Privacy Policy

Treehouse is operated by RunCodesRun, a development studio based in the Philippines. If you have a question about anything here, or want a copy of your data or its deletion, write to support@thetreehouse.me and a person will read it.

This policy is written to be read. Where something is awkward, it is said plainly rather than buried.

Who can use Treehouse

You must be 18 or older. We ask your date of birth when you create an account and refuse anyone younger. If we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we remove it.

What we collect, and why

Because you typed it:

Because you used the app: your posts, comments, likes, messages and the photos in them; who you follow and who follows you; the groups you are in; who you have blocked; and reports you file.

Because the app has to work: the last time you were active, so people in a conversation can see you are around; a notification token for your device, so we can send you a push; and ordinary server logs, which include your IP address.

If you sign in with Google or Apple: we receive an identifier from them and your email address. We do not receive your password, and we do not post anything anywhere on your behalf.

Because your feed is ordered rather than listed: which posts were shown to you, where they sat on the screen, and which ones you opened.

Your wall is sorted by what you are likely to want to read — how recent a post is, how many people replied to it, and how much you usually read that person. This is the record of whether that sorting is any good. Without it we would be guessing, and every future change to the order would be a guess on top of a guess.

It is a list of post numbers and times. Not what you read of them, not how long you looked, not where you stopped scrolling. It never leaves Treehouse.

There is no setting to turn it off. Every wall is sorted this way, so the record is kept for everyone who uses Treehouse. It is deleted after 90 days (see How long we keep it), and you can ask us to delete yours sooner, like anything else we hold about you (see Your rights).

Photos are saved again before we keep them. A photo from a phone can carry hidden details, such as where it was taken. We keep a fresh copy without them, and the file you sent is not kept.

We do not collect your contacts, your location, or your advertising identifier. There is no advertising in Treehouse and no third-party analytics watching what you do in it — the sorting record above is ours, stays with us, and is not sold, shared or used to target you with anything.

Who else sees your data

Nobody buys it, and it is not sold or rented. It reaches these companies only because the app needs them to work:

Embedded links are different, and worth understanding. When somebody posts a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram link, Treehouse shows a card with a small preview image. That image is loaded from those companies, so scrolling past the card is enough for them to see a request from your device — which tells them your network address and roughly when. We do not send them your name or your account, and we cannot see what they do with it.

These providers handle your data as service providers to us, to run Treehouse — not for their own purposes. We don't name our hosting, storage, push and email providers here, but you can ask: write to support@thetreehouse.me and we will tell you who they are.

The video itself does not play until you tap. Tapping is a bigger step: you are then talking to them directly, and their own privacy policy applies to everything that follows.

If you would rather this did not happen at all, the only way to avoid it is not to open a screen showing that post — there is no setting for it today.

Who can see what you post

• Your posts are visible to anybody signed in to Treehouse if your account is public, or only to people you have approved if it is private. One exception: if you share somebody else's post on your wall, anyone who can see that post can see that you shared it, even if your account is private. What you wrote with it is still seen only by people you have approved. And if somebody shares your post on their wall or sends it in a message to a person you haven't approved, that person can see that the post is yours (your name, photo and @handle) and can ask to follow you, but not the post itself. They see this only if they can already see the posts of the person who shared or sent it.
• Who liked a post can be seen by anyone who can see the post, including likes given before this change, even if the account that liked it is private. A private account's posts and profile stay private. Who shared it on their wall can be seen on the post by anyone who can see it, even if the account that shared it is private. The shares on somebody's profile are still shown only to their followers. Who sent it in a message is shown only to the post's author, never to anyone else, and never who it was sent to.
• Group posts are visible to that group's members and nowhere else.
• Messages are visible to the people in that conversation.
• Your profile picture is publicly reachable by its web address. This is true even for a private account, because an image has to load without signing in. Private means your posts, not your face. Photos in posts and messages are not like this — those are served only after we check you are allowed to see them, on every single request.

If something of yours is reported, a moderator can see it. Posts, comments, messages and accounts can be reported. To decide a report, a member of our moderation team can see what was reported — even if your account is private and they do not follow you. They look only to decide that report, and every time one of them opens a report it is written down.

Nobody at Treehouse reads your messages, except when somebody in the chat reports a message. A moderator sees the reported message and a short run of messages around it: up to 20 before it and 5 after, and only ones the person reporting could see. That can include messages from other people in the chat. Somebody who has left a chat, or declined to join it, can still report messages they saw while they were in it. The moderator looks only to decide the report, and every look is written down. Nobody is told that a report was made.

A computer program checks every photo you add to a post, your profile or a message, before anyone else sees it. That includes group posts, your profile photo and your cover. It checks against the list in our content policy. It looks at photos only, never at what you write. Photos already in posts and on profiles when the check started are checked too. While a photo is being checked, the post it is in is hidden, and if the photo is blocked, the post stays hidden until you change it. A message with a photo is delivered once the photo has been checked. If the photo is blocked, the message is not delivered at all, words included.

If it blocks a photo, nobody sees it: not the people who would have seen it, not the people you sent it to, and nobody at Treehouse. There is no review, and a blocked photo cannot be restored. Most blocked photos are deleted straight away. A photo blocked as sexually explicit (showing genitals, a bare bottom or a woman's bare nipple, sexual activity, or sex toys) is kept for 30 days where nobody can see it, not even us, in case the law requires it to protect a child, and then deleted. We also keep a short note that a photo was blocked: which kind, when, and a fingerprint of the file. The note never contains the photo itself.

How long we keep it

• Your account and its content stay until you delete them.
• Notifications you have read are deleted after 60 days.
• The record of which posts your feed showed you is kept for 90 days. It is only useful for judging a recent change to the ordering, and a year of it would answer no question the last three months cannot.
• A message you unsend disappears from the chat for everyone straight away, but we keep its words so that somebody who saw it can still report it.
• A message you edit shows everyone in the chat that it was edited. We keep only the new words, not the earlier ones, unless the message had already been reported for a child's safety (see below).
• A message you delete for yourself (Delete for me) goes from your copy of the chat only. Everybody else in the chat still has it, and so do we.
• A reported message stays where it was. Reporting does not copy it or make it last longer. The report itself (who reported, why, and what was decided) is kept as described below.
• A photo the program blocks is deleted straight away, or after 30 days if it was blocked as sexually explicit (see Who can see what you post). It is kept longer only if somebody reports it, the police ask for it, or it matches known child-abuse material.
• The note that a photo was blocked (which kind, when, a fingerprint of the file, and whose it was) is kept for 90 days so we can check the program is working. After that we keep only totals, which say nothing about you.
• Reports and moderation decisions are kept after the content is gone. They are the record of why something was removed, and deleting them would leave us unable to answer that question or hear an appeal. This includes every suspension, closure and deletion we make, with who made it, when and why. If we delete your account, we close it straight away and erase it 30 days later. We keep that record, and anything held for child safety, after everything else is gone.
• Anything reported for child safety, including a reported message, its photos and the words of the messages around it, is kept from the moment it is reported, even if it is then deleted — by its author, by the account being deleted, or by anything else in this section. Only our lead moderator can let it go, and every time that happens it is written down with the reason.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you what we hold, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy. Write to support@thetreehouse.me. We will answer within 30 days. Being suspended does not change any of these rights.

You can delete your account inside the app: Settings, then Account, then Delete account. You enter your password to confirm. Your account disappears from Treehouse straight away and is erased 30 days later. Signing in before then cancels the deletion; after that it cannot be undone.

What is erased: your profile, your posts and the photos in them, your likes, and who you follow and who follows you. What stays, without your name: comments you left on other people's posts and messages you sent, because they are part of conversations other people took part in. A group you created is handed to one of its remaining members rather than deleted. Records of moderation decisions, and anything preserved for child safety, are kept as described above.

If you signed up with Google or Apple, you have no Treehouse password, so the app asks you to sign in with Google or Apple again to confirm it is you. If you used Apple, we also tell Apple to remove Treehouse's access to your Apple ID. If you can't do this — for example, your account uses Apple and you only have an Android phone — write to support@thetreehouse.me from the address your account uses and we will delete it.

Blocking a photo is decided by a computer program alone. It affects only whether that photo is shown. It never counts against your account, and it never leads to your account being suspended or closed. Those decisions are always made by a person.

If you only want a break, Deactivate account in the same place hides your account without deleting anything. Sign in whenever you like and it all comes back.

If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the GDPR gives you these rights and the right to complain to your national data protection authority. If you are in the Philippines, the Data Privacy Act of 2012 gives you equivalent rights and the National Privacy Commission hears complaints.

Where your data lives

Our servers are in Singapore. If you use Treehouse from the European Union, the United Kingdom or elsewhere, your data is transferred there and to the providers listed above, some of which are in the United States.

Security, honestly

Passwords are hashed and never stored as you typed them. Traffic is encrypted. Private photos are served only after a permission check, and that check is re-run every time the photo is requested — so removing somebody's access takes effect within minutes rather than lasting as long as a shared link.

No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If something happens that affects you, we will tell you.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the version and date at the top, and email you about any change that affects what we collect or who sees it before it takes effect. Continuing to use Treehouse after a change means you accept it.

Every change is listed, in plain words, on our What's changed page.

Not legal advice

This document was written to describe accurately what the app does. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer. If you are reading it as a user, that does not affect your rights — the law applies whatever is written here.