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Telemetry & Privacy

Lowkey collects anonymous install telemetry to help us understand how the installer is being used, which platforms people run it on, and where installs fail so we can fix them. This page describes exactly what is collected, when, and how to turn it off.
TL;DR — opt out any of three ways:
export LOWKEY_TELEMETRY=0
# or
export DO_NOT_TRACK=1
# or
mkdir -p ~/.lowkey && touch ~/.lowkey/telemetry-off
Any one of these disables all telemetry for that shell / user.

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What we send

Telemetry is sent from install.sh (and its helper lib/telemetry.sh) to https://telemetry.loki.run. Three kinds of calls may happen:

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1. Install beacon (POST /v1/install)

Sent at install start, install completion, and install failure. 
{
  "schema": "lowkey.install.v1",
  "sent_at": "2026-04-27T12:30:14Z",
  "install_id": "09ff13c6-...",
  "machine_id": "sha256:83d4cc5a...",
  "agent": {
    "version": "0.5.105",
    "channel": "stable",
    "os": "linux",
    "arch": "arm64",
    "os_version": "6.1"
  },
  "install_method": "cfn",
  "outcome": "completed",
  "duration_ms": 412380,
  "is_test": false,
  "failure_step": null,
  "failure_class": null
}

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2. Event batch (POST /v1/ingest)

Sent once at the end of an install run. Contains only install-flow events from this closed allowlist:
  • install.started
  • install.pack_selected
  • install.method_selected
  • install.deploy_started
  • install.deploy_completed
  • install.bootstrap_completed
  • install.completed
  • install.failed

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3. Config fetch (GET /v1/config)

Optional — a remote kill-switch so we can disable telemetry globally without shipping a new installer.

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What we do not send

We deliberately do not collect:
  • ❌ Your name, email, username, or AWS account ID
  • ❌ Your IP address (dropped before persistence on the backend)
  • ❌ Your AWS credentials, tokens, or access keys
  • ❌ File paths on your machine
  • ❌ Commands or shell history
  • ❌ Code, repo contents, prompts, or AI responses
  • ❌ Anything you type into the installer
  • ❌ Your hostname (only a salted sha256 hash of it, combined with the machine-id)
  • ❌ The contents of CloudFormation templates or Terraform plans
  • ❌ Anything after the install finishes — telemetry is installer-scoped only

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machine_id — what it actually is

machine_id is a one-way SHA-256 hash of your OS’s own machine identifier (/etc/machine-id, /var/lib/dbus/machine-id, or the macOS IOPlatformUUID) combined with your hostname. The raw value never leaves your machine. We store only the hash, prefixed with sha256:. We use it to answer questions like “is this the same machine retrying a failed install?” without knowing which machine it is. If we can’t compute a hash (no sha256sum/shasum), the field falls back to fallback:<random uuid> — even less identifying.

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install_id and session_id

Random UUIDs generated per install run. They let us correlate the started / completed / failed beacons for a single install. They are not persisted on your machine.

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Country (approximate)

The backend may derive a 2-letter country code from your request’s network routing (CloudFront viewer headers) for high-level geo stats. IP is never stored.

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is_test

If you pass --test to the installer, every record carries is_test: true and our backends exclude it from funnel/product metrics.

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When we send

  • Start of install — one lowkey.install.v1 beacon with outcome: "started"
  • Deploy success — one lowkey.install.v1 beacon with outcome: "completed" + one batched /v1/ingest with the install-flow events
  • Deploy failure — one lowkey.install.v1 beacon with outcome: "failed" + batched events
  • Runtime after install — nothing. Telemetry stops the moment the installer exits.
All sends are fire-and-forget: the curl call runs in the background, hard-limited to 2 seconds total, and any failure is silently ignored. The installer never blocks on telemetry and never fails because of it — even if our endpoint is down, unreachable, or returns an error.

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Retention

On our side:
Record typeRetained for
Install beacons≤ 365 days (then auto-deleted via DynamoDB TTL)
Event batches≤ 90 days
Test installs (is_test: true)Excluded from product dashboards

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How to turn it off

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Per-shell / per-install

LOWKEY_TELEMETRY=0 curl -sfL install.lowkey.run | bash
# or
DO_NOT_TRACK=1 curl -sfL install.lowkey.run | bash

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Permanently for your user

mkdir -p ~/.lowkey
touch ~/.lowkey/telemetry-off
When any of these are set, the installer:
  1. Sets _TELEM_ENABLED=false at init time
  2. Skips machine-id hashing, UUID generation, and everything else
  3. Makes every _telem_* call a no-op
  4. Never contacts telemetry.loki.run

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Point it somewhere else

If you want to run your own collector (the schema is published): 
LOWKEY_TELEMETRY_URL=https://your-collector.example.com curl -sfL install.lowkey.run | bash

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Source of truth

Don’t trust this page — read the code: If you find anything on the wire that’s not described here, open an issue — that’s a bug.