NỌX Principles

Statement of Intent, Privacy Principles, Institutional Neutrality, and Procedures for Responding to Lawful Requests of the NỌX Project

1. General Provisions

This document defines the fundamental position of the NỌX project, its purpose, its privacy principles, the limits of the technical capabilities of the system operator, as well as the general approach to acceptable use, the processing of technical data, and interaction with competent public authorities in cases provided for by applicable law.

This document is programmatic, explanatory, and public in nature. It reflects the core principles of the NỌX project and shall be interpreted in conjunction with the Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy, and other official project documents. In the event of any inconsistency between this document and legally binding terms of use, the relevant legally binding documents shall prevail unless expressly stated otherwise.

2. Purpose of the NỌX System

NỌX was created as a system for the protection of private life, private communication, confidentiality of correspondence, and digital security.

The project proceeds from the understanding that the right to private life, the right to personal and family privacy, the right to secrecy of correspondence, and the right to secure private communication are among the fundamental human rights and deserve proper technical protection.

The purpose of NỌX has been and remains the creation and development of a tool that enables private digital communication without turning personal interaction into an object of constant surveillance, behavioral analysis, profiling, commercial exploitation, or excessive data accumulation.

NỌX was originally intended for lawful, good-faith, and private use.

3. Institutional Neutrality of the Project

NỌX is an independent project and was not created in the interests of any political party, religious organization, ideological movement, state structure, commercial influence group, or any other social force seeking control over users’ communications.

The NỌX project was not originally intended to promote any political, religious, ideological, or other doctrine. NỌX does not tie a person’s right to privacy to that person’s views, beliefs, origin, citizenship, language, culture, religion, affiliation, or public position.

The protection of private communication toward which NỌX is directed must apply equally to all people within the limits permitted by the architecture of the system and applicable law.

4. Architectural Principle of Privacy

NỌX was originally designed in such a way that the system operator would not have substantive access to users’ private communications and would not possess information enabling the operator to identify users, determine the content of their correspondence, map their circle of communication, reconstruct their interaction history, or determine the subjects of their private discussions, except for strictly limited and short-lived technical processes without which message delivery, file transmission, connection establishment, or the protection of the infrastructure itself would be objectively impossible.

The architecture of NỌX is aimed at ensuring that the system operator has no practical ability to:

• determine who a specific user actually is;
• read the content of private messages;
• reconstruct the history of private correspondence;
• determine who is communicating with whom;
• analyze the topics, purposes, or nature of private communication;
• turn a private communication system into a system of surveillance.

The limitation of the operator’s access to sensitive information is, for NỌX, not a matter of discretion or goodwill, but a consequence of the project’s original architectural design.

Where data is not required for the existence and protection of the system, the project proceeds from the principle of its absence.

5. Principle of Data Minimization

NỌX does not seek to collect personal data, accumulate behavioral information, build user profiles, form databases of social connections, or analyze the content of private communications.

If certain technical data is processed by the system, such processing must be minimally necessary, short-lived, limited to a specific technical purpose, and unrelated to the analysis of a user’s private life beyond what is objectively necessary for the functioning of the service.

NỌX is not a cloud archive of a user’s private life and is not intended for the long-term storage of private correspondence, file contents, or communication history.

6. Absence of Excess Knowledge as a Principle

The NỌX project proceeds from the principle that the operator of a private communication system should not know more about a user than is objectively necessary for the existence, functioning, and protection of the system itself.

The absence of information concerning the content of private communication, its participants, subject matter, and history is not regarded by NỌX as a deficiency. On the contrary, within the architecture of the project, this is a deliberate, desirable, and principled condition.

Where the operator does not possess such information for architectural reasons, its absence constitutes confirmation that the project’s principles are being observed rather than any breach of duty.

7. File Transfer and Third-Party Metadata

NỌX does not create or embed hidden identifiers, service markers, additional metadata, or any other elements in user files for the purpose of tracking the user or the contents of a file by the system operator.

At the same time, files transmitted by users may already contain embedded metadata generated by the user’s device, camera, operating system, document editor, third-party application, or other software or hardware not related to NỌX.

Such metadata is not created by the NỌX project, is not considered data generated by the operator, and may be processed by the system solely in transit and only to the extent objectively necessary to deliver the file to the recipient. After delivery is completed, such data shall not be retained by NỌX unless otherwise required for short-lived technical processing or for the protection of infrastructure within the limits provided by the official documents of the project.

The user bears sole responsibility for the contents of files transmitted by that user, including the presence of third-party metadata within them.

8. Infrastructure Security Logs

NỌX does not keep logs of the contents of private correspondence, does not build logs of users’ social graphs, and does not log private communication as such.

