Why Remio Doesn't Want Your Email

The Question Nobody Asks

When you download a remote desktop app, the first thing it asks for is usually your email address. Then a password. Then maybe a phone number for two-factor auth. Then it wants you to verify your email. Then you can start connecting your devices.

We're so conditioned to this flow that nobody stops to ask: why?

You own both devices. They're sitting right in front of you. One is your computer. The other is your phone. You want to see your computer's screen on your phone. That's it. That's the entire transaction.

Why does a company in another country need to know your name, email, and device inventory to make that happen?

The Real Reason Apps Want Your Email

Let's be honest about why most apps require accounts: it's not for your security — it's for their business model.

An email address is the foundation of a user profile. A user profile enables usage tracking. Usage tracking enables targeted upselling. Upselling drives revenue. The account isn't a feature — it's a funnel.

There are legitimate reasons for accounts in some apps. If you need cloud sync, team management, or cross-device persistence, a user identity makes sense. But for connecting two devices on the same network? The account is overhead — for you and for your privacy.

How PIN Pairing Works

Remio uses a 6-digit PIN for pairing. That's it. No email. No password. No account.

Here's the flow: install Remio on your computer. It shows a PIN. Type that PIN on your phone. Done. You're connected. The whole process takes under 10 seconds.

The PIN is a one-time pairing code. Once your devices are paired, they remember each other using cryptographic keys exchanged during the initial handshake. The PIN itself is never stored and expires within 60 seconds.

This isn't just simpler — it's more secure than email/password authentication. There's no password to leak in a data breach. No account to phish. No credential database for hackers to target. You can't hack an account that doesn't exist.

What We Don't Collect

Here's a complete list of what Remio knows about you:

Nothing.

We're not being cute. We literally don't have a user database. There's no server storing your email, your name, your device list, your connection history, or your usage patterns. We couldn't sell your data if we wanted to — we don't have any.

No analytics SDK. No crash reporting that phones home with your IP. No "anonymous" telemetry that's three SQL joins away from being personally identifiable. No cookies. No tracking pixels.

We know how many times Remio has been downloaded from app stores — because Apple and Google provide that number. That's it. That's the extent of our "analytics."

Trust Through Transparency

Here's the uncomfortable truth about privacy policies: they exist to describe data collection, not to prevent it. A privacy policy that says "we collect usage data to improve our service" gives a company legal cover to track virtually anything.

We took a different approach: make data collection architecturally impossible.

Remio connects your devices peer-to-peer whenever possible. Your screen data doesn't pass through our servers. We don't run relay infrastructure that could inspect your traffic. The connection is end-to-end encrypted with keys that only your devices hold.

When peer-to-peer isn't possible (strict NATs, corporate firewalls), connections go through a relay — but the relay only sees encrypted bytes. It can't decrypt your screen, your input, or your audio. It's a dumb pipe by design.

We don't ask you to trust our privacy policy. We ask you to trust the architecture. The code can't collect what the code can't see.

The Business Case for Not Knowing

People ask us: "How do you make money without user accounts? How do you do marketing without emails? How do you measure engagement without analytics?"

Fair questions. Our answers:

• Revenue comes from the product, not from data. We sell a Pro tier with features that power users need. They pay because the software is good, not because we've funneled them through a drip campaign.
• Marketing happens through word of mouth and content (like this blog). People share tools they love. No email list required.
• Engagement is measured by download counts and app store reviews. We don't need session analytics to know if users are happy — they tell us.

Is this harder? Absolutely. Most SaaS playbooks assume you have a database of user emails to market to. We don't. We've accepted that tradeoff because we believe it's the right one.

A Bet on the Future

We think the era of "give us your email to use our product" is ending. Users are tired. They're tired of spam, tired of data breaches, tired of finding out their "anonymous" data was sold to an advertising network.

The next generation of great software will compete on the product, not on the data. It will earn trust by not asking for information it doesn't need.

Remio doesn't want your email. We don't want your name. We don't want your usage patterns. We just want to help you see your computer from your phone — and to get out of the way while you do it.

That's not a limitation. That's a feature.