Privacy Policy
Last updated: 5 October 2026
The short version. The Telly has no servers and no accounts. We do not collect, receive, store or sell any personal information about you. Everything the app knows — your provider details, what you have watched, your favourites and recordings — stays on your device. The app asks for exactly one Android permission: internet access.
Who this policy is from
The Telly ("the app") is an independent project ("we", "us"). You can reach us at hello@thetelly.org.
This policy covers the Android TV and Fire TV application and this website, thetelly.org.
What the app stores on your device
All of the following is written to the app's private storage on your device. None of it is transmitted to us, because we operate no service to transmit it to.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your provider's server address, username and password (or playlist and guide URLs) | To request channels, catalogue and guide data from the provider you chose |
| The channel, film and series catalogue fetched from your provider | So browsing and search work without re-fetching everything each time |
| Programme guide data | To draw the guide |
| Favourites, watch history, resume positions, hidden channels and categories | To power Continue Watching, Recently Watched and your own arrangement of the guide |
| Recordings and timeshift buffers you create | They are video files, saved on the device, deleted when you delete them |
| Profiles, app settings, chosen theme, language and parental-control PIN | To keep the app configured the way you left it |
| A note of whether you have supported the app, and whether a monthly subscription is running | To know which colour themes to offer. It records only that a purchase happened — no amount, no order number, no payment details |
Uninstalling the app removes all of it. Settings also offers a reset that clears recordings or returns the app to defaults without uninstalling.
What leaves your device
Your IPTV provider
The app connects to whichever provider you configure, and sends the credentials you entered in order to authenticate. It requests channel lists, catalogue data, guide data and video streams. We have no relationship with, and no visibility into, your provider — what they log about your usage is governed by their privacy policy, not this one.
Many IPTV services are only reachable over plain, unencrypted HTTP. The app therefore permits unencrypted connections, which means your provider credentials and the addresses of what you are watching may travel unencrypted across your network and your internet connection. This is a property of the services themselves rather than a choice the app makes for you, but you should know it. Where your provider offers HTTPS, use it.
Artwork servers chosen by your provider
Posters and channel logos are loaded from whatever web addresses your provider's playlist supplies. These are frequently third-party image hosts that are not operated by your provider and are certainly not operated by us. Loading an image discloses your IP address and the fact that the image was requested to whoever runs that host. The app calls no metadata or artwork service of its own choosing.
Google Play and the Amazon Appstore
If you support the app from the Support screen, the transaction is handled entirely by the store you installed the app from: Google Play Billing, or Amazon's In-App Purchasing on the Amazon Appstore. We never see your card details, billing address or any other payment information. The store tells the app only whether a purchase completed, so it can be finalised. The store's handling of that transaction is covered by Google's or Amazon's own privacy policy.
Supporting the app unlocks extra colour themes, so the app does ask the store what you have bought — when the Support screen opens, and once when the app starts. On the Amazon Appstore it also asks whether the Appstore is present and signed in, so it knows whether to offer support at all. These checks happen between your device and the store; they reach no server of ours, because we run none. A one-time contribution is cleared with the store once the app has noted it, so that the same amount can be given again; the note described in the table above, kept on your device, is what keeps the themes unlocked from then on, offline included.
Nothing about watching is affected either way. The themes are cosmetic, and no feature of the app is gated behind a payment.
Android backup
The app currently uses Android's default backup behaviour. If backup is enabled on your device and for this app, Android may copy the app's stored data — including your saved provider credentials, and the note of whether you have supported the app — to your own Google account's backup, where it is used to restore the app if you move to a new device. Restoring that backup is also what carries the unlocked colour themes across to the new install. This transfer is performed by Android, not by the app, and the backup belongs to your Google account, not to us. You can turn it off in your device's system settings under backup, or per-app where your device offers that.
What we do not do
- We do not operate any server that the app talks to.
- We do not create accounts, and there is nothing to sign in to.
- The app contains no analytics, crash-reporting, advertising, attribution or tracking libraries of any kind.
- We do not build profiles of you, and we have nothing to sell, share or disclose to anyone — including to law enforcement, because we hold nothing.
- We do not supply, host, index or resell any television channel, film or programme. See the terms.
Children
The app is a general-audience media player and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect information from anyone, of any age. Parental controls are available in Settings to restrict channels and categories behind a PIN.
Your rights
Data-protection law gives you rights to access, correct, export and erase personal data held about you. We hold no personal data about you, so there is nothing for us to produce or delete — the data described above is in your possession, on your device, and you can remove all of it by uninstalling the app or using the reset options in Settings. If you believe we hold something about you, write to hello@thetelly.org and we will answer.
This website
thetelly.org sets no cookies and runs no advertising or analytics scripts.
It is served as static files by Cloudflare Pages, which processes request metadata such as
IP addresses in order to deliver the site and protect it from abuse.
Changes
If this policy changes we will update this page and the date at the top. Material changes will also be announced in the Discord.
Contact
hello@thetelly.org — or the Discord, which is usually faster.