THE GOLD STANDARD
What good terms
look like.
We rate every clause 1 to 10. These are the ones that score highest, and the products built so the question never comes up.
Clauses that respect you
Real quotes, Rights Score 7 or higher. Credit where it's due, even when the rest of the document isn't great.
“Notwithstanding the breadth of the license granted above, Fireflies: (i) will exercise its rights solely in connection with providing the Services to you and authorized users in your user group; and (ii) will not use your User Content to…”
They actually promise not to use your content to train AI models - rare these days.
“Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like Customer Content (such as poll results, whiteboard and reactions) to train Zoom or third-party artificial intelligence models.”
They actually promise not to use your meetings and conversations to train AI systems.
“Signal does not sell, rent or monetize your personal data or content in any way – ever.”
They promise never to make money from your personal data - a rare explicit commitment.
“Supabase will not use, nor allow any third-party to use, Customer Data, Customer's AI Input, or any AI Output to train, fine-tune, or otherwise improve any artificial intelligence or machine learning model, without Customer's prior written…”
Supabase promises they won't use your data to train AI models unless you explicitly say it's okay.
“Mintlify will not use Customer Data to train, fine-tune, improve, or develop any large language models (LLMs), generative AI models, machine learning models, or other artificial intelligence systems, whether proprietary to Mintlify or…”
They explicitly promise not to use your content to train AI models, which is better than most companies.
“Subject to your compliance with our Terms, we assign to you all of our right, title, and interest—if any—in Outputs.”
You actually own the responses Claude generates for you - not everyone does this.
Services and protocols doing it well
Built so the good terms are hard to walk back.
Signal
Private messaging
Encrypted by default. Non-profit. Can't read your messages.
Feb 2026
Proton
Email, VPN, and cloud storage
Zero-access encryption. Swiss law. Can't read your mail.
Feb 2026
Arweave
Permanent data storage protocol
No accounts. Data outlives any company.
Feb 2026
DuckDuckGo
Search engine
No history, no profiles, no tracking.
Feb 2026
Firefox
Web browser
Non-profit. Open source. Blocks trackers.
Feb 2026
Mastodon
Social networking
No owner. Take your account anywhere.
Feb 2026
The checklist
- 1.
You can leave. Export your data and delete your account. No tricks.
- 2.
You keep your content. A license to show it, not to own it or train on it.
- 3.
You can sue. No forced arbitration. No class action waiver.
- 4.
You get notice. Changes announced ahead of time, with a way to decline.
- 5.
They can't read it. End-to-end encryption, or a promise not to look.
Now check the apps you actually use.
Disclosure: We're independent, but not neutral about Arweave. We build on it, advocate for it, and hold AR tokens. Nothing here is investment advice. Nobody listed above pays or endorses us. Terms change; verify them.