ThoughtTyped is a messaging app published by NorthForge Labs (northforge.company). This policy explains what information the app handles, where it is stored, and what your choices are. In it, "we" and "us" mean NorthForge Labs.
Summary
ThoughtTyped shows people what you write as you write it: the people in a conversation, and the audience you choose for a Thought or a prompt answer. Drafts are relayed live and never stored. Your account, the messages you send, your posts for the 24 hours they last, and statistics about how they were written are stored on our server, hosted by Railway in the United States. We do not sell your information or use it for advertising.
Information you provide
- Account information: your display name, username and password. Passwords are stored only as a salted cryptographic hash.
- Profile details you choose to add: a profile photo, a bio, pronouns and a profile colour. The app shrinks a photo to 512 pixels square before uploading it.
- Messages and reactions you send, and the group conversations you create.
- Thoughts and prompt answers you post, the colour and audience you choose for each, and the reactions you leave on other people's.
- Your connections: who you follow and who you block, and the invite links you create or join through.
- Reports you submit about other users or their content.
Live drafts
While you type a message, your draft is transmitted to the conversation's other participants in real time, including edits and deletions. While you write a Thought or an answer to the daily prompt, the audience you choose can watch it the same way, and you can see how many people are watching. This is how ThoughtTyped works, and it cannot be turned off. Drafts are held in server memory only while they are being written and are discarded when they are sent, posted or cleared. Draft text is not written to storage or logs.
Writing statistics
When you send a message or post, we compute and store statistics about how it was written, such as writing time, character counts and edits, along with any label it receives. If you abandon a message draft, we may record that it happened and how long it lasted, without its content.
Technical information
We process the technical information needed to operate the service, such as session identifiers and the IP address your device connects from. Our server does not log the content of messages, posts or drafts.
Where your information is stored
ThoughtTyped's server and database are hosted for us by Railway (railway.com), in a data centre in Virginia, United States. If you use ThoughtTyped from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and stored in the United States. Railway may keep standard request logs, such as IP addresses and times, to run and secure its platform.
Invite links open a page on northforge.company, which is hosted by Vercel (vercel.com). The page reads the invite code in your browser to open the app. The page has no analytics and does not store the code, though Vercel may keep standard request logs.
How we use information
We use information to provide and secure ThoughtTyped: delivering messages, posts and live drafts, showing writing receipts, labels and statistics, reviewing reports, and preventing abuse. We do not sell your information or use it for advertising. ThoughtTyped contains no advertising and no analytics.
Who can see your information
- Your display name, username, profile photo, bio, pronouns and profile colour are visible to other signed-in users you have not blocked. Anyone you have not blocked can find you by username and follow you.
- People who share at least two friends with you may see you under "People you may know". You can turn this off in Settings with "Show me in suggestions".
- If someone joins or accepts through your invite link, you become friends. A group invite link also adds them to that group.
- Your messages, drafts, writing receipts and labels are visible to the participants of the conversation they belong to.
- Thoughts and prompt answers are visible to the audience you choose: your friends (people you follow who follow you back), or your friends and fans (everyone who follows you). Answers to the daily prompt are shown only to people who have posted their own answer that day.
- Reactions on a Thought or answer are visible to its author and to the people who can see it.
- How many friends, fans and follows you have is visible only to you.
- If you share an answer or Thought as an image, you share it yourself through your phone, and the app you share it to handles it under its own terms.
- People you block cannot find you, follow you or see your posts, and you will not see theirs. They are not told.
- People you report are not told who reported them.
We may disclose information where required by law.
Security
The app connects to our server over an encrypted connection (HTTPS). Messages and posts are not end-to-end encrypted; our server processes their content to deliver them and to compute writing statistics. If you choose to stay signed in, your session is kept in your device's secure storage. If you choose to save your username and password, they are kept the same way and are only ever sent to sign you in.
Retention
Messages are kept until you unsend them, which deletes their content, or until your account is deleted. Writing statistics are kept for as long as the conversation exists. Thoughts and prompt answers are deleted 24 hours after they are posted, or sooner if you delete them, and their reactions with them. Your profile photo and other profile details are kept until you change or remove them. Follows and blocks are kept until you change them. Your personal invite link works until you reset it; a group invite link expires after 7 days. Reports are kept for as long as we need them to review them and keep ThoughtTyped safe. Sessions expire after 30 days, or after 24 hours if you do not choose to stay signed in.
The server keeps a copy of its database once a day, for 7 days, so we can recover from a mistake. Anything deleted, including a deleted account, can remain in these copies for up to 7 days before it is gone for good. Profile photos are not included in them.
Deleting your data
You can unsend messages, delete your Thoughts and answers, sign out at any time, and remove saved credentials from the sign-in screen.
You can delete your account in the app, under Me → Settings → Delete account. This permanently deletes your profile and profile photo, your follows and blocks, your Thoughts and answers, the messages you have sent, and your direct conversations. Group conversations continue for their other members. Reports you have made are kept without your identity. Copies in our daily backups are gone within 7 days.
If you cannot sign in, email support@northforge.company with DELETE in the subject line and your username in the message. We will confirm the request is yours before deleting anything, and complete the deletion within 30 days.
Children
ThoughtTyped is intended for people aged 13 and over and is not directed at children. We do not ask for your age, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we delete it. You can report an account you believe belongs to a child under 13 from its profile.
Changes
This policy is updated when the app's handling of information changes. We will tell you in the app before a material change takes effect. The date above reflects the most recent change.
Contact
NorthForge Labs