Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 28, 2026

Ethos National ("Ethos," "we," "us," or "our") operates the Ethos mobile application and the Ethos web application (together, the "App"). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your information when you use the App. By creating an account or using the App, you consent to the practices described in this policy.

Information You Provide

When you create an account and use Ethos, we may collect the following information that you provide directly:

• Account information: Email address, mobile phone number, first name, last name, username, and date of birth (used to confirm that you are at least 18 years of age).
• Community information: The community type through which you join (University, Parish, or Independent) and, for Parish accounts, the parish code you enter at signup.
• Profile information: Whether you are an undergraduate or graduate student and your expected graduation year (University accounts), your living community or location (where applicable), and how you heard about Ethos.
• Community affiliation: For University accounts, your university, vetted by the domain of your school email address (for example, an @nd.edu domain matches Notre Dame). For Parish accounts, your parish or ministry community, identified by your parish code.
• App activity: Reading progress, group meeting attendance, accountability call logs, captain applications, schedule preferences, feedback submissions, semester survey responses (including program-impact questions and any written testimony you choose to provide), referral activity, and any concern or safety reports you submit.
• Sensitive behavioral data: The approximate number of times per month you viewed pornography before joining (a required signup question), and, if you track habits, your habits, streaks and setback events, including the part of the day, the tags and any note you add to a setback. This data is described further below.
• Content protection: If you turn on content protection, whether it is on and the reasons you write for its block screen, as described in the “Content Protection” section.

Phone Number and SMS Verification

We collect and verify your mobile phone number as the primary method of confirming account ownership. When you sign up or sign in, we send a one-time verification code to your phone via SMS through our messaging provider, Twilio, Inc. (described below). By providing your phone number and tapping "Send code," you consent to receive a single verification SMS for that request.

• Verification codes are 6 digits, expire after 10 minutes, and are not used for marketing.
• If you begin creating an account but do not complete signup, we may send a small number of reminder emails to finish setting up your account. These are account-related, never marketing.
• Standard message and data rates from your mobile carrier may apply.
• We retain your phone number on your account for as long as your account is active. You may update it from the App's Settings screen at any time.
• Your phone number is visible to the program administrators for your community (for University accounts, your campus's student board members; for Parish and Independent accounts, the Ethos National operations team) and to the other members of your small group, as described in the "Data Sharing" section. It is shared externally only with Twilio (to deliver the verification SMS). It is not shared or used for marketing or advertising.
• You may reply STOP to any verification message to opt out, although doing so will prevent you from receiving the codes needed to sign in.

Information Collected Automatically

When you use the App, we may automatically collect certain information, including:

• Device information: Device identifiers and push notification tokens necessary to deliver notifications to your device.
• Usage data: Aggregated performance metrics such as effort scores and content completion, computed from your activity within the App.
• Crash and error diagnostics: If the App or our servers crash or encounter an error, technical diagnostic data (such as the error message, stack trace, device model, and operating-system version) is sent to our error-monitoring provider, Sentry, so we can find and fix the problem. We configure this reporting to exclude your personal profile data.

Information We Do Not Collect

• We do not collect precise location or GPS data.
• We do not access your contacts, camera, or microphone.
• We do not track you across other apps or websites.
• We do not collect your browsing history or a record of the apps you use. Content protection's checks run on your phone and are not sent to us, as described in the “Content Protection” section.
• We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Create and manage your account, and confirm that you meet our age and eligibility requirements.
• Verify account ownership and authenticate sign-ins via one-time SMS codes sent to your mobile phone.
• Place you into an accountability group with other members of your community (your university, your parish or ministry community, or your independent group).
• Match you with an accountability partner based on your profile information, such as graduation year, student status, and living location, where applicable.
• Provide reading content and track your progress.
• Send push notifications and account-related emails (group updates, reminders, and other operational messages).
• Block the apps and websites you choose, and alert your partner when your protection is turned off or you remove a blocked app or website, if you turn on content protection.
• Enable program administrators to manage groups and captain applications, as described in the "Data Sharing" section.
• Display your effort score, daily call and reading streaks, and weekly meeting attendance to other members of your small group so the group can track its own progress. These per-user metrics are visible inside your assigned group and to the program administrators described in the "Data Sharing" section.
• Generate anonymized, community-level aggregate reports for program administrators and partner institutions (such as universities and parishes). No individual user is identifiable in any such report.
• Perform automated processing such as group assignments, effort score calculations, scheduled notifications, and automatic account deletion as described in the "Data Retention and Deletion" section.

