Privacy Policy

Current published version: 2026-08-30.

The Fold Network

This policy applies to thefold.ai and every community website, app, and service operated by The Fold, Corp. (together, the Fold Network). One account and one policy acceptance cover the entire Fold Network, including communities a member joins later. Accepting the policy does not by itself join you to every community.

The Fold, Corp. is responsible for the information described in this policy.

Information we collect

Information you provide. This includes your real name, email address, password, profile details and avatar, group memberships, preferences, submissions, comments, reactions, reports, messages, event responses, and email choices. Passwords are stored as secure hashes, not in plain text. If we offer paid features, we and our payment provider may collect transaction and billing information.

Technical and usage information. We collect information about visits and use of the Fold Network, including IP address, browser and device information, pages viewed, referring pages, clicks, interactions, and cookies or similar identifiers. When you sign in, we also record the approximate location, network provider, and datacenter or VPN indicators derived from your IP address. Creating an account does not create that sign-in record.

Information from public sources. We collect and combine information about content, people, organizations, events, jobs, and publications from public websites, social networks, feeds, and data providers. A person profile may include names, images, biographies, locations, affiliations, professional history, social links, contact details, and gender information when those details appear in public sources. We may derive summaries and relationships from those sources.

How we use information

We use information to:

• operate and secure the Fold Network and provide one account across communities;
• display and attribute public activity;
• personalize feeds, recommendations, search, alerts, and digests;
• communicate with you and manage email choices;
• process transactions when paid features are offered;
• analyze and improve the service and develop new features;
• moderate content, investigate abuse, enforce our terms, and comply with law; and
• organize, classify, rank, summarize, recommend, and distribute content using automated systems and artificial intelligence.

We may use content and activity to operate and improve our services and automated systems. We will not use private member content to train a third party's general-purpose AI model without clear notice and permission.

We may personalize the service using topics, memberships, and activity. We do not use that activity to infer sensitive traits such as a health condition, political belief, religion, or sexual orientation unless a feature clearly asks for the information and obtains any permission required by law.

What is public

Having an account does not by itself create a public member listing. Your real name and account connection become visible when you take an attributed public action, such as commenting, posting, reacting, appearing on a public attendee list, or claiming a profile.

When profile claiming is available, a claimed profile may show the groups you joined. Profile privacy controls will let you hide group memberships. Passive browsing, private preferences, and memberships you hide are not publicly displayed.

Profiles of people who are not members

The Fold Network organizes publicly available information about people with public personas, such as founders, investors, creators, athletes, and experts, in a way similar to a search service. A public profile may therefore exist even if the person has never created an account or visited the Fold Network.

To correct or remove a profile or its photo, email privacy@thefold.ai and identify the profile. We handle these requests manually and do not require a non-member to prove their identity before removing a public profile. A profile photo is our own copy of the picture on the person's public LinkedIn profile. We keep that copy even after the person is no longer listed in the directory; a removal request is what deletes it, and it also stops us collecting a photo for that person again. A copy already held by a browser or cache can take up to a day to expire.

Cookies and analytics

We use:

• secure session and antiforgery cookies to sign you in and protect requests;
• gf-consent to remember an analytics choice;
• gf-welcome to remember that you closed the welcome message; and
• analytics identifiers, when allowed, to recognize visits and measure product use.

Our product analytics provider is currently PostHog Cloud in the United States. Analytics may include pages and features used, referral information, interactions, device information, an account identifier after sign-in, and your IP address or other request context, for both browser-recorded and server-recorded events. We do not send PostHog your name or email as profile properties.

Visitors in the EU, EEA, United Kingdom, and Switzerland are shown a choice. Before they accept, and for as long as they reject, neither browser nor server analytics are captured. Elsewhere, analytics run without that opt-in choice. An unresolved country is treated as outside an opt-in region. Analytics consent is remembered per community domain, not across unrelated domain names.

Email

We send necessary account and service messages. Joining a group currently subscribes you to that group's member newsletters: its weekly digest and upcoming-events email. Each can be turned off at any time without leaving the group. Additional alerts, daily messages, and promotional email require a separate choice.

Our email provider is currently Postmark. It receives the recipient address, message, and delivery metadata. We ask Postmark to measure opens and clicks on our email, except account security messages: email and address confirmation, password reset, password changed, and account suspended notices.

Avatars

If you have not uploaded an avatar, our server may send Gravatar a SHA-256 hash of your lowercased email address once to look for an existing avatar. We store a successful result and serve it ourselves. Your email address is not sent in plain text, and visitors do not connect to Gravatar when viewing your avatar.

Advertising and sharing

We may show contextual promotions or sponsorships and use Fold Network activity for our own personalization and measurement. We do not currently sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Before introducing such a practice, we would update this policy and provide any notice and choice required by law.

We share information with providers that help with hosting, storage, analytics, communications, security, payments, public-data processing, and AI. We also share information when you make it public, direct us to share it, or when reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect people or the service, investigate abuse, or complete a corporate transaction. Providers may process information only for the services they perform for us, subject to their contracts and applicable law.

Retention and security

Sign-in IP, device, network, and approximate-location records are kept for 12 months. Append-only operator and security audit records, including moderation records and daily sign-in and admin audit files, are kept without a fixed expiration because they are business and security records.

Other information is kept for as long as reasonably needed to operate an account, maintain public content and source records, prevent abuse, resolve disputes, and meet legal obligations. Retention depends on the information's purpose, sensitivity, and legal requirements.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards. No storage or transmission system is completely secure.

Your choices and requests

You may update account information and email choices, withdraw analytics consent where offered, and ask to access, correct, or delete personal information. Additional rights may apply where you live.

Account deletion is currently handled manually. Email privacy@thefold.ai from the address on your account. The Fold, Corp. receives the request, confirms control of that address, completes the deletion, and records the outcome in the request's email thread.

When an account is deleted, we delete or de-identify account information unless retention is reasonably necessary for security, legal, or operational reasons. Public discussions may remain without a connection to the deleted account. A separately created public-source profile may remain unless you also ask us to remove it.

International use and children

The Fold, Corp. is based in the United States. Information is stored in the United States and may be processed in other countries where our providers operate. Where required, we rely on consent, our contract with you, legitimate interests, and legal obligations to process information.

Anyone may browse public pages, but accounts are for people age 13 or older. The Fold Network is not directed to children under 13. If we learn that an account belongs to a child under 13, we will delete it.

Changes and contact

We may update this policy as the Fold Network changes. We will update the effective date and give reasonable notice of material changes. Signed-in members may be asked to accept an updated policy once for the entire Fold Network.

Email privacy questions and requests to privacy@thefold.ai. You may also write to: