Privacy Policy
Last updated 1 August 2026 · Effective 1 August 2026
In short: Kestrel collects nothing. There is no Kestrel account, no analytics, no telemetry and no Kestrel server anywhere. Your camera address, your credentials, your video and your recordings stay on your own devices and your own network. We could not see them if we wanted to. Buying the Roku channel is handled by Roku — we never receive your payment details.
1. Who we are
This policy is issued by Schooley Industries, the publisher of the Kestrel applications — Kestrel for Linux, the Kestrel channel for Roku, and the Kestrel Screensaver for Roku — and of this website at kestrel-app.com.
It explains what those applications do with information, and what this website does. It covers nothing else: your camera hardware, its manufacturer's own apps and cloud services, your Roku device, and any other software you run are governed by their own policies.
2. What we collect
Nothing. We do not collect, receive, store, process, sell or share any personal information through the Kestrel applications.
This is a structural fact rather than a promise about our intentions. Kestrel is client software that runs entirely on your device and talks only to hardware on your own network. We operate no servers for it to report to. There is:
- no Kestrel account, sign-in, licence key or registration;
- no analytics, usage measurement or event reporting;
- no crash or diagnostic reporting;
- no advertising, advertising identifiers, or advertising frameworks;
- no tracking, profiling or fingerprinting of any kind;
- no automatic “check for updates” call to us;
- no cookies or equivalent storage used for tracking.
On the Roku channel this extends to declining Roku's optional marketing pixel, which would report an event to Roku each time you connected to your own NVR. It is not implemented, deliberately.
Buying the app does not change this. Kestrel for Roku is a paid channel, but the purchase happens entirely between you and Roku: Roku takes the payment and records the entitlement on your Roku account. The app itself does not check a licence with us, does not phone home to verify a purchase, and works exactly the same whether or not it can reach the internet. See section 8 for what Roku does with the transaction.
3. What the apps store on your device
Kestrel stores what it needs to reconnect to your equipment next time. All of it stays on the device you installed it on, and none of it is transmitted to us.
Kestrel for Linux
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Device addresses, usernames, and your preferences | ~/.config/kestrel/config.json, created with owner-only permissions (mode 0600) |
| Device passwords | Your desktop's system keyring, via the Secret Service API. If no keyring is available, they fall back to the config file above — the About dialog states which store is actually in use, so this is never silent |
| Snapshots, recordings and downloaded clips | A folder you choose, ~/Videos/Kestrel/ by default |
Kestrel and Kestrel Screensaver for Roku
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Device address, port, username, password and channel preferences | The Roku registry, which is private to the channel |
| Nothing else | The Roku apps write no video, images or logs to storage |
Roku credentials are stored in clear text. The Roku registry is private to the channel and not readable by other channels, but the platform provides no encrypted storage, so the password you enter is held unencrypted. Anyone with your Roku's developer password could read it. We recommend creating a dedicated, non-administrative user on your camera or NVR for Kestrel rather than reusing an administrator account.
The screensaver reads the settings the Kestrel app wrote — it has none of its own, because a screensaver cannot take remote input. This works because the Roku registry is shared between apps signed with the same developer key. No settings are copied off the device to make it happen.
4. What the apps send, and where
In normal use, Kestrel makes network connections to exactly one place: your own equipment.
- Your camera or NVR. Kestrel sends the requests needed to log in, list channels, fetch snapshots and video, control PTZ and lights, and read detection state — over your local network, using the device's own documented HTTP interface and RTSP. Your username and password go to your device, and nowhere else.
- An HLS restreamer, if you configure one. Optional, off by default, and entirely under your control. If you point the Roku channel at a restreamer such as go2rtc, MediaMTX or Frigate, it will request video from the address you gave it. That software is yours; its handling of your video is governed by its own configuration and terms.
There is no third destination. Kestrel does not use Reolink's P2P/UID cloud relay, does not contact any Reolink service, and does not contact any service of ours — because we run none.
A note on local network security. Reolink's API carries the session token as a URL query parameter, which is how the API is designed. Over plain HTTP on your own LAN, that token — and your camera imagery — is visible to anything able to observe traffic on that network. This is a property of the device's interface rather than of Kestrel, but it is yours to be aware of when deciding who and what shares your network.
5. Your video and recordings
Your camera footage never reaches us. Live video, snapshots, recordings and downloaded clips travel from your device to the screen you are looking at, across your own network. Anything saved is written to storage you chose, on hardware you own.
We have no copy, no cache, no backup and no means of retrieval. If you delete a recording, it is gone; we cannot restore it.
