Ello

A little bit of information that I feel is well organised, thoroughly thought about & informative right from the start

I am pleased to be using such a cool social network

This was last updated on 9th February 2015, but it is still rather good!

Ello is a Public Benefit Corporation, with a legal obligation to never display paid third-party advertising, sell user data to a third party, or sell our company to anyone that would ever do any of those things.

We believe that the best privacy protection is transparency, so all of us can make smart choices about how to use Ello.

Here is information about the data that Ello collects when you join our social network:

We believe that you should be able to be anyone you want on Ello, and you are not required to use your real name when signing up. Quite honestly, we don’t care who you are because we don’t serve ads and don’t sell user data.

When you use Ello, some information needs to be saved about your account in order to make Ello work. For example, when you post on Ello, servers store your posts in a database, so they can be called up later when you or someone else wants to look at them. We store who you choose to follow on Ello, so we can connect you with them and vice versa when you’re logged in. Also, when you sign up to use Ello, the information that you fill out on your profile and settings pages are stored as well.

When you create an account we do require you to use a valid email address. We may use it if we need to reach you about important system updates; to reset your password; to contact you if there are any safety or other issues you should be aware of; to send you our newsletter if you opt-in to it; and to verify that you are a real human being of some kind and not a robot.

Besides the obvious information mentioned above, that’s used to make Ello run, Ello does not seek to collect or store data linked to individual users.

In order to make Ello better, we do collect some anonymised user data through Google Analytics and Segment. This information shows us in a general way how people are using Ello, where they are coming from, how long they spend on Ello, etc. — which helps us develop new features and improve Ello. That said, we only need general data to do this (no data about any individual users), so all of this data is immediately anonymised when you visit Ello so that it cannot easily be traced back to you by us or anyone else.

Furthermore, if you don’t even want to be tracked anonymously, you may opt-out of anonymous Google Analytics and Segment on your Ello settings page. Ello also respects do-not-track browser code and plugins.

Ello allows people to post third-party media, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, and other streaming services, that may include embedded advertising. Ello doesn’t make money from ads shown in embedded media and offers you the option to hide this media when using Ello if you don’t want to see it. Power to the people, right on.

We’re always working on improving Ello, and will continue to enhance our privacy tools as Ello develops over time.

There is a better way.