How Gazenest Encrypts Your Data

A few months after launching the first private beta, someone asked me a straightforward question: "Can you read my email?" The honest answer is no, and not because of a policy, but because of how the database stores it.

What gets encrypted

Only personally identifiable information is encrypted. Public YouTube metadata stays in plaintext because it is already public and querying it needs to be fast.

How the encryption works

The algorithm is AES-256-GCM, an authenticated encryption mode that provides both confidentiality and integrity in a single pass. You will find it in online banking, password managers like 1Password, and Signal.

Each encrypted value is stored alongside a unique nonce and an authentication tag. Because the nonce changes on every write, the same email address encrypted twice produces different ciphertext. The tag means any tampering with a stored value is detectable at read time, before decryption proceeds.

The key itself lives outside the database, in an environment variable on the server. Compromising the database rows without the key leaves an attacker with bytes that cannot be reversed.

This is also why Gazenest staff cannot read your email: the application decrypts on demand for transactional use (sending a receipt, for example), but the raw database column is opaque. There is no admin interface that lists addresses in cleartext.

One thing this design does not solve: if you use a weak password and your session token is stolen, that is outside the encryption layer entirely. AES-256-GCM protects data at rest, not a compromised login session.

Your rights under GDPR

You can export all your data in decrypted form from the dashboard at any time. Account deletion is permanent: after a 30-day grace period, all rows are hard-deleted, with no soft-delete or "deactivated" state left behind.

If you have questions about the implementation, the contact form is the right place. I would rather answer a technical question plainly than leave it to a vague privacy page.