6. This website
kestrel-app.com is a static site. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, contains no advertising or tracking scripts, and loads no fonts, scripts or images from third-party services. Nothing you do here is measured, and there is nothing to opt out of.
As with any website, the server that hosts it may keep standard access logs — typically the requesting IP address, timestamp, requested URL, referrer and browser user-agent string — generated automatically by the web server for security and operational purposes such as diagnosing faults and identifying abuse. We do not use these logs to identify individuals, build profiles, or combine them with anything else, and they are not shared with third parties except where a hosting provider processes them on our behalf or where the law requires disclosure.
7. If you email us
If you contact [email protected], we receive whatever you put in your message — your email address, and anything else you choose to include. We use it only to reply to you and to fix the problem you raised, and we keep the correspondence no longer than is useful for that.
Please do not send us camera footage, credentials, or the addresses of your devices. We do not need them to help, and we would rather not hold them. If you send a screenshot for a bug report, blur or crop anything you would not want a stranger to see.
We also do not need — and would rather not receive — payment details or receipts. Refunds for the Roku channel are handled by Roku, as the Terms explain; we have no access to the transaction.
8. Third parties
We use no third-party services inside the applications. Outside them:
- App distribution and payment. If you install Kestrel from the Roku Channel Store, Roku handles that transaction and knows you installed it. Kestrel for Roku is a paid app, so for it Roku also acts as the merchant: Roku collects the payment, issues the receipt and records the entitlement against your Roku account. We never receive your card details, billing address, name or Roku account identity. Roku may give us sales and performance reporting about the channel, which arrives as counts and totals rather than as information about identifiable buyers. Roku's own privacy policy governs all of this, along with anything else your Roku device does.
- Web hosting. This site is served by a hosting provider that processes server logs on our behalf, as described above.
- Email. Our email provider processes messages you send us, as any email provider does.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising — we have none to sell or share.
9. Security
The strongest security property here is architectural: information that is never collected cannot be breached at our end. There is no Kestrel database to compromise, and no credential store of ours holding your camera passwords.
What remains is on your side, and Kestrel is built to help rather than hinder it: the Linux config file is written with owner-only permissions, passwords go to your system keyring where one exists, and tokens and credentials are redacted from log output and error messages so they do not leak into a terminal or a bug report.
Securing the devices and network Kestrel runs on remains your responsibility — current firmware, a least-privilege camera account, a trustworthy network, and no port-forwarding your NVR to the public internet.
10. Retention and deletion
We retain nothing, so there is nothing on our side to delete. What is stored locally is yours to remove at any time:
-
Linux — delete
~/.config/kestrel/config.jsonand remove the Kestrel entry from your keyring; your media folder is unaffected unless you delete it too. - Roku — choose Forget saved settings in the channel's settings to clear the stored host and credentials, or remove the channel from your device.
Uninstalling the software ends its access to everything.
11. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights under laws such as the UK and EU GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, or similar legislation — to access, correct, delete or port your personal information, to object to or restrict its processing, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights.
Those rights apply to personal information a business holds about you. Because Kestrel collects none, there is in practice nothing for us to produce, correct or erase — and no profile, no sale of information, and no automated decision-making. The exception is any email correspondence you have sent us, and website server logs; you may ask us about those, and ask us to delete correspondence, using the contact address below.
Where we do process such limited information, our lawful basis under the GDPR is our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries and in operating and securing our website. If you are in the UK or EEA and are unhappy with how we have handled a request, you may complain to your national data protection authority.
12. Children
Kestrel is not directed at children, and is not designed or marketed for use by them. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone, children included. If you believe a child has sent us personal information by email, contact us and we will delete it.
13. People your cameras record
Kestrel displays footage your cameras capture, which may include other people. We never see that footage and are not a controller or processor of it — but you may have obligations towards those people under privacy, data protection, employment or tenancy law, including where cameras may point, whether audio may be recorded, what notice or signage is required, and how long footage may be kept.
Meeting those obligations is your responsibility, as set out in the Terms of Service. If you have been recorded by someone else's cameras and want that footage addressed, please contact the camera's owner — we have no access to it and no ability to act on it.
14. Changes to this policy
If Kestrel ever changes in a way that affects this policy, we will update it here and change the date at the top. Should we ever introduce anything that collects information — which we have no plans to do — it would be described here first, and made optional and off by default.
15. Contact
Schooley Industries
[email protected]
For questions about this policy, or to ask about information we may hold from your correspondence, use the address above and mark your message “Privacy”.