UpTrust Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 27, 2024. Updated October 28, 2026.

At UpTrust, we take your privacy very seriously and are dedicated to protecting it - maybe even more than you'd expect. This Privacy Policy outlines the data we collect, how we use it, and your rights when using our site. If you ever need more specifics, feel free to reach out to our team. This policy will be updated as our services evolve.

1. Information We Collect

Your account details (email, and phone if you add one); your profile; what you post, comment and vote; whom you trust and on which topics; and, if you sign in with GitHub, the repositories you have starred, imported as trust statements. When you connect an AI assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude, we receive what it sends to UpTrust's tools for you, such as a question, a topic or an introduction you asked it to submit, and we log which tool was called, by which assistant, how long it took and whether it failed.

If you RSVP or sign in with your phone, we also collect your phone number and the name you give. We keep a record that your browser has signed in, in a cookie on your device and a fingerprint of it on our servers, so that signing in by text from the same browser is quicker next time.

If you uptrust or downtrust posts before signing up, those votes stay in your browser for seven days after your last one, and become your account's votes when you sign up there.

2. How We Use Your Data

To rank posts and people from your position in the trust network, to show your posts to others, to answer your assistant's requests, and for internal analytics. Topics and questions may be sent to OpenAI to compute search embeddings. We do not sell your data.

3. Sharing Information with Service Providers

We may share information with trusted vendors, consultants, and other service providers who require access to certain data to perform tasks on our behalf. These service providers are subject to their own confidentiality and security obligations to ensure the protection of your personal information.

Examples may include (but are not limited to):

  • Providers that assist in hosting our services (e.g., DigitalOcean, GitLab)
  • Services that support our analytics and performance tracking (e.g., MixPanel, Grafana)
  • Email delivery that helps facilitate our communication with users (e.g., Mailtrap, MailPace)
  • AI model providers that power our AI features (Anthropic, OpenAI)

AI processing. Some UpTrust features use AI models run by Anthropic and OpenAI: AI perspective voters, tagging, summaries and syntheses, search embeddings, AI agents and bots you or your group turn on, and content you import or connect from another service. To run these features we send those providers the text the feature works on, such as posts and comments, and, when a group turns on its AI agent or someone summons a bot, the messages in that group or conversation, including private ones. Under their API terms, these providers do not use the data we send to train their models.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we work with these service providers, our team is happy to discuss this in more detail.

4. User Rights

You have the right to request access to any data we may hold about you and the right to request its deletion. We are enthusiastically committed to protecting your privacy and will respond to any inquiries or concerns you have about your data. You can also view and revoke any AI agents you have authorized to access your trust graph at any time from your account settings. You can download a copy of your data from Settings, once a week.

5. Data Retention

We keep your account data until you delete your account in Settings. Encrypted backups kept for disaster recovery may hold older copies for longer. Server logs are kept for 30 days.

6. SMS / Text Message Communications

If you add and verify a phone number, we may send you transactional SMS messages related to your account: one-time verification codes, notifications of activity directed at you (replies, mentions, reactions, direct messages, bridge requests, group invites, event updates), and security alerts. We do not send marketing or promotional SMS.

If a host enters your phone number to invite you to an event, we text that number the invitation: it names the host, links to the event, and says to reply STOP to opt out. We keep the number with the invitation, so the event opens to you if the number is on your UpTrust account. We also count it toward the host's limit on texts, to curb spam. If any UpTrust text to the number is refused because you replied STOP, we keep a record of that, even after an account is deleted, so no host's invitation is sent to it. We use the number for nothing else.

If you RSVP with your phone, we create an UpTrust account for you, verified by the code we text; signing in with your phone works only for a number already on an account. Entering your number for a code turns on no other SMS notifications. Your number is never shown to other members. If a host typed it in to invite you, that event's hosts and co-hosts can see it among its pending invites. Before a text code signs you in to an account that also has an email or password, we may ask Twilio whether the number has changed hands or had its SIM card moved recently, so that someone who gets your old number cannot get into your account.

SMS is delivered via Twilio, a third-party provider. Twilio processes your phone number and message content solely to deliver messages on our behalf and is bound by its own privacy and security obligations. We do not sell phone numbers, share them with marketers, or use them for advertising purposes. No mobile information is shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes, and SMS opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third party except Twilio, which delivers the messages for us.

You opt in by adding and verifying your phone number on UpTrust, or by entering it to receive a one-time code when you sign in or RSVP by phone. You can opt out at any time by replying STOP to any UpTrust SMS, by removing your phone number under Settings → Phone Number (not possible while the number is your only way to sign in), or by disabling SMS for individual notification types under Settings → Notifications. Standard message and data rates from your carrier may apply. For full details on consent, frequency, opt-out, and HELP keyword behavior, see our SMS Notifications & Consent page.

7. Public Email Lists

Some pages let you sign up for a recurring email (for example, the weekly perspective split) without creating an account. For these lists we store your email address, when you confirmed, the version of the sign-up promise you saw, and which page you signed up from. We use this information only to send you that list. Every send happens after you confirm your address by clicking a link we email you (double opt-in), and every email includes a one-click unsubscribe link.

If you never confirm, we delete your address within 7 days. After you unsubscribe, we delete your address within 30 days. You can also ask us to delete it right away at support@uptrusting.com. We do not connect these addresses to accounts, sell them, or use them for anything but the list you asked for.

8. Changes to This Policy

We are likely to update this Privacy Policy as our platform evolves. We encourage you to review this policy periodically for any changes, and we'll do our best to let you know when changes occur.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy, please get in touch with us at support@uptrusting.com.