Sensitive Behavioral Data

The App collects sensitive self-reported behavioral data. During signup, you are required to report the approximate number of times per month you viewed pornography before joining Ethos; answering this question is a condition of creating an account. You can also choose to track habits in the App, such as No Porn and No Masturbation, with their streaks and setback events. Habit tracking is always optional. All of this data is handled with the highest level of care:

• All behavioral data is stored securely and encrypted in transit.
• Your habit details (streaks, goals, setbacks and the tags and notes you add to them, your monthly reports, and the setback frequency you reported at signup) are private by default. They are not visible to your group members, your group captain, your community's program administrators, or anyone outside our small operations team, except as described in the next three points. This data is not shared with universities, parishes, administrators, advertisers, or any third party.
• Habits you share. You can share habits with your accountability partner and with friends you invite in the App. Nothing is shared until you agree to it. A friend you invite sees nothing until he accepts; he then sees the habits you choose for him, or every habit you track if you turn on the switch in Settings → Share Habits. When you are paired with an accountability partner, the App asks you once whether to share all your habits with him or choose which ones. For each habit you share, that person sees its streaks, its goal and its day-by-day progress this week, how many setbacks you have logged, and when your most recent setback happened, with the tags and note you added to it. The people you share a habit with are also notified, without the habit being named, when you log a setback or meet a goal on it. Nobody you share with sees the personal reasons you wrote for a habit or the setback frequency you reported at signup. You can stop sharing any habit with any person at any time.
• Progress shield. If you track the No Porn or No Masturbation habit, the members of your small group and your accountability partner see a shield beside your name once your current run reaches 30, 100 or 365 days (bronze, silver or gold). If you track both habits, both runs must reach the mark. They see the shield's tier, not your number of days, and a member without a shield looks the same to the group whether or not he tracks these habits.
• Shared monthly reports. Your monthly habit report is shown only to you. If you send one with Share via text, the link opens that report once, within seven days, for whoever opens it, and the link's preview shows your first name and the month.
• The three Ethos commitments — daily call with your partner, daily content reading, and weekly meeting attendance — along with your effort score are visible to other members of your assigned small group inside the App so the group can track its own progress. These metrics are not part of habit tracking and are not the sensitive behavioral data described above.
• Behavioral data may be used in anonymized, community-level aggregate form for program reports. No individual user is identifiable in any such report.
• If you delete your account, all individual behavioral data — including streak lengths, reset history, setback events, monthly reports, and questionnaire responses — is permanently removed from our systems as described in the “Data Retention and Deletion” section below. No behavioral data is retained in the alumni record. We do retain anonymized, community-level and program-wide aggregate statistics (such as average setback frequency across a campus or the program). These aggregates persist after account deletion and do not identify any individual.

Content Protection

Content protection is optional. When you turn it on, the App blocks the apps and websites you choose on your phone.

• On iPhone, content protection uses Apple's Screen Time framework (Family Controls). iOS gives Ethos the apps you choose in a form that does not tell us which apps they are, and your list of blocked websites stays on your phone. Ethos does not read your Screen Time usage, which apps you open, or which websites you visit.
• On Android, content protection uses Android's Accessibility Service and Usage Access to see which app is open, and reads the address bar of supported browsers, so it can show the block screen when you open a blocked app or website. These checks run on your phone: the app or web address is compared with your block list and then discarded, and it is never stored, logged or sent to us. The App reads the list of apps on your phone so you can choose which ones to block, and your choices stay on your phone.
• What we store: whether protection is on, whether your phone is an iPhone or an Android phone, the last time your phone confirmed protection was on, and a dated record of each change (turned on, turned off in the App, found off outside the App, a blocked website removed, a blocked app removed). The record never names an app or website. If you write reasons for the block screen, we store them encrypted and show them only to you.
• Your partner: Alerts go to the partner you invite for content protection or, if you have not invited anyone, to your accountability partner. Your partner is notified when your protection is turned off in the App, when it is found off outside the App, and when you remove a blocked website or app. These notifications name you but never the app or website. Your partner can also see whether your protection is on and when your phone last confirmed it.
• No Ethos screen shows one person's content protection status to our staff or to your community's program administrators. Our staff dashboards show only counts for each campus.
• Your content protection records are deleted with your account.

Data Sharing

Your name, phone number, group membership, accountability partner information, and certain activity metrics (such as effort scores and daily call completion) are shared with the other members of your small group and your accountability partner within the App. The Group tab gives each member the others' phone numbers so the group can start a group text. Habit data is shared only as described in the “Sensitive Behavioral Data” section, and content protection alerts only as described in the “Content Protection” section.

If you refer men to Ethos, your name, your campus and your number of referrals can appear on the App's referral leaderboards, which other members can see.

