TideMail privacy policy
What TideMail is
TideMail is an email client that runs on your computer. It connects straight from your computer to the mail accounts you add, such as Gmail, Outlook, or your own mail server. There is no TideMail server in the middle. We do not receive, store, or copy your mail, your passwords, or your sign-in tokens.
What TideMail accesses
When you add an account, TideMail reads your messages, folders and attachments, and sends, moves, flags and deletes messages, only to do what you ask in the app: show your mail, let you write and send it, and organize it. If you choose "Sign in with Google", TideMail asks Google for permission to read, send, organize and delete your Gmail messages (https://mail.google.com/), which is the access Gmail requires for IMAP and SMTP.
Where your data is
- Your mail, settings and a cache of the messages you have synced stay in TideMail's folders on your computer.
- Passwords, AI keys and sign-in tokens are kept in your system keychain (libsecret on Linux, Keychain on macOS). If no keychain is available, TideMail falls back to its configuration file, which only your user account can read.
- Text you are still writing is saved as a local draft and is deleted once the message is sent.
Network requests TideMail makes
- Your mail providers, to read and send your mail.
- Google or Microsoft, only if you use their sign-in, to obtain and refresh access.
- Setup lookup. When you add an account, TideMail can ask your email domain for its published mail server settings over HTTPS. That request can include the address you typed.
- GitHub, to check for a newer TideMail release and, if you use the plugin installer, to fetch the plugin catalog. These requests contain no mail data.
- An AI provider you choose, only if you turn on the optional AI features (off by default) and add your own key. The text you ask it to work on is sent to that provider under its terms.
- Plugins you install. A plugin runs on your computer with only the permissions you grant it, and TideMail shows those permissions before you enable it.
TideMail blocks remote images in messages. If you choose to load them for a message, your computer fetches them from the sender's servers, which can tell the sender that the message was opened.
What TideMail shares
TideMail does not sell your data, does not use it for advertising, and does not share it with anyone. It does not use your Google data, or any other mail content, to develop, improve or train artificial intelligence or machine-learning models, and nobody at TideMail can read your mail. TideMail's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Your choices and deleting your data
In TideMail, open accounts (M), choose an account and delete it. That removes the account's saved sign-in and its local mail copy from your computer. Your messages stay on your mail provider's servers, which TideMail does not control. To end Google access, remove TideMail at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Uninstalling TideMail and deleting its configuration and data folders removes everything it stored.
Changes and contact
If this policy changes, the new version is posted here with a new effective date. Questions: open an issue at github.com/allisonhere/tidemail/issues or write to support@mylivelab.com.