Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Who We Are
Tunnel X's fundamental goal is to protect the privacy of your communications. Thus we always choose to obtain as little information about you as possible. We choose to encrypt all of the data you store on our site such that even we cannot read it. For us, privacy is not just a policy, it is our ethos.
Your data
We collect as little data about you as possible. The following are the ways in which we may collect personal data:
1. Visiting our website. We do not log IP addresses. For the purpose of traffic analysis, we map IP addresses to locations (with "municipality" granularity but not more than that), and then store that information, so that we can understand traffic. However, we do not store that information such that it is mapped to specific users. Users who do not wish to reveal their location to Tunnel X are welcome to use an anonymizing service such as the Tor network.
2. Creating an account. When you create an account, we want to know as little about you as possible. We do not collect any personal data from you, including your IP address. We ask you to upload a random image from your computer (which is never visible to us; in fact, we only process a small fraction of this image), and to choose a PIN; you will use these whenever you sign into Tunnel X. The image will be used to derive an encryption key which will secure your data. We do not store either of these data points in a way that we can decrypt; rather, we store hashes (one-way-encrypted versions) of them. We also record the date and time on which you created your account, so we know when your "free" period is over (however, "beta" users' accounts remain free indefinitely).
3. Signing in to your account and our record of your activity. When you sign into your account, we record the actions you take necessary for us to authenticate you, or to store and transmit the messages you send, as well as the files you share with your confidant. We also store your account preferences (such as font size). We store all of this data in encrypted form, in such a way that it may only be decrypted by you or your confidant when you or your confidant are signed in. We also track the total file size of all messages and files in your Tunnel, because we place limits on the amount of data users may keep in their accounts. We do not track which messages you have read and which you haven't. We do not record when you delete messages; we simply remove the message from our storage drives. Sometimes we display "system messages" to our users (for example, warnings that Tunnel X will be offline briefly for maintenance at a specific time); we note whether or not we have displayed these messages to you so that we don't display them to you more than once.
4. Communicating with us. When you communicate with us, you may provide us with personal data about yourself. Your communication with us may be retained in our system. We encourage all users to communicate with us in as anonymous a way as is possible, because we want to store as little data about you as we can.
How we store your data
1. When you sign up for an account, you consent to your account and any other account data being stored on the Tunnel X servers.
2. We do not store your authentication tokens on the Tunnel X servers. Instead, a hashed value is stored for authentication. The original authentication tokens cannot be determined from that hashed value. As a result, we are unable to recover a forgotten image key or PIN.
3. We store all of your data either in encrypted form (with a key which itself is derived from your login key, meaning your data is unencryptable by anyone other than you or your confidant), or in hashed form (hashing is a process of one-way encryption: hashes are not decryptable, by anyone).
How we use your data
1. We do not analyze the data in your account for the purpose of displaying advertisements.
2. We do not and will never share your account data with any third-party except as specified in this policy. We will never sell your account data under any circumstances.
3. We do not solicit users' email addresses. We only see email addresses when someone contacts us via email; We do not and will never share your email address or other contact data with mailing lists. We provide anonymous modes of contacting us as well. We will never initiate contact with you unless the communication is account related, or unless you have consented to such communication.
4. We do not use third-party services, because doing so may expose your data to those third parties. We do not use Google Analytics or similar services for exactly that reason. Nor do we show you targeted advertising; doing so would require disclosing your online behavior to advertising networks. The exception is that we will implement third-party payment systems, such as Paypal and Bitcoin. Any information about you we receive from them will be discarded as soon as the payment is recorded.
How long do we retain your data?
The following outlines how our data retention policy affects the messages in your account and your account data:
1. Data in your account will stay in your account as long as your account is active. If you delete a message, or the entire contents of your Tunnel, it will be removed from your Tunnel at that time.
2. If you delete your Tunnel or request we delete your Tunnel for you, your Tunnel and the messages in the Tunnel will be removed from our servers at the time of deletion.
3. Records that are stored for statistical purposes may be kept indefinitely; note that none of this type of data is associated with your account (it is stored only in aggregate), nor does it identify you personally.
4. Your data may reside in our backups for a brief period subsequent to a message or Tunnel being deleted. This backed up data, of course, will be in encrypted form only, decryptable only with keys in possession of you and your Tunnel confidant.
