Privacy Policy
Effective 23 August 2026 · Last updated 23 August 2026
Sozo is a streaming client for movies, series and anime. This policy explains exactly what the app and its servers store about you, what stays on your device, and who else is involved. It is written to describe what Sozo actually does — not what a generic template says.
1. Who runs Sozo
Sozo is an independent, non-commercial project maintained by Azamov. The apps (Android, Android TV, iOS, Windows, macOS and Linux) talk to a single backend operated by the project. There is no company behind it, no advertising business, and nothing about you is sold.
2. Information you give us
You can browse Sozo without an account. Creating one is required only for features that follow you across devices — sync, comments, watch parties and trackers.
- Email address — used to verify your account, to sign you in, and to reset your password. Verification and reset use a one-time code sent by email.
- Username and display name — shown next to your comments, in watch parties and on trivia leaderboards.
- Password — stored only as a bcrypt hash. We cannot read it, and neither can anyone with access to the database.
- Profile photo — optional. If you sign in with Google, the photo and display name from that Google account are used unless you change them.
If you choose Sign in with Google, Google tells us your Google account identifier, email address, name and photo. We do not receive your Google password and we get nothing else from your Google account.
3. What your account records as you use the app
These are stored against your account on our server so that a phone, a TV and a desktop all show the same thing:
- Watch history — the title, the source it came from, the episode, and where you stopped (playback position and duration), so you can resume on another device. Deleting a row is also synced, so it disappears everywhere.
- Favourites, Watch Later and Watched lists — the titles you saved and when you saved them.
- Watch streak — which local dates you watched something on, your current and longest streak, and the UTC offset your device reported (used only to decide when your day ends).
- Comments, replies and likes — public. Your username and photo are shown with them.
- Reports you submit about broken links or content.
- Watch party and premiere participation — the room you joined, your username and photo shown to other members, and chat messages you send in that room.
- Trivia (Kino Billar) — rounds you played, scores and leaderboard position.
Watch parties never carry your video. The server relays only what is being watched and where it is paused — never a stream URL. Each device resolves and plays the video itself, so nothing you play travels through another member's connection or ours.
4. Connected accounts (AniList, MyAnimeList)
Connecting a tracker is entirely optional and can be undone at any time from Profile → Connections.
- When you connect, we store the access token that service issues, along with your username, numeric user id and avatar on that service. The token is stored against your Sozo account rather than on one device, which is what lets a TV inherit the connection without a second sign-in.
- Sozo writes only your episode progress to the connected service, and only for titles you have linked. It never posts, never changes your other entries, and never moves your progress backwards.
- We also store the title links you make — the association between a title in a Sozo source and an entry on the tracker. This is what makes tracking work for sources the tracker has never heard of.
- Disconnecting deletes the token and those links from your account and from the device. It does not delete anything already written to your AniList or MyAnimeList list — that lives with them, and you control it there.
5. Technical and device information
- Push notification token (Firebase Cloud Messaging) — so we can notify you about replies, new episodes and streak reminders. Notifications can be turned off in the app and in your system settings.
- Device sessions and pairing — when you link a TV by scanning a QR code, we store a short-lived pairing record and a session for that device so it can stay signed in. Pairing codes expire after 10 minutes.
- App version and platform — sent with some requests so the server can serve the right feature flags and update prompts, and so download counts can be grouped by platform.
- Server logs — our reverse proxy records the IP address, timestamp, requested path and user agent of requests, as any web server does. These are used for debugging, rate limiting and abuse prevention.
- Crash reports and analytics (Firebase Crashlytics and Analytics, Android only) — stack traces, device model, OS version and coarse usage events, so crashes can be found and fixed. Crashlytics is disabled in debug builds.
6. What never leaves your device
A great deal of what Sozo remembers is local only. None of the following is uploaded:
- App Lock PIN — stored as a salted hash in the platform's secure storage (Android Keystore / iOS Keychain). Biometric unlock is handled entirely by your operating system; Sozo never sees your fingerprint or face data.
- Downloaded videos — saved to your own storage. We know nothing about what you downloaded, only an anonymous count of app downloads per platform.
- Private list — the hidden, PIN-protected list is local by design.
- Player preferences — playback speed, fit, subtitle styling, gesture settings, chosen playback engine.
