In-app anonymous mode with Cloudflare

Enable personalized app features without exposing sensitive data

With in-app anonymous mode, developers allow a portion of their in-app experience to be handled by Cloudflare in order to protect customers’ IP addresses without requiring costly or time-intensive additional development. This ensures user privacy while maintaining the intended user experience, making Cloudflare an ideal solution for privacy-first app design.

The Cloudflare difference

More privacy

In-app anonymous mode balances privacy with usability, enabling secure and anonymous data exchanges

Improved customer experience

Cloudflare's privacy platform maintains a smooth, uninterrupted customer experience

Future-proof against evolving laws

Cloudflare builds our platform to the lowest common denominator, making it easier for organizations to adapt to regulatory changes

HOW IT WORKS

User data is protected with in-app anonymous mode

This mode protects users' IP addresses, allowing anonymous interactions with app features, as defined by the developer. It ensures that a key part of users' identities are protected without the developer ever needing to handle sensitive data directly instead of collecting and discarding user information. The result: app developers can simplify compliance and safeguard user privacy. This is made possible thanks to an API-level implementation where certain types of requests can be sent through an Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP) relay, an emerging IETF standard and is built upon standard hybrid public-key cryptography.

anonymous mode diagram between client and servers

Cloudflare Technology In Action

Flo ‘Anonymous Mode’ offers advancement in the privacy and security of reproductive health data

Flo Health, the world’s leading female health app with 400 million installs and 75 million monthly users, relies on Cloudflare to secure sensitive data, ensure regulatory compliance, and optimize performance. By implementing anonymous mode via Cloudflare Relay, they mask user IPs and encrypt traffic with post-quantum cryptography to meet GDPR and other privacy mandates.

Cloudflare Email Security, the web application firewall, custom WAF rules, and rate limiting block nearly 99 percent of attacks, while Zero Trust solutions protect internal applications for 520 employees, and edge networking with the global CDN, Argo Smart Routing, and Workers accelerates API responses by around 20 percent.

"We firmly believe that every woman deserves the right to track their health without concern. If you’re using a period tracker, check whether you have a way of using the app anonymously. If you don’t, either insist that they adopt Anonymous Mode or choose another provider. It is the responsibility of every women’s health product to commit to high privacy and security standards, and by open-sourcing Anonymous Mode and giving away part of our IP, we are democratizing access across the industry.”

Vice President of Privacy and Data Protection Officer, Flo