Program administration depends on your community type:

• University: Student board members at your university can view member signup and contact information (including name, email address, and phone number), group rosters and assignments, and individual engagement metrics such as effort scores, for their campus.
• Parish and Independent: Groups are administered by the Ethos National operations team through our administrative tools. Parish and Independent communities do not have student boards or community-level administrators.

Program administrators are permitted to access member information only to administer the program and are required to handle it appropriately.

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate the App:

• Twilio: For delivering one-time SMS verification codes to your mobile phone during signup and sign-in. Twilio receives your phone number and the verification code; it does not receive any other profile data. Subject to Twilio's Privacy Notice.
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service: For delivering push notifications to your device. Subject to Google's Privacy Policy and Apple's Privacy Policy.
• Mailchimp Transactional (Intuit Mailchimp): For sending operational emails (sign-in codes, group updates, reminders, application decisions, and donation receipts). Mailchimp receives your email address, name, and the content of the email. Subject to Intuit's Global Privacy Statement.
• Mailgun: Backup provider for the same operational emails, used only when Mailchimp cannot accept a message. Subject to Mailgun's Privacy Policy.
• Amazon S3 / Tigris: For storing the Ethos reading curriculum (images and audio files we author). No user-uploaded data is stored on S3 or Tigris. Encrypted nightly backups of our database are stored in a separate, access-restricted bucket on the same service and are automatically deleted after 30 days.
• Fly.io: For hosting our backend servers and database in the United States.
• Vercel: For hosting the Ethos web app.
• Expo: For delivering over-the-air JavaScript updates to the mobile app. Expo receives only your device platform, app version, and update channel, not your account data.
• Sentry: For crash and error monitoring in the App and on our servers. Sentry receives technical diagnostic data (error details, stack traces, and device/runtime context) when something breaks. We configure Sentry not to receive your personal profile data. Subject to Sentry's Privacy Policy.
• Better Stack: For keeping our server logs for a limited time so we can find and fix problems. We remove email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses from the logs before they are sent. Subject to Better Stack's Privacy Policy.
• HubSpot and Mailchimp: We may use HubSpot (contact management) and Mailchimp (email delivery) to manage contact records and send communications to members and alumni. These providers receive contact and membership information only — never behavioral data.

These service providers may process your data on our behalf and are contractually obligated to protect your information. We do not authorize them to use your data for their own purposes.

Data Retention and Deletion

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. You may delete your account at any time from the Ethos mobile app (Settings → Delete Account), from the Ethos web app (Profile → Delete Account), or by emailing support@ethosnational.org from the email address on your Ethos account. You may also request deletion of specific pieces of personal data without deleting your entire account by emailing the same address with the subject line Partial Data Deletion Request. We will verify any request and complete it within 30 days. Deleted data is also purged from our encrypted backups within 30 days.

When you delete your account we permanently remove your activity history, behavioral data (including all streak details, setback events, monthly reports, and questionnaire responses), content protection records, push notification tokens, group and partnership records, notification history, and active sessions. We retain an alumni record containing only: your name, email address(es), phone number (if provided), your university, parish, or community and community type, the periods in which you participated, whether you served as a captain or board member, and your final and average effort scores. We retain the alumni record indefinitely to support alumni outreach and historical reporting; historical reporting otherwise uses anonymized, aggregate statistics that do not identify any individual. To request deletion of your alumni record, email support@ethosnational.org and we will remove it within 30 days. We also retain records of your legal acceptances (which document and version you accepted, and when) after account deletion, as proof of consent. For details, see our account deletion page.

Automatic deletion. Your account is automatically deleted, using the same process described above, when:

• University accounts: you remain in Ethos through your graduation year, in which case your account is deleted on June 30 of that year; or
• Parish and Independent accounts: your account has been inactive for eighteen (18) consecutive months.

The alumni record is kept unless you also request its deletion. You will not receive a separate notice before automatic deletion occurs.

Data Security

We use industry-standard security measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), secure password storage, and access controls on our servers. However, no method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Children's Privacy

Ethos is intended for men aged 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of 18, and we collect your date of birth at signup to confirm your age. If you believe that someone under 18 has provided us with personal information, please contact us so we can remove it.

Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, including the right to:

• Access and review the personal information we hold about you.
• Update or correct your personal information through the Profile page in the App.
• Delete your account and associated data through the Settings screen.
• Request a copy of your personal data in a portable format.
• Opt out of certain data processing activities.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the information below. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable law.

California Residents

If you are a California resident, you may have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the right to know what personal information we collect, the right to request deletion of your personal information, and the right to opt out of the sale of your personal information. We do not sell personal information. Residents of other states with comprehensive privacy laws may have similar rights and may exercise them using the contact information below.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by updating the "Last updated" date above and, where appropriate, through in-app or email notification. Your continued use of the App after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your privacy rights, contact us at: