In short
- StratoStream has no accounts and no sign-up. We never ask who you are.
- We run no servers. Your playlists, credentials, favourites and viewing history stay on your device and are never sent to us.
- Your Xtream username and password are encrypted on the device with a key that cannot leave it, and are excluded from Android backups.
- The app contains no analytics and no crash-reporting SDK.
- The free version shows ads through Google AdMob, which does collect data — that section is below. A one-off in-app purchase removes the ads.
1. What StratoStream is — and what it is not
StratoStream is a media player. It plays M3U and Xtream Codes playlists that you add to it, in the same way a music player plays files you already have.
Specifically:
- The app ships with no channels, no playlists and no media of any kind preloaded. It is empty until you add a source.
- We do not sell, resell, host, stream, index or distribute any television channel, film, series or other content.
- We do not sell, bundle or broker IPTV subscriptions, and we are not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any IPTV provider, channel or rights holder.
- We have no relationship whatsoever with illegal or pirate IPTV services, and we do not condone the unauthorised streaming of copyrighted material.
- We cannot see, and do not check, what any playlist you add contains. Nothing about your playlist reaches us.
You are responsible for the sources you add and for holding a lawful right to view them — typically a subscription from a legitimate provider, or a publicly available free stream. If you do not have a legal right to a stream, do not use StratoStream to play it.
2. Data we collect about you
None. MDS AppTech operates no server, no backend and no account system for StratoStream. There is no place for your data to be sent to us, and we receive no personal information from the app.
The only way we learn anything about you is if you email us for support, in which case we have whatever you wrote to us and your email address, used only to answer you.
Third parties integrated into the app — Google AdMob and Google Play — do collect data for their own purposes. Sections 4 and 5 describe exactly what and why.
3. Data stored on your device
Everything the app needs to work is kept in the app's private storage on your device, readable only by StratoStream:
| What | Why it is stored |
|---|---|
| Playlist details | The name and URL (or file) of each playlist you add, plus its EPG address and user agent, so the app can refresh it. |
| Xtream username and password | Needed to talk to your provider's portal. Stored encrypted using a key held in the Android Keystore that never leaves the device. |
| Channel list and programme guide | A local cache of what your provider returned, so browsing is instant and the guide works offline. Rebuilt from your provider on refresh. |
| Favourites, recently watched, resume position | So the app can put your channels first and pick up where you left off. |
| Programme reminders | The programmes you asked to be reminded about, and their alarm times. |
| Preferences | Theme, decoder and buffer settings, aspect ratio, guide auto-refresh, and whether the ad-free purchase is active. |
Android backup. Your preferences may be included in Android's own backup to your Google account, if you have that feature switched on. The database — playlists, credentials, channels and guide — is deliberately excluded from both cloud backup and device-to-device transfer, so your subscription credentials never travel off the device.
We never see any of the above. It is not uploaded, synchronised or shared. Uninstalling the app, or clearing its storage, removes all of it permanently.
4. Advertising (free version)
The free version of StratoStream shows ads supplied by Google AdMob. To do that, Google's advertising SDK collects information from your device, which may include:
- your advertising ID (a resettable identifier Android provides for advertising) and other device identifiers;
- your IP address, from which an approximate location (typically country or city level) is derived;
- device and app information — model, operating system version, language, and the name and version of this app;
- ad interactions — which ads were shown, viewed or tapped.
This data goes to Google, not to us. We receive only anonymous, aggregated reporting: how many ads were shown and what they earned. We cannot identify any individual user from it. See Google's privacy and terms for business and how AdMob handles data.
Your choice about personalised ads
In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, StratoStream shows Google's consent form (the User Messaging Platform) the first time you open it. Your answer decides whether ads are personalised and which advertising partners may process your data. You can change it at any time from Settings → Privacy & ad settings inside the app.
You can also, on any device:
- reset or delete your advertising ID in Android Settings → Privacy → Ads;
- turn off ad personalisation entirely in the same place;
- remove ads from StratoStream altogether with the one-off purchase described below.
Turning off personalisation does not remove ads; it makes them less relevant.
5. Purchases
StratoStream offers a single, one-off in-app purchase that permanently removes the ads. It is processed entirely by Google Play Billing.
