Last updated: 5 October 2026.
Damn Chat is run by Hertge VOF, President Kennedylaan 154, 2343 GV Oegstgeest, the Netherlands. Chamber of Commerce 88251918, VAT NL864554187B01. For anything in this statement, write to info@hertge.com.
Using Damn Chat needs no account at all. There is no signup, we do not ask for an e-mail address, a phone number or a password, and there is no profile. The only thing you provide is a nickname, which you choose again each time you arrive.
Messages are stored so they stay visible in the room. Alongside each message we keep the time and the nickname, and nothing else.
Your IP address is not stored with your messages. While you are connected it is held in memory, to check you are not banned from that room and for the human check at the door. It is written down in one case only: if somebody is banned from a room, that room keeps the address so the ban can be enforced. Nothing links a stored message back to an address.
A room holds the last fifty messages and clears itself after a day with nobody in it. The person who opened a room can also switch on a timer so messages delete themselves sooner.
One thing we want to be exact about: when a room clears itself, a copy of its recent messages is kept for seven days in a place only the operator can read. It exists so that abuse reported after the fact can still be looked into. After those seven days it is gone.
A private message between two people in a room passes through our server, because that is how it reaches the other browser. It is not stored: it is not written to the room's history, it is not in the seven-day copy above, and once it is delivered it is gone. It is not end-to-end encrypted, so treat it as private from other people in the room, not as a secure channel.
We will not pretend otherwise: the operator of Damn Chat has an administration page that can show the messages in a room, and the seven-day copies described above. It is used to deal with abuse reports and to keep the service running, not to read along for fun. If confidentiality from us is what you need, Damn Chat is the wrong tool.
Under the message box of a room there is one line of text, marked Ad when it is a paying sponsor. It is not there in a room embedded on somebody else's website.
It is worth being precise about what that line is, because most advertising is not like this. There is no advertising network involved: no third-party script runs on the page, no cookie is set, no pixel is loaded, and nothing about you is sent anywhere to decide which line you see. The text and the link are written by hand in our own page. A sponsor can ask to be shown only in certain countries, and for that we use the country that Cloudflare already tells us on every request; we do not store your address to work it out.
We count how often each line was shown and how often it was clicked. That counting happens on our own server, records only the line's name, the numbers, and the country, and is never linked to you or to your messages. Sponsors are given those totals, never anything about a person. If you click the line you go to the sponsor's own site, and from that moment their privacy statement applies, not ours.
Damn Chat is free. There is no checkout on this site and we do not take card payments. We do not send e-mail, and we do not send newsletters.
Rooms and messages are stored by Cloudflare. Cloudflare also delivers the site and therefore processes the technical details of your connection. The human check at the door of a room is either a small sum or Cloudflare's Turnstile check; both exist to keep automated traffic out.
We use one analytics tool, Clicky (Roxr Software), to see how many people visit and roughly where they come from. It records the page visited, the referring page, the country, and the browser and device type, and stores an identifier in your browser so it can tell a returning visit from a new one. We do not use any of it to build advertising profiles and we do not sell data. There is one line of sponsored text under the message box of the rooms, described under Advertising above; it is chosen by us by hand and knows nothing about you.
You can stop this entirely by turning on Do Not Track or a tracking blocker in your browser, or by using the browser's private mode.
For spam protection, abuse handling and keeping the service running we rely on our legitimate interest in a service that works and is not abused. Where the law requires it, we respond to requests from the authorities.
Messages: as described above, with the seven-day operator copy.
You can ask to see your data, to have it corrected, or to have it deleted, at info@hertge.com. If you are a business customer and need a data processing agreement, ask and you will get one. If you think we are handling your data badly, you can complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens).
Most of Damn Chat is available in several languages. This statement is not: it exists only in English, and this English wording is the version that applies. If your browser offers to translate this page, that translation is there to help you read it. It is not a version of this statement and nothing in it can be relied on against the English above.
This text describes what the service actually does. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer.