PerliStream Privacy Policy
Effective 24 September 2026
1. Summary
- PerliStream is a player for your own media server. Your films, series, music, recordings and live TV live on a PerliStream Server that you, or someone who shared it with you, runs. We do not hold your library and we never receive your media files.
- The app signs in to a PerliStream Connect account, which exists to find your servers and to let a server owner share access with family. It holds your e-mail address, your servers and the devices you signed in on — not your library.
- Watching happens directly between the app and the server, over your own network whenever it can. Our relay is used only when a direct connection is impossible.
- The free version shows ads, supplied by Google AdMob, on list screens only — never on or over the player. Section 7 explains what that means for your data.
- No location permission, no contacts, no ad targeting from anything you watch.
- You can delete your Connect account from the app, and export what it holds.
2. Who is responsible
Perlicom Systems Limited (company number 546999, Ireland) is the data controller for the PerliStream app and for PerliStream Connect. Contact: support@perlicom.com.
The server is not ours. A PerliStream Server runs on hardware its owner controls, holds that owner's media and keeps its own records of what was played on it. If you connect to someone else's server, that person decides what you can see and can see the activity their server records. If you run the server, you are responsible for it and for the people you invite to it. Google acts as an independent controller for the data its sign-in, Cast and advertising services collect, under Google's own privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy).
3. Signing in
You can sign in to PerliStream Connect either with Sign in with Google (Google gives us your account identifier, e-mail address and name; we never receive your password) or with a six-digit code sent to your e-mail address. On a television, where typing is painful, you can instead sign in by entering a short pairing code, and you can claim or join a server by scanning its QR code with the camera.
After sign-in the app holds a short-lived access token and a rotating refresh token in your device's protected storage. Signing out, on that device or remotely from the device list, invalidates them.
4. What PerliStream Connect holds
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Your account: identifier, e-mail address and name | To identify you, to sign you in, and so a server owner can invite you by e-mail. |
| Your servers: name, identifier, version, platform, whether they are online, and the network addresses they can be reached at — which include IP addresses, yours and the server's | So the app can find your server and choose the fastest route to it. Address records are short-lived and are purged on a schedule. |
| Sharing: invitations you sent or received, and who is a member of which server | To let a server owner share their library with family. |
| Your devices: a device name, the platform and the app version | So you can see where you are signed in and sign a lost device out remotely. |
| Your plan, and — if you buy one — order and invoice records | To know what your account is entitled to, and to meet accounting and tax law. |
| Server logs: requests with a date and an IP address | Security and troubleshooting. Kept briefly and then deleted. |
What Connect does not hold: your media, your library listings, your artwork, your subtitles, your search terms and what you watched. Those stay between the app and your server.
Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you for the account, the servers, the sharing and the plan; our legitimate interest in a secure, working service for the logs; and legal obligation for the order records.
5. What stays between the app and your server
Browsing, searching, playing, resuming, downloading for offline use, recording and live TV are conversations between the app and the PerliStream Server you are connected to. Your watch progress and history, what you searched for, and the media itself are held by that server, under its owner's control — not by us.
Direct first, relay only if it must. The app prefers a connection over your own network, then a direct connection over the internet. Where neither is possible, and if your plan includes it, traffic is carried by our relay at relay.perlicom.com. The relay passes encrypted traffic through; we do not decode or store what is being watched, and we count only the volume carried, so that a fair-use limit can be applied.
6. Permissions, and exactly what each one is for
| Permission | What PerliStream uses it for |
|---|---|
CAMERA | Only the QR scanner: scanning a server's claim or pairing code to add it to your account. It is requested when the scanner opens and at no other time. Nothing is photographed or stored, and no image leaves your device — only the text in the code is read. |
RECORD_AUDIO | Only voice search: when you press the voice button on a TV remote, the app records a short clip (about four seconds) and sends it to your own PerliStream Server, which turns it into text locally and searches your library. The clip is not sent to us and not sent to any third-party speech service. Nothing is recorded unless you press the button. |
MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS | The player's volume boost above 100%, which attaches an audio effect to the output. |
FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MEDIA_PLAYBACK | The media notification shown while you are casting to a Chromecast, so you can pause or skip without reopening the app. |
Network access (INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE) | Reaching your server and PerliStream Connect, and noticing when you are offline so downloaded titles are offered instead. |
com.farmerbb.taskbar…START_STOP_TASKBAR | A convenience on the Android-TV style boxes we build: showing or hiding the system taskbar from the app. It has no effect on an ordinary phone or tablet, and it gives the app no access to other apps or their data. |
The microphone, camera, touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and location hardware features are all declared optional, so the same app installs on a television stick that has none of them. Declaring a feature as optional is not a permission and gives the app no access to it.
Permissions the app does not have: no location of any kind, no contacts, no SMS, no call log, no access to your photos or documents beyond the folder it downloads into, and no background recording.
