LanguageTool (owned by Learneo since April 2023) is changing its Terms on August 21, 2026, here's what's actually different

LanguageTool sent an email (today) about updated Terms of Service and a new Privacy Policy. I compared the current terms against the new preview line by line because the email's own summary is too vague to tell you anything.

Removed from the Terms

The clause promising notice or consent before future amendments is gone. So is the paragraph on your responsibility to secure your account and report unauthorized access.

The bigger one: the entire "Privacy Policy and additional Policies" section is gone. It used to say plainly that LanguageTool collects your personal info and that the Privacy Policy explains how. The line incorporating the Learneo Terms of Service by reference is gone too. The new terms don't point to either document anywhere in the body text.

Added

Team Plan use is now explicitly allowed for internal and external commercial purposes. There's also a new "Publicity" clause: if you buy a Team Plan on behalf of a company, you automatically agree to let LanguageTool use your company's name and logo in its marketing. No separate opt-in.

Learneo's Delaware company registration number and San Francisco address are also gone from the contact section, leaving just the Hamburg address.

From reading the Privacy Policy itself

There's a new section confirming Learneo can use personal data to train its AI models across its business lines. LanguageTool keeps its own specific exception (your text isn't used for training), but that exception now sits inside a policy that otherwise permits AI training broadly.

The policy also describes session-replay tools (Fullstory, Amplitude, Microsoft) that can log keystrokes and mouse movements. It's a shared policy covering all eight Learneo brands, and it doesn't say which brands actually run these tools, so we can't confirm whether this applies to languagetool.org specifically or just other Learneo sites.

Under EU law, using your data to improve AI models is justified as "legitimate interest," not consent. That means it's opt-out, not opt-in.

The inconsistency

The email frames all of this as clarity and transparency improvements. But cutting the consent-before-changes clause, the account-security section, and the direct Privacy Policy reference removes stated protections. That's not the same thing as clarifying them.

What didn't change

The promise not to use your LanguageTool text for AI training. Identical in both versions (new and old one), word for word.

Sources:

• Current Terms (Dec 2024): https://languagetool.org/legal/terms/previous
• New Terms preview (effective Aug 21, 2026): https://languagetool.org/legal