5. If you let your paid subscription lapse then your account will be downgraded to free account status approximately one week after your subscription has expired and will then be subject to the data retention and time-limit rules for free accounts.
Disclosure of account data
Under normal circumstances, we do not and will never disclose account data to anyone other than the owner of an account. We will always attempt to authenticate any requests that require the disclosure of account data to ensure they come from the account owner. If we are unable to successfully authenticate a request, we do not disclose any account data.
We will only disclose account data in the following circumstances:
1. If we receive an order enforceable under U.S. laws compelling us to disclose account data for a specific user account. The account data we disclose may include data in an unencrypted format. Because such orders generally state that we are not permitted to disclose the existence of the order to a user, we will not disclose to any user the existence, or nonexistence, of any order we may have received.
2. Where the safety or well-being of an individual or individuals is in imminent danger, and we believe in good faith that the disclosure of account data is reasonably necessary to protect against such harm, we will disclose account data. This may include but is not limited to the welfare of a child, or an act of terrorism.
Data Storage
Our office is located in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Our servers where user data is stored are located in the AWS EC2 "US East (Northern Virginia)" region, operated by Amazon.com, Inc., a public Delaware, USA company. We store no user information at our Brooklyn, New York offices.
By visiting our website and using our services, you consent to the collection and use of information as outlined in this privacy policy.
Cookies
Tunnel X sets one "session cookie" on your browser, to ensure that your session persists and is secure. We do not use "persistent cookies" whatsoever (cookies which remain on your browser after you leave Tunnel X or close your browser), nor do we have any code on our site which causes "third-party cookies" to be set on your browser. Finally, we do not track your browser, computer, or device in any way (such as by tracking your device's "MAC address" or any other type of cookie-like tracking identifier).
Advertising
We do not advertise on our site.
Content analysis
We perform no analysis of your data.
Constant improvement
We occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our services and customer feedback. When we post changes to this Policy, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of this statement. If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy or in how Tunnel X uses your personal information, we will notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes prior to implementing the change or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to keep informed about how Tunnel X is protecting your information.
Contact us
We value your opinions and appreciate your comments. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
Tunnel X's fundamental goal is to protect the privacy of your communications. Thus we always choose to obtain as little information about you as possible. We choose to encrypt all of the data you store on our site such that even we cannot read it. For us, privacy is not just a policy, it is our ethos.
Your data
We collect as little data about you as possible. The following are the ways in which we may collect personal data:
1. Visiting our website. We do not log IP addresses. For the purpose of traffic analysis, we map IP addresses to locations (with "municipality" granularity but not more than that), and then store that information, so that we can understand traffic. However, we do not store that information such that it is mapped to specific users. Users who do not wish to reveal their location to Tunnel X are welcome to use an anonymizing service such as the Tor network.
2. Creating an account. When you create an account, we want to know as little about you as possible. We do not collect any personal data from you, including your IP address. We ask you to upload a random image from your computer (which is never visible to us; in fact, we only process a small fraction of this image), and to choose a PIN; you will use these whenever you sign into Tunnel X. The image will be used to derive an encryption key which will secure your data. We do not store either of these data points in a way that we can decrypt; rather, we store hashes (one-way-encrypted versions) of them. We also record the date and time on which you created your account, so we know when your "free" period is over (however, "beta" users' accounts remain free indefinitely).
3. Signing in to your account and our record of your activity. When you sign into your account, we record the actions you take necessary for us to authenticate you, or to store and transmit the messages you send, as well as the files you share with your confidant. We also store your account preferences (such as font size). We store all of this data in encrypted form, in such a way that it may only be decrypted by you or your confidant when you or your confidant are signed in. We also track the total file size of all messages and files in your Tunnel, because we place limits on the amount of data users may keep in their accounts. We do not track which messages you have read and which you haven't. We do not record when you delete messages; we simply remove the message from our storage drives. Sometimes we display "system messages" to our users (for example, warnings that Tunnel X will be offline briefly for maintenance at a specific time); we note whether or not we have displayed these messages to you so that we don't display them to you more than once.
4. Communicating with us. When you communicate with us, you may provide us with personal data about yourself. Your communication with us may be retained in our system. We encourage all users to communicate with us in as anonymous a way as is possible, because we want to store as little data about you as we can.
