What Do I Need to Know About Privacy and Trillian?

Trillian is a standalone instant messaging service made by Cerulean Studios for both individual users and companies alike. As such, the nature of Trillian is to enable you to send and receive instant messages and files to and from your contacts. Importantly: once you send someone a message or file, you are no longer in exclusive control of it, so be careful who you choose to communicate with! It's also important to note that if you use Trillian as a chat client to connect to a third-party service like Facebook, you also need to make sure the third-party service is doing the right things with your data as well.

• We only store your data - which can include personally identifiable information - to make Trillian work, and we don't store anything otherwise. This means we can always associate stored customer data back to actual product functionality; we don't randomly gather data on our customers to show them ads!
• We've outlined the specifics of everything we might store on your behalf in our Privacy Policy, and we've outlined how we secure and protect your data in our Security Practices document. If you're interested in learning more, please read them both.
• Our own IM network is privacy-conscious and requires you to give approval to each person that adds you to their list to help prevent spam. There are exceptions to this if you run Trillian at work, where your company may decide the makeup of your contact list.
• We limit our use of web cookies (we use Google Analytics, HubSpot, and Olark, all of which require cookies) and other trackers (we use email-based trackers to know when you've read our emails) to the absolute bare minimum necessary to run the business.
• We don't run any third-party advertising in Trillian, although we occasionally advertise our own premium and business offerings. Not running third-party advertisements prevents other companies from tracking you in ways you might not consent to.
• We comply with the GDPR and have self-certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF), the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF, and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (Swiss-U.S. DPF) as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce for EU data transfers. We make no distinction between users in the EU and users anywhere else in the world, so all of our customers will benefit from any improvements we make to help us stay compliant with strict European laws and regulations.
• You own your data, not us. Our job is to keep it secure so that we can give it back to you in order to make Trillian work. We don't analyze your data or look at it for any other reason.

When I Use Trillian, Who Might See My Data?

• Your contacts. People you send messages and files to will see those messages and files, and people to whom you've given permission to add you as a contact will see your name, avatar, and status.
• Your employer. If you use Trillian at work, your company may be in control of your Trillian Account and the data you generate with it. If your Trillian username has your company's domain in it, this means you're using the business version of Trillian and your employer is responsible for your Trillian data.
• Governments. We respond to valid government-issued subpoenas, so if you were planning on running your criminal enterprise through Trillian, don't.
• Our employees, with your permission. Our employees are only allowed to interface with customer data for legitimate and documented business reasons. For example, if you ask us for help troubleshooting an issue it might mean we have to access some of your data to help you.
• Other companies, with strict limitations. We utilize other companies - subprocessors - to help us run Trillian. Subprocessors might see your name and email address without any interaction from you, but your instant messages and contacts never flow through anyone else. We require that subprocessors execute an agreement with us stating that they'll protect your data and notify us if they fail to do so so that we can tell you about it.

How Can I Delete My Trillian Account?

Deletion of Trillian Accounts is a self-serve process and can be initiated by following the instructions here. There are exceptions to this if you run Trillian at work, where your company may be in control of your account.

What Happens to My Data When I Delete My Trillian Account?

When you delete your Trillian Account, we hard delete your information in a non-recoverable way. Remnants of your activity in the form of access logs and backups may exist for an additional 90 days until purged, as we store both for 90 days to help us run the business and to ensure we can recover from a catastrophic data loss event. There are exceptions to this if you run Trillian at work, where your company decides how long to hold on to information associated with your Trillian Account.

How Can I Contact You With Questions?

We welcome any questions you might have about our privacy practices and are always available via email. You can reach us at privacy-feedback@ceruleanstudios.com.