At the same time, the project may maintain limited technical logs relating exclusively to the protection of its own infrastructure, including the detection of unauthorized access attempts, the recording of attacks on servers and network resources, the detection of abuse directed against the platform itself, the investigation of incidents threatening the security of operators, users, or service stability, as well as the maintenance of the integrity, resilience, and cybersecurity of NỌX infrastructure.

Such logs are not intended for surveillance of users’ private lives, do not constitute logs of private communication, and are used exclusively for the protection of infrastructure and response to threats.

9. Acceptable Use

NỌX was developed for the protection of lawful private communication and was not originally intended for use for purposes contrary to law, public safety, the foundations of public order, or the fundamental rights of others.

It is prohibited to use NỌX for:

• the preparation, organization, coordination, or facilitation of terrorist activity;
• violence, threats, harassment, blackmail, extortion, and other forms of harm;
• the exploitation of persons, including human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and violence against minors;
• fraud, theft, malicious attacks, and other criminal acts;
• the distribution of malicious software;
• unauthorized access to third-party systems, networks, or data;
• the distribution, sale, coordination of transfer, or other unlawful trafficking of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances, their analogues, precursors, potent substances, toxic substances, poisonous substances, hazardous chemical substances, as well as any other substances, preparations, materials, or means the circulation of which is restricted or prohibited by applicable law;
• any other acts prohibited by applicable law.

The operator of NỌX does not approve, authorize, or encourage unlawful use of the system.

10. User Responsibility

Each user bears sole responsibility for the lawfulness, good faith, and consequences of that user’s actions when using NỌX.

The mere existence of a private communication tool does not in itself imply approval of any possible purpose for which it may be used. NỌX provides a neutral technological environment for private and lawful communication, but does not become a participant in, organizer of, approver of, accomplice in, or guarantor of actions carried out by users in violation of the law.

11. Limits of Liability of the Operator and Developers

The operator and developers of NỌX shall not be liable for the content of users’ private communications, their motives, intentions, private topics of discussion, or the purposes for which individual persons may attempt to use the system, provided that such purposes are not supported, encouraged, or controlled by the operator and that the architecture of the system does not give the operator any practical ability to know, analyze, or monitor such conduct.

The inability to provide information that the operator does not possess for architectural reasons cannot be construed as a refusal to cooperate, concealment of information, or evasion of obligations. It is impossible to provide what the system does not create, collect, or retain.

12. Interaction with Competent Public Authorities and Lawful Requests

NỌX does not declare a refusal to interact with competent public authorities in cases where properly issued, lawful, and applicable requests are received in the prescribed manner.

At the same time, the scope of any possible response by NỌX is objectively limited to the data that actually exists, is genuinely in the possession of the operator, and can be extracted without violating the architectural principles of the system and without creating new data retroactively.

If the requested information is not created, not collected, not retained, or is inaccessible to the operator for architectural reasons, NỌX cannot provide it.

In such cases, the response of NỌX may be limited to a statement that the requested data is absent from the operator’s possession or is not generated by the system in principle.

13. Use in Certain Jurisdictions

In certain countries and jurisdictions, the use of private communication tools, encryption technologies, or enhanced confidentiality instruments may be restricted, prohibited, or associated with increased risks for the user.

NỌX does not recommend using the system in violation of the applicable law of the user’s country of presence.

A person who decides to use NỌX in a jurisdiction where such technologies are restricted or prohibited acts at that person’s own risk and bears sole responsibility for compliance with local law.

At the same time, the existence of restrictions in certain countries does not alter the project’s fundamental position that the right to private life, secrecy of correspondence, and secure personal communication are among the basic values of a free society.

14. “As Is” Principle

NỌX is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis within the limits established by the Terms of Use and other official documents of the project.

The project does not guarantee absolute availability, uninterrupted operation, fitness for a particular purpose, or the absence of restrictions arising from third parties, communications providers, external infrastructure participants, device manufacturers, legal regimes of individual states, network failures, blocking measures, sanctions, prohibitions, force majeure, or any other factors beyond the control of the NỌX project.

15. Fundamental Position of the Project

NỌX was not created as a tool for concealing crimes.
NỌX was created as a tool for the protection of private life.

NỌX was not created as a system of surveillance.
NỌX was originally designed as a system that limits the operator’s knowledge.

NỌX does not seek to know more about a user than is objectively necessary for the existence of the system itself.
Where knowledge is not required, NỌX proceeds from the principle of its absence.

NỌX does not serve a political, religious, or ideological agenda.
NỌX serves the protection of private human space.

16. Final Provision

This document reflects the fundamental position of the NỌX project: private communication should remain private, and the operator of a private system should not become the custodian, observer, or interpreter of another person’s private life.

Where data is absent for architectural reasons, such absence is not a defect of the system but its deliberate principle.