How we store your data
1. When you sign up for an account, you consent to your account and any other account data being stored on the Tunnel X servers.
2. We do not store your authentication tokens on the Tunnel X servers. Instead, a hashed value is stored for authentication. The original authentication tokens cannot be determined from that hashed value. As a result, we are unable to recover a forgotten image key or PIN.
3. We store all of your data either in encrypted form (with a key which itself is derived from your login key, meaning your data is unencryptable by anyone other than you or your confidant), or in hashed form (hashing is a process of one-way encryption: hashes are not decryptable, by anyone).
How we use your data
1. We do not analyze the data in your account for the purpose of displaying advertisements.
2. We do not and will never share your account data with any third-party except as specified in this policy. We will never sell your account data under any circumstances.
3. We do not solicit users' email addresses. We only see email addresses when someone contacts us via email; We do not and will never share your email address or other contact data with mailing lists. We provide anonymous modes of contacting us as well. We will never initiate contact with you unless the communication is account related, or unless you have consented to such communication.
4. We do not use third-party services, because doing so may expose your data to those third parties. We do not use Google Analytics or similar services for exactly that reason. Nor do we show you targeted advertising; doing so would require disclosing your online behavior to advertising networks. The exception is that we will implement third-party payment systems, such as Paypal and Bitcoin. Any information about you we receive from them will be discarded as soon as the payment is recorded.
How long do we retain your data?
The following outlines how our data retention policy affects the messages in your account and your account data:
1. Data in your account will stay in your account as long as your account is active. If you delete a message, or the entire contents of your Tunnel, it will be removed from your Tunnel at that time.
2. If you delete your Tunnel or request we delete your Tunnel for you, your Tunnel and the messages in the Tunnel will be removed from our servers at the time of deletion.
3. Records that are stored for statistical purposes may be kept indefinitely; note that none of this type of data is associated with your account (it is stored only in aggregate), nor does it identify you personally.
4. Your data may reside in our backups for a brief period subsequent to a message or Tunnel being deleted. This backed up data, of course, will be in encrypted form only, decryptable only with keys in possession of you and your Tunnel confidant.
5. If you let your paid subscription lapse then your account will be downgraded to free account status approximately one week after your subscription has expired and will then be subject to the data retention and time-limit rules for free accounts.
Disclosure of account data
Under normal circumstances, we do not and will never disclose account data to anyone other than the owner of an account. We will always attempt to authenticate any requests that require the disclosure of account data to ensure they come from the account owner. If we are unable to successfully authenticate a request, we do not disclose any account data.
We will only disclose account data in the following circumstances:
1. If we receive an order enforceable under U.S. laws compelling us to disclose account data for a specific user account. The account data we disclose may include data in an unencrypted format. Because such orders generally state that we are not permitted to disclose the existence of the order to a user, we will not disclose to any user the existence, or nonexistence, of any order we may have received.
2. Where the safety or well-being of an individual or individuals is in imminent danger, and we believe in good faith that the disclosure of account data is reasonably necessary to protect against such harm, we will disclose account data. This may include but is not limited to the welfare of a child, or an act of terrorism.
Data Storage
Our office is located in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Our servers where user data is stored are located in the AWS EC2 "US East (Northern Virginia)" region, operated by Amazon.com, Inc., a public Delaware, USA company. We store no user information at our Brooklyn, New York offices.
By visiting our website and using our services, you consent to the collection and use of information as outlined in this privacy policy.
Cookies
Tunnel X sets one "session cookie" on your browser, to ensure that your session persists and is secure. We do not use "persistent cookies" whatsoever (cookies which remain on your browser after you leave Tunnel X or close your browser), nor do we have any code on our site which causes "third-party cookies" to be set on your browser. Finally, we do not track your browser, computer, or device in any way (such as by tracking your device's "MAC address" or any other type of cookie-like tracking identifier).
Advertising
We do not advertise on our site.
Content analysis
We perform no analysis of your data.
Constant improvement
We occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our services and customer feedback. When we post changes to this Policy, we will revise the "last updated" date at the top of this statement. If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy or in how Tunnel X uses your personal information, we will notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes prior to implementing the change or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to keep informed about how Tunnel X is protecting your information.
Contact us
We value your opinions and appreciate your comments. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.
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