How HN Login Works
Understanding how Haiker handles your Hacker News login.
Haiker uses a proxy-based login flow. Here's exactly what happens when you sign in.
1. Credentials are sent to our server
When you enter your Hacker News username and password, Haiker sends them to our API server. The server forwards them to the official Hacker News website to authenticate.
Upon success, Hacker News returns session cookies. These cookies are sent back to your phone and stored locally in the app.
2. We do not store your credentials or cookies
Our server acts as a pure pass-through proxy — it never writes your username, password, or cookies to any database, log, or cache. The credentials exist in server memory only for the duration of the login request and are discarded immediately after.
That said, trust is trust. We can only tell you we don't store them — we cannot prove a negative. If you do not trust our server, please do not use Haiker to log in to your Hacker News account. You can still use the app without logging in.
3. Write operations use your local cookies
When you perform actions that require authentication — such as posting a comment, upvoting, or replying — Haiker sends the cookies stored on your phone through our server to the Hacker News API. The server simply forwards the request with your cookies and returns the response.
Your cookies never leave your phone except inside an encrypted HTTPS request to our server, which forwards them to Hacker News and discards them immediately.
TL;DR: Credentials and cookies live on your phone. Our server is a stateless proxy that never stores them. If you don't trust the server, don't log in — browsing works fine without it.