Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how the Loam authors ("we", "us", "our") handle personal information when you visit the Loam website at loam.md (the "Website").

Loam is a free, open-source, local-first Markdown notes app for macOS. The project is developed on GitHub at github.com/Azilone/loam. Notes you write in Loam are plain Markdown files stored on your own disk.

Loam does not send us any data, and it has no analytics or telemetry. The app does contact other services. It checks GitHub for new versions of Loam and of your plugins. Some features contact the service they use when you use them: GitHub for sync, OpenRouter or Anthropic for the meeting recorder, which sends your meeting audio and transcripts using keys you provide, and YouTube or X for link previews on a canvas.

We collect only the information described below.

Information you give us

• The content of any issue or security report you send us on GitHub, including any contact details you include in it.

Information collected automatically

When you visit the Website, the company that hosts it receives standard technical information for each request, such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested. It uses this information to deliver and secure the Website.

Information stored in your browser

The Website stores two small entries in your browser's local storage: your cookie choice and whether you closed the announcement banner. See our Cookie Policy.

We do not ask you to create an account, and the Website does not take payments.

We use personal information to:

• reply to messages you send us;
• operate, secure and troubleshoot the Website;
• comply with legal obligations and protect our rights.

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not build profiles of visitors.

We do not sell personal information. We share it only with the service providers that help us run the Website and the project, and only as far as they need it to do that work:

• the company that hosts the Website, which serves it;
• GitHub, which hosts the project's source code and issues, if you contact us there.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, or to protect the rights, safety or property of Loam, its users or others.

• Hosting logs: kept by the company that hosts the Website, under its own retention policy.
• Messages you send us on GitHub: they stay there under GitHub's terms. Issues stay public until they are deleted.

We use cookies and browser storage only as described in our Cookie Policy. The Website does not use analytics, advertising or social media tracking.

The Website links to third-party sites, such as GitHub. Loam plugins are built by independent developers and are not operated by us. Their privacy practices are governed by their own policies, which we encourage you to read.

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal information. No method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• correct inaccurate information;
• delete your information;
• object to or restrict certain processing.

To exercise these rights, contact us as described in the Contact us section. Please do not post sensitive personal details in a public GitHub issue. We may ask you to confirm your identity before we act on a request.

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act) gives you the right to know what personal information we collect, to request its deletion or correction, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. To exercise your rights, use the contact details in the Contact us section. We will not discriminate against you for exercising them.

This section applies to people in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom.

Controller. The Loam authors are the controller of the personal information collected through the Website. Contact details are in the Contact us section.

Legal bases. We process hosting logs and security data on the basis of our legitimate interest in operating and protecting the Website. We process messages you send us on the basis of our legitimate interest in answering you, or where needed to take steps at your request.

International transfers. The company that hosts the Website, and GitHub, may process data outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. Where this happens, they rely on the transfer safeguards described in their own privacy policies.

Representative. We have no EU or UK representative.

Complaints. You have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection authority in your country of residence. In the United Kingdom, this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

The Website is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the effective date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will also post a prominent notice on the Website.

Questions about this policy or your personal information: open an issue at github.com/Azilone/loam/issues. Security problems: use GitHub's private "Report a vulnerability" form in the Security tab of the repository.