Privacy Policy

Last updated: January 20, 2026

The privacy of your data—and it is your data, not ours!—is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights with respect to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.

This policy is split into sections. For your convenience, links to each of those sections is as follows:

This policy applies to our handling of information about site visitors, prospective customers, and customers and authorized users (in relation to their procurement of the services and management of their relationship with Tree of Liberty Society ("TOLS"). We refer collectively to these categories of individuals as "you" throughout this policy.

If you are a California resident, please click here to see our California Notice at Collection, which includes additional disclosures as required by California law.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:

Identity and access

When you join TOLS, we ask for identifying information such as your name, and email address. That’s so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you product updates and other essential information. We may also send you optional surveys from time to time to help us understand how you use our products and to make improvements. With your consent, we will send you our newsletter and other updates. We also give you the option to add a profile picture that displays in our app. Your profile picture may be displayed to other users.

We’ll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won’t use your name in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

If you sign up for a paid TOLS product or membership subscription, you will be asked to provide your payment information and billing address, which is submitted directly to our payment processor (Stripe) and doesn’t hit TOLS servers.

Product interactions

We store on our servers the content that you upload or receive or maintain in your TOLS product accounts. This is so you can use our products as intended, for example, to download digital content. We keep this content as long as your account is active, or until you delete it, where applicable.

General Geolocation data

We do not currently log IP addresses or otherwise track your server location.

Website interactions

We collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as conversion rate testing and experimenting with new product designs. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us. If you have an account and are signed in, these web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account until your account is no longer active. The web analytics we use are described further in the Advertising and Cookies section.

Advertising and Cookies

TOLS runs contextual ads on various third-party platforms such as Google, Reddit, and LinkedIn. Users who click on one of our ads will be sent to a marketing page. As is common, we may load an ad-company script on their browsers that sets a third-party cookie and sends information to the ad network to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of our ads, e.g., which ad they clicked and which keyword triggered the ad, and whether they performed certain actions such as clicking a button or submitting a form.

We also use persistent first-party cookies and some third-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and perform A/B testing as well as support some analytics.

A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings, although our app may not work and some aspects of our service may not function properly if you turn cookies off.

Voluntary correspondence

When you email TOLS with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.

We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys. If you agree to a customer interview, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We will only do so with your express consent.

When we access or disclose your information

To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some third-party processors for business functions such as managing newsletter subscriptions, sending customer surveys, and providing our company storefront.

To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. We may need to access your content to help you with a support case.

To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. We want to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us, and we do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will take action as necessary, including notifying appropriate authorities where warranted.

Aggregated and de-identified data. We may aggregate and/or de-identify information collected through the services. We may use de-identified or aggregated data for any purpose, including marketing or analytics.

When required under applicable law. TOLS is a U.S. company and all data infrastructure are located in the U.S.

Requests for user data. Our policy is to not respond to government requests for user data.

Preservation requests. Similarly, TOLS’ policy is to comply with requests to preserve data only if compelled by the U.S. Federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 2703(f), or by a properly served U.S. subpoena for civil matters. We do not disclose preserved data unless required by law or compelled by a court order that we choose not to appeal. Furthermore, unless we receive a proper warrant, court order, or subpoena before the required preservation period expires, we will destroy any preserved copies of customer data at the end of the preservation period.

If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to disclose billing-related information. If that happens, we will disclose only the minimum needed, such as billing addresses and tax exemption information.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. Some data, such as login information, including passwords, is also encrypted in our database. Most data are not encrypted while they live in our database (since they need to be ready to send to you when you need them).

Data retention

We keep your information for the time necessary for the purposes for which it is processed. The length of time for which we retain information depends on the purposes for which we collected and use it and your choices, after which time we may delete and/or aggregate it.

Location of site and data

Our products and other web properties are operated in the United States. If you are located in the European Union, UK, or elsewhere outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in the United States. By using our websites or Services and/or providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer.

Changes and questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will refresh the date at the top of this page and take any other appropriate steps to notify users.

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0