We’ve refreshed our policies

Spring is emerging in the US and as part of our company spring cleaning, we took a peek at our product policies, noticed some cobwebs, and got out the duster.

You can read our current product policies here. Besides rewriting sections to be more readable, we made four substantive changes:

1. We’ve consolidated our policies across all products owned and maintained by Basecamp, LLC.
That includes all versions of Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire, Backpack, and the upcoming HEY. This change mostly affects our legacy application customers, bringing their (stale) terms and privacy policies up-to-date.

2. We’ve added more details to our privacy policy.
Our customers deserve to be able to easily and clearly understand what data we collect and why. We’ve restructured and fleshed out our privacy policy to do just that, while also adding more details on your rights with regard to your information. Just as important are the things that haven’t changed: that we take the privacy of your data seriously; that we do not, have not, and never will sell your data; and that we take care to not collect sensitive data that aren’t necessary.

3. We’ve introduced a Use Restrictions policy. We are proud to help our customers do their best work. We also recognize that technology is an amplifier: it can enable the helpful and the harmful. There are some purposes we staunchly stand against. Our Use Restrictions policy fleshes out what used to be a fairly vague clause in our Terms of Service, clearly describing what we consider abusive usage of our products. In addition, we outline how we investigate and resolve abusive usage, including the principles of human oversight, balanced responsibilities, and focus on evidence that guide us in investigations.

4. We’ve adjusted how you can find out about policy changes.
In 2018, we open-sourced our policies by publishing them as a public repository on Github. One of the nice things about this repository is it tracks all the revisions we make in our policies so you can see what changed, when, and why. For instance, you can see every change we made to our policies in this refresh. You can also decide whether you want to get an email notification when changes are made by watching the repository. We’ll also be announcing any substantive changes here on SvN; if you prefer email updates, you can subscribe here.

As always, customers can always reach us at [email protected] with questions or suggestions about our policies. You can also open an issue in our policies repository if you’d like to contribute!