We never see, handle or store your card number, billing address or any other payment detail. Google tells the app only whether a valid purchase exists for your Google account, and the app records that answer locally to keep the ads off. Payment data is handled by Google under the Google Privacy Policy.
Because the purchase is tied to your Google account, it is restored automatically when you reinstall the app or sign in on another device.
6. Connections the app makes
StratoStream connects to exactly four kinds of destination, and no others:
- Your IPTV provider. Playlist, guide and video requests go straight from your device to the server whose address you entered. That provider therefore sees your IP address, your credentials and what you watch, under their privacy policy — not ours. We are not involved in, and cannot see, that connection.
- Channel logo images. Loaded from whatever URLs your playlist specifies, which are usually hosted by your provider or a third party. Those hosts see your IP address.
- Google's advertising and consent services, as described in section 4 (free version only).
- Google Play, to check the ad-free purchase.
There is no StratoStream server. Nothing is proxied, mirrored or relayed through us.
7. Permissions the app requests
| Permission | What it is for |
|---|---|
INTERNET | To fetch your playlist and guide, and to play streams. |
ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE | To detect whether you are online before a refresh or a retry. |
WAKE_LOCK | To keep the screen and CPU awake while a stream is playing. |
POST_NOTIFICATIONS | To show the programme reminders you set. Optional — decline it and the rest of the app works normally. |
RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED | To re-arm your reminders after the device restarts, since Android clears alarms on reboot. |
BILLING | To offer and restore the ad-free purchase. |
AD_ID | Required by Google Play services on Android 13+ for the advertising ID used by ads. |
StratoStream requests no access to your location, camera, microphone, contacts, calendar, call logs, SMS or photo library.
8. Analytics and crash reporting
There are none. StratoStream contains no Google Analytics, no Firebase Analytics, no Crashlytics and no third-party analytics or attribution SDK of any kind. We do not know how many times you opened the app, which channel you watched, or that a crash happened, unless you tell us yourself.
Google Play may show us its own anonymous, aggregated statistics — installs by country, and crash reports that Android users choose to send to Google. Those come from Google Play itself, not from anything inside the app, and identify no one.
9. Children
StratoStream is a general-audience media player and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. The app is not part of Google Play's Designed for Families programme, and the content shown in it comes entirely from playlists supplied by the user, which we cannot rate or filter.
10. Retention and deletion
We hold nothing, so we have nothing to delete. Everything the app stores lives on your device for as long as you keep it there. To erase all of it:
- delete individual playlists from within the app; or
- go to Android Settings → Apps → StratoStream → Storage → Clear storage; or
- uninstall the app, which removes its storage entirely.
To remove data held by Google in connection with ads, use the Android advertising controls described in section 4, and Google's own data and privacy controls. To ask about data held by your IPTV provider, contact that provider.
11. Your rights
Data protection law — including the GDPR in the EU and UK, and the CCPA/CPRA in California — gives you rights of access, correction, deletion, portability and objection over personal data held about you.
Since we hold no personal data about you, there is nothing for us to disclose, correct, port or erase, and we have never sold or shared personal information — we have none to sell. Where the advertising in the free version does involve processing of your data, Google acts as the controller or processor for it and you can exercise those rights through the Google controls linked above, or by withdrawing consent in Settings → Privacy & ad settings.
If you believe something in this policy is inaccurate, or you want to raise a concern, email us at geral@mdsapptech.com. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.
12. Security
App data is stored in Android's private per-app storage. Portal credentials are additionally encrypted with AES-GCM using a key generated in, and confined to, the Android Keystore, and the database holding them is excluded from backup and device transfer.
StratoStream can play streams over plain http, because a great many IPTV portals
still only offer that. Traffic to such a server — including the credentials in the URL — is
not encrypted in transit. That is a property of the provider's server, not of the app;
prefer an https portal where your provider offers one.
13. Changes to this policy
If the app changes in a way that affects this policy, we update this page and the Last updated date at the top. Significant changes will also be noted in the app's Google Play release notes. This page is the current version at all times.
14. Contact
Questions about this policy, about StratoStream, or a privacy request:
geral@mdsapptech.comMDS AppTech — mdsapptech.com