- Installed extensions and repositories, source selection, search history and cached artwork.
7. What we do not collect
- No payment or card details — Sozo does not sell anything.
- No precise location, contacts, calendar, photos, microphone or camera access, other than the camera you explicitly open to scan a TV pairing QR code (the image is processed on the device and never uploaded).
- No advertising identifiers, ad networks or third-party marketing trackers.
- We do not sell, rent or trade personal data to anyone, for any purpose.
8. Content sources and playback
Sozo does not host video. It indexes publicly reachable third-party sources and, for many of them, your device connects to those sources directly — some streams are tied to the IP address that requested them, which is precisely why the request has to come from your device rather than from our server.
That means the site you are streaming from can see your IP address and the usual details any website sees. Those sites are operated by unrelated third parties, we have no control over them, and their own privacy practices apply. The same is true of any extension or repository you install: extensions are third-party code you choose to add, and they can make their own network requests.
9. Services we rely on
Sozo uses a small number of external services to operate. Each one receives only what it needs:
| Service | What it is used for | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Google Firebase | Sign-in, push notifications, crash reports, analytics | Account identifier, device token, crash and usage data |
| Google Sign-In | Optional sign-in method | Handled by Google; we receive your identifier, email, name and photo |
| Resend | Sending one-time codes by email | Your email address and the code |
| Cloudflare R2 | Hosting shorts, trivia clips and posters | Nothing personal; it serves files |
| DigitalOcean | Hosting the backend and database | Everything described above, as our infrastructure provider |
| Vercel | Hosting this website and the admin panel | Standard web request logs |
| TMDB | Titles, artwork, cast and metadata | Metadata lookups; no account data |
| AniList / MyAnimeList | Optional progress tracking | Only if you connect them — see section 4 |
| OpenSubtitles & subtitle providers | Fetching subtitles | The title or IMDb/TMDB id being searched |
Our backend and database run on infrastructure rented from DigitalOcean. The database is not shared with anyone outside the project, and no third party is given bulk access to it.
10. Why we process this data
- To provide the service you asked for — signing in, syncing your history across devices, running watch parties, delivering notifications you enabled.
- To keep it working and safe — rate limiting, abuse prevention, moderation of comments and reports, fixing crashes.
- With your consent — connecting a tracker, enabling notifications, opting into analytics-bearing builds. Consent can be withdrawn at any time.
11. How long we keep it
- Account data is kept until you delete your account.
- One-time codes expire within minutes; device pairing codes within 10 minutes.
- Watch parties and their chat are ephemeral and expire automatically once the room goes idle. Trivia rounds that are abandoned delete themselves.
- Records of unlinked titles are kept for up to 60 days so that a device which has been offline still learns about the removal, then dropped.
- Server request logs are kept for a short operational period and then rotated away.
12. Your rights and how to delete your account
You can, at any time:
- See and edit your profile, history, lists and comments from inside the app.
- Delete individual items — removing a history row or a comment removes it on the server too.
- Disconnect trackers from Profile → Connections.
- Delete your account. Sozo does not yet have a self-service delete button. Message us on Telegram from the email address the account uses and we will remove it by hand, normally within a few days. Deletion removes your account record, history, lists, streak, tracker tokens and your comments. It cannot be undone.
If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you also have the right to access, correct, export, restrict or object to our processing, and to complain to your local data protection authority. Write to us and we will act on it.
13. Children
Sozo is not directed at children under 13, and accounts are not knowingly created for them. Some sources and optional extensions carry content intended for adults; adult manga sources are hidden until explicitly enabled. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
14. Security
All traffic to our servers uses HTTPS. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored in a readable form. Access tokens are short-lived and refreshed silently. The database is not exposed to the public internet, and administrative actions are recorded in an audit log.
No system is perfect. If you find a vulnerability, please report it to us privately rather than publicly — we will credit you and fix it.
15. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect or why, we will update the date at the top and announce it on our Telegram channel. Continuing to use Sozo after a change means you accept the updated policy.
16. Contact
Questions about this policy, a data request, or an account deletion:
- Telegram — @sozoapp
- Discord — Sozo community server
- GitHub — professorDeveloper/sozo
See also our Terms of Use.