Privacy Policy

Unfettered ("we," "us," or "our") provides AI-powered educational services to incarcerated individuals through email. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and what rights you have. We serve a population with limited ability to exercise conventional digital privacy rights, and we take that responsibility seriously. This policy is written in plain language because we believe transparency is especially important when the people affected have the fewest alternatives.

1. Who This Policy Covers

This policy applies to two groups of people:

• Supporters: Individuals who visit our website, purchase subscriptions, and manage accounts on behalf of incarcerated users.
• Users: Incarcerated individuals who correspond with Unfettered through facility email systems.

The Service is currently available to adults only. We do not knowingly collect information from individuals under 18 years of age.

2. Information We Collect

From supporters:

• Name and email address
• Payment information (processed by Stripe; we do not store card numbers)
• Information provided about the incarcerated individual (name, facility, email address)
• Communications with us (contact form submissions, support requests)

From users (incarcerated individuals):

• Email correspondence — the full content of messages sent to and from Unfettered
• Learning path selections and progress
• Name, facility, and email address as provided by the supporter

Automatically collected:

• Email metadata (timestamps, sender/recipient addresses)
• Standard web server logs for supporters visiting our website

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• Operating the Service: Processing correspondence, generating AI responses, managing learning paths, and maintaining user accounts.
• Safety monitoring: Applying automated content filters to identify communications that may indicate a risk to user safety or the safety of others, as described in our Terms of Use.
• Service improvement: Analyzing usage patterns and correspondence to improve our learning paths, AI responses, and overall educational quality.
• Research: Using de-identified or aggregated data to study educational outcomes, engagement patterns, and rehabilitation — with the goal of contributing to evidence-based approaches to education for incarcerated populations.
• Payment processing: Processing subscription payments and managing billing.
• Communication: Responding to supporter inquiries and sending service-related notifications.

4. How Correspondence Is Processed

Because correspondence is central to the Service and involves sensitive personal expression, we want to be specific about how it is handled:

• All correspondence passes through automated content filters before and after AI processing.
• Correspondence is sent to an AI language model to generate educational responses. The AI provider processes the content of messages to produce replies but does not use your correspondence to train its models (see Section 5).
• Unfettered staff may review correspondence for quality assurance, safety review, or service improvement. Access is limited to staff with a legitimate operational need.
• Correspondence is stored in our database to maintain conversational context, track learning progress, and operate the Service.

5. Third-Party Service Providers

We use the following third-party services to operate Unfettered. Each processes some portion of user data as described:

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We do not share identifiable user data with third parties except as described in this policy (service providers, safety disclosures, and research conducted with de-identified data).

6. Data Retention

We retain correspondence and user data indefinitely in order to maintain learning continuity, support long-term educational progress, and enable the research purposes described in this policy and our Terms of Use.

Supporter account and payment information is retained for as long as the subscription is active, plus a reasonable period afterward to comply with legal and financial record-keeping obligations.

As our service matures, we intend to develop more granular retention and archival policies, including options for users or their families to manage how correspondence is preserved over time.

7. Data Security

We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect user data, including:

• Encryption of data in transit (TLS/HTTPS)
• Encryption of data at rest in our database
• Access controls limiting staff access to user data
• Regular security reviews of our systems

No system is perfectly secure. While we take data protection seriously, we cannot guarantee absolute security and encourage users to be thoughtful about the personal information they share in correspondence.

8. Safety-Related Disclosures

As described in our Terms of Use, we may disclose correspondence or user information to correctional facility authorities or other appropriate parties when we identify content indicating a credible risk to the safety of any person. This includes expressions of suicidal ideation, threats of violence, or plans to commit crimes.

We may also disclose information when required by law, court order, or valid legal process.

9. Your Rights

Supporters:

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by contacting us. You may cancel your subscription at any time through the subscription management page.

Incarcerated users:

We recognize that incarcerated individuals face practical barriers to exercising privacy rights that are typically accessed through websites or digital forms. If you wish to request information about your data, request corrections, or ask questions about how your correspondence is handled, you may do so by writing to Unfettered through your facility email system. A supporter may also submit requests on your behalf through our contact page.

We will respond to all reasonable requests within 30 days. Some requests may be limited by our legal obligations or operational requirements.

10. Research Partnerships

When we share data with research partners, we adhere to the following principles:

• Data shared for research is de-identified — personal names, facility names, and other directly identifying information are removed.
• Research partners are required to use shared data only for the agreed-upon research purpose.
• No individual user will be publicly identified in research outputs without their explicit written consent.
• We will seek ethical review (such as Institutional Review Board approval) for formal research studies involving user data.

11. Oregon Privacy Rights

Oregon residents may have additional rights under the Oregon Consumer Privacy Act, including the right to know what personal data we collect, the right to request deletion, and the right to opt out of certain data processing. To exercise these rights, please contact us. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the effective date at the top of this page. For supporters, we will also notify you by email. Because we cannot guarantee that incarcerated users will see updated web pages, we will include a notice of material privacy changes in correspondence when practical.

13. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your data is handled, please contact us.