Security
How Mailvie keeps your mail and your keys safe
A mail app holds the keys to everything else you have. This page says, in plain words, what leaves your Mac, where your secrets live and what has to be true before the app updates itself.
What leaves your Mac
Six destinations, and nothing else
Mailvie has no server of its own in the path of your mail. This is everything the app talks to.
| To | What is sent |
|---|---|
| Your mail provider | Your mail, over IMAP and SMTP, signed in with your own password from the Keychain. |
| The AI provider you chose | The open conversation, when you ask for a summary or a reply. Never for senders on your "Never send to AI" list. |
| A mailing list's own address | An unsubscribe request, when you press Unsubscribe. The address comes from the list's header, never from a link in the email. |
| Our payment provider | Your licence key and a label for this Mac, to check the licence. Nothing about your mail. |
| cdn.mailvie.com | Nothing is sent. The app downloads one small file to see whether a newer version exists. |
| mailvie.com | The app's name, version and build channel, to ask for announcements. No licence key, account or device id. |
The full wording, with when each connection happens, is on the privacy page.
Secrets live in the Keychain
Mail passwords, AI keys and your licence key are stored in the macOS Keychain, the same place Safari keeps passwords.
- Never written to a settings file
- Never printed to a log
- Never sent to us
Every email is treated as untrusted
An email is content from a stranger until proven otherwise, so the app gives it as little power as it can.
- Shown with JavaScript switched off
- Invisible tracking images are taken out
- A phishing warning never moves or deletes anything by itself
AI cannot be steered by an email
When you ask for a summary, the email's text is given to the AI model as data to read, not as instructions to follow.
- Nothing is sent to AI unless you ask, or you switched it on for that account
- Excluded senders and domains are never sent
- Your key goes only to the provider it belongs to
Our website cannot control the app
The one thing mailvie.com can do is show a notice in the app. The app decides what it will accept.
- Plain text only, with a length limit
- Links only to mailvie.com, over https
- An answer that does not fit shows nothing
The licence check fails safe
If the licence server cannot be reached, your plan stays as it was. Only a definite "no" changes it.
- No network never locks you out
- A lapsed plan locks features, never your mail
- Reading and search work with no plan at all
Mail is moved, not erased
Archive, delete and the clean-up tools move mail to another folder of the same account, with time to undo.
- Bulk deletes ask first
- Delete all from a sender keeps receipts and notices
- Only emptying the Trash removes mail for good, after a question
Updates
Four checks before a new version is installed
An app that updates itself is a way in, so the update has to prove where it came from. If any check fails, nothing is installed and the version you have keeps running.
- 1
The list of versions came from our own download server and names a higher version than the one you have.
- 2
The download carries a signature made with a key that never leaves our release Mac, and it matches the public half built into the app.
- 3
The unpacked app has a valid Apple code signature, from our Apple developer team, for Mailvie itself.
- 4
The new app says it is the version that was promised.
Reporting
Found a security problem?
Write to [email protected] with what you found and how to see it. Please give us time to fix it before you publish it. The machine-readable version of this is at /.well-known/security.txt.
Related reading: Can a third-party mail app read your email? and How to spot a phishing email.
Get Mailvie
Read your mail in Mailvie today
Reading and search are free. Sending, AI and the clean-up tools open with a 7-day trial. Needs macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon.