Lifetime Labs

About

Who we are, and where the line is

Lifetime Labs builds privacy software. This page says who we are, to the extent that matters, and where the line is.

Where it started, in 2025

Our two Swiss developers were building an encrypted notes app part-time, stuck in their old jobs, when they met the owner of PrivacyTools.io in person, by chance, on a business trip in Singapore. He liked the idea and funded it fully from personal savings so they could go full-time. The app got its name to sit beside PrivacyTools, and he has been on it since for usability, privacy consulting, marketing and the general direction. No venture capital, no obligations, nobody to answer to but the people using it.

One roof

The directory has been helping people replace Big Tech since 2015, longer than almost anything else in this space, and that decade of testing and recommending privacy software is the experience behind Lifetime Labs. Since April 2026 the two share ownership, by design. We tell you to block ad networks, so we were never going to buy our distribution from them. When PrivacyNotes appears there, that's first-party coverage. Read it as us showing you our own work. We build for this audience because we are this audience.

Who we are

Lifetime Labs LLC is a US company, set up because that was the quickest way to put everything under one name; the structure may change one day, and we'd rather ship than deal with paperwork. Nobody here is in the United States. The core team is German and Swiss. Freelancers in the Philippines test releases, build interface features and run social media. That's the whole team description you'll get: no names, no photos, no addresses.

Don't take our word for it

The clients are open source, so the people who can read code do, on GitHub, in the open. A verify script you can run without an account shows your notes are encrypted before they leave your machine. Your notes export any time. You pay once, so there's no subscription holding them hostage. We could put a likeable founder on stage to tell you your data is safe with us. People relax on a promise, and relaxed people stop checking. We'd rather you never had to take our word for anything, including this page.

Where the line is

Since the launch of PrivacyNotes we've had a steady stream of emails asking for our home address, our office address, social media profiles, photos, and more than once what race we are. From people using a free, open-source privacy app. We built this so nobody gets to know where or who you are, and we're not going to hand that over about ourselves.

The products we give you for free don't build a footprint of you. We ask the same courtesy back. Emails asking where we live, what we look like or where our desks are get no reply, and we don't take meetings. If something would make the software more trustworthy, it goes on this page. If it leads strangers to our doorstep, it doesn't, and it wouldn't make the encryption any better anyway.

Official accounts