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).

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.

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.
• 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.

Treehouse does not read your messages. Nobody at RunCodesRun browses them. Today only posts can be reported, not messages. If reporting a message is added, a reported message will be looked at only to decide that report.

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.
• 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.
• Content removed for child safety is preserved where the law requires it, regardless of anything else in this section.

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.

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, and the app cannot yet confirm it is you another way. Until it can, write to support@thetreehouse.me from the address your account uses and we will delete it.

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 companies listed above, which may be 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.

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.