Privacy and security

The short version

• No telemetry. Zephium does not collect or send anything about how you browse.
• No account needed. History, tasks, notes, memory and time live on your device. An account is only for Zephium AI, and until you sign in, Zephium does not contact our servers.
• Zephium AI keeps no content. Requests pass through to the model that answers them. We count usage for your plan, never store prompts, answers or pages, and never see your card.
• Private windows keep nothing once they close.

The full policy is on the privacy page. This page is the practical version.

Where your data lives

History, open tabs, bookmarks, tasks, notes, Work, memory and time are stored on your computer, in the profile they belong to. Each profile keeps its own website data and its own history, session and icons, apart from every other profile. Notes are plain Markdown files in a folder you own. Time is counted on this device only.

You can remove any of it. Clear… in History, or Settings › Privacy & security, clears browsing history for a time range. Deleting a profile removes everything in it from the device.

What Zephium connects to

Zephium talks to these, and to nothing about how you browse:

With a model on your computer, nothing leaves it.

Ads and trackers

The blocker is built into Zephium and on by default for every profile. It is native, written in Rust on Brave's open-source adblock engine, and uses the EasyList and EasyPrivacy filter lists. It stops requests before a page can make them, so there is nothing to install and nothing sitting inside the page. Blocking decisions happen on your device, and the pages you visit are not reported to anyone.

• See it work. The New Tab page counts what was blocked today.
• Pause it on one site. Open the sidebar menu and turn off Block Ads and Trackers for that site, then reload the page.
• Hide something it missed. Choose Hide Elements…, click the part of the page you do not want, and Zephium keeps it hidden.
• Turn it off or refresh the lists. Both are in Settings › Privacy & security, under Ad & tracker protection.

Models and agents

Using AI sends words to a model, so Zephium is careful about what, to whom, and when.

• You choose where it goes. To Zephium AI, to a provider with your key, or to a model on your own computer. Your keys are kept in your system's credential store and each is sent only to its own provider.
• Agents show their sources. When an agent works, you see on the canvas which pages and notes it uses. It asks once before using your history, notes, open tabs or a folder, says what it would see, and keeps to those for that work.
• Sensitive sites need your say-so. Banks, payments and health sites are never used without asking, and Ask Zephium never reads banks, payments, health or government pages.
• Pictures of pages are your choice. Work sends a picture of a page to your model only when its text is not enough, and asks first on sites where you are signed in. You can turn it off.
• Memory keeps no secrets. It never keeps passwords, keys or card numbers, and you can read, edit and forget everything it remembers.
• Private windows are off limits. Neither Ask Zephium nor Work runs in them.

What a provider does with what it receives is governed by your agreement with them. With Zephium AI, our servers do not store prompts, answers, page content, images or audio; how long the model provider keeps what it receives depends on that provider's own terms. See the privacy policy and what agents may do.

How sites are kept in their place

Zephium draws pages with the web engine your system already has: WebKit on macOS, the engine Safari uses, and WebView2 on Windows. Each tab is an ordinary web view with no access to Zephium's own interface or its native commands. The part of Zephium that holds your tabs, storage, blocker, extensions and agents is separate, and written in Rust.

• A site that asks to use your camera or microphone asks you first, and an indicator shows while either is in use, with a button to stop it.
• Pop-ups are blocked, and a page that wants to open a link in another app asks first.
• A site whose identity Zephium cannot confirm is not opened, and a page without an encrypted connection is marked in the address field.
• Passkeys can be switched on in Settings › Privacy & security.

Extensions are installed from the original package, with a review of the access they ask for. An update cannot widen that access without asking you. See Extensions.

Updates and downloads

Zephium updates itself from GitHub Releases. Updates are signed, and Zephium checks the signature before it installs. When your system has security updates waiting, or Windows needs to update WebView2, Zephium tells you, because the web engine is part of your protection.

Windows builds are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn you the first time. See Getting started.

Where the guarantees stop

We would rather say this plainly than leave you to find it.

• Zephium relies on the engine your system provides, so it has that engine's protections and its limits. It does not claim the full site isolation that Chromium has on every platform.
• Zephium does not encrypt your profile on its own. Your computer's account and disk encryption protect it.
• Zephium does not include its own phishing or malware scanning, and does not promise to catch every harmful download.
• It is in beta. If something is not right, please open an issue.

Open source, and reporting a problem

Zephium is open source under the MPL-2.0, so every claim here can be checked against its source code. The backend behind Zephium AI is a separate repository under the AGPL-3.0-only.

If you find a vulnerability, please report it privately and not in a public issue: write to [email protected], or use the security tab of the repository.