The version on Google Play cannot install other apps. Copies of PerliStream distributed outside a store can update themselves, which needs the "install unknown apps" permission; that permission and the torrent-link handling that goes with the self-hosted household build are removed from the store build at build time.
7. Advertising
The free version of PerliStream is supported by advertising supplied by Google AdMob. Ads appear in two places only: a small banner at the foot of the Account screen and at the bottom of the library shell, and one full-screen ad at a natural break — when a title has finished, there is no next episode, and the app is taking you back out to the title's page.
No ad is ever shown during playback. There is no pre-roll, no mid-roll and no ad over the player, the subtitles, the live guide or a cast screen; a full-screen ad cannot appear while a player is open, and it is not shown between episodes when the next one auto-plays. The television and kiosk interface shows no ads at all, and neither does the desktop app.
To serve those ads, Google may process your device's advertising ID, coarse device and app information (model, operating-system version, app version, language) and your IP address, from which an approximate, city-level location is derived, as an independent controller under its own policies. It also records whether an ad was shown, seen or tapped, and diagnostics from the ads SDK.
We give Google nothing about what you watch. Your library, your titles, your search terms, your watch history, your server and the people you share it with are not shared with the ad SDK, with an advertiser or with anyone else, and no ad is targeted using them.
- In the EU, EEA and UK the app asks for your consent before any personalised advertising, through Google's certified consent flow. You can reopen it and change your answer at any time from the privacy options in the app's settings.
- On Android you can reset or delete your advertising ID, and switch off ad personalisation, in Settings > Privacy > Ads (on many devices: Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy > Ads, or Settings > Google > Ads). Deleting the ID stops PerliStream's ads being personalised. You can also manage Google ad settings at myadcenter.google.com.
- How Google uses data from apps that use its services is described at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
A paid plan removes advertising.
8. Paying for a plan
Where a paid PerliStream plan is offered, the app opens a checkout page in your browser and the payment is taken by our payment provider. We never see or store your card details. We keep the order and the invoice — the amount, the date, the plan, the country used for VAT and the evidence for it — because tax law requires us to.
9. What is kept on your device
Your sign-in tokens (in protected storage); your server list and the last server you used; your player preferences (subtitle and audio choices, quality, playback speed, volume and brightness); cached artwork and library listings so the app opens quickly offline; and any titles you downloaded for offline watching, with their subtitles. Uninstalling the app or clearing its storage removes all of it. Downloads can be deleted individually from the Downloads screen.
Optional usage counts. Settings contains an opt-in that counts which features are used — for example that the Live TV tab was opened, or that a subtitle track was changed. It is off by default, the counts stay on your device and are not sent to us, and they never contain a title, a media identifier, a file name or a search term. Switching the option off erases them.
10. Who else is involved
- The owner of the server you connect to, and the server itself.
- Our hosting provider, which runs PerliStream Connect and the relay.
- Google, for Sign in with Google, for Google Play, for Google Cast when you cast to a Chromecast, and — in the free version — for the advertising in section 7.
- Our payment provider, if you buy a plan.
- Our e-mail provider, to send a sign-in code or an invitation.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use what you watch for advertising or to train anything. Where a provider such as Google processes data outside the European Economic Area, it does so under its own approved safeguards, such as the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
11. How long we keep it
- Your Connect account and its servers, memberships and devices: while the account exists.
- Server address records, which contain IP addresses: they expire within minutes and are hard-deleted within 24 hours.
- Server logs: a short period for security and troubleshooting, then deleted.
- Order and invoice records: as long as Irish and EU tax law requires.
Deleting your account removes it from PerliStream Connect, together with your memberships, invitations and devices; a server you own is unclaimed. You can do it in the app, or e-mail support@perlicom.com from the address you signed in with and we will do it within one month. Deleting your Connect account does not delete anything held by a server — ask that server's owner. The app also offers an export of what your account holds.
12. Security
Connections to PerliStream Connect and to the relay use HTTPS/TLS. A server on your own network may present its own certificate, which the app pins to the fingerprint Connect published for that server. Access tokens are short-lived, refresh tokens rotate on every use, and a reused refresh token revokes the whole session family — a deliberate defence against a stolen token.
13. Your rights (GDPR)
If you are in the EU, EEA or UK you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or port your personal data, to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to withdraw consent where processing rests on it. E-mail support@perlicom.com and we will answer within one month. For data held by a server you do not own, contact that server's owner.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (www.dataprotection.ie) or with the supervisory authority where you live or work.
14. Children
PerliStream is intended for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. A server owner decides what a member of their server can see; parental controls are a matter for that server. If you believe a child has created a Connect account, contact us at support@perlicom.com and we will delete it.
15. Changes to this policy
We will update this page if the app or the law changes, and change the effective date above. If a change materially affects how your data is used, we will also tell you in the app or on the Google Play listing.
16. Contact
Perlicom Systems Limited (company number 546999, Ireland)
E-mail: support@perlicom.com