Skip to main content

Security and privacy

The security story of a self-hosted instance is shaped by one fact: it runs on your machine, on your network, under your control. There is no vendor holding your data and no shared multi-customer database. That changes what you have to worry about and what you don't.

This section is the operator's view of it. Four pages, each answering a question you'd ask before trusting the thing with real data.

  • Secrets and keys: the two secrets the instance runs on, which one is irrecoverable, and how to hold them.
  • Accounts and access: roles, sessions, API tokens, and turning signup off.
  • Network exposure: what can leave the box, what's reachable from where, and the guard on outbound connections.
  • Your data: where it lives, that it's yours, and what the instance does not send anywhere.

The model in a paragraph​

You run four containers on your own box (a database, the API, the web frontend, and an HTTPS proxy when you enable it). All data sits in a folder on that box. A person gets in by logging in with an account you or they created; what they can do is set by their role and the individual permissions you grant. Automated clients (scripts, agents) use API tokens that are scoped to exactly what they need. Outbound connections happen only for features you turn on, and each has an off switch. Nothing reports back to a central service.

What self-hosting does and doesn't cover​

Hosting your own instance removes an entire class of risk: your data is never on someone else's server, so there's no third-party breach that can expose it and no account with a provider that can be compromised. It also hands you the parts a hosted service would handle: keeping the box patched, controlling who can reach it on your network, and holding the encryption key safely.

None of that is heavy for a home box. The pages here walk through each piece with the specific settings, so a household or a small group can run an instance soundly without a security background. The privacy summary is the short companion: exactly which features reach the internet and how to switch each off.