scrumhost

Privacy & security

Your meeting notes stay yours

scrumhost encrypts what your team writes in your browser, before it reaches our server. Here's exactly what that covers and what it doesn't, in plain language.

What's protected

End-to-end encrypted
  • Backlog stories you estimate
  • Retrospective items
  • Comments on retro items

Only people with the room password can read these.

Visible to the server
  • Room name, room code, and room type
  • Display names of people in the room
  • Estimates (vote values) and upvote counts
  • When things were created or changed

Needed to run the room, so avoid putting sensitive details in room names.

How it works

  1. Every room gets its own password

    When you create a room, your browser generates a random password. The server only receives a one-way fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash) of it, which it uses to check that people joining have the right password. The password itself is never sent to our database.

  2. Content is encrypted on your device

    Before a story, retro item, or comment leaves your browser, it's encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key derived from the room password (PBKDF2, SHA-256, 100,000 iterations, with a fresh random salt and IV for every message). The server stores only the scrambled result, and your teammates' browsers decrypt it locally.

  3. Invite links keep the password out of requests

    An invite link carries the password after the # in the address. Browsers never send that part of a link to a server, so the password goes straight from the link to your teammate's browser. Anyone with the link can join the room, so share it like you would a meeting password.

  4. No sign-up, no email

    You only enter a display name. scrumhost creates an anonymous account for you behind the scenes; there's no email address, phone number, or real password to leak.

What's stored on your device

  • Your session, so you stay signed in (in your browser's local storage).
  • The password for each room you've joined, in a secure, same-site-only cookie, so you can rejoin without asking for it again. Like any cookie, your browser includes it when loading pages from the scrumhost website (the database never receives it). Logging out ends your session; clearing your browser's cookies for this site removes saved room passwords.

Good to know

  • Room passwords are short so they're easy to read out in a meeting. That keeps casual access out, but it's not designed to stand up to a determined attacker with access to our database. Don't use scrumhost for secrets you couldn't share in a normal team meeting.
  • Encryption protects the content, not the fact that a room exists or who joined it.
  • We use privacy-friendly, cookie-free page analytics (Vercel Web Analytics) to see how many people visit. It never sees your room content.
  • scrumhost’s source code is public, so you can check exactly how this works on GitHub.

Questions or concerns? Reach out on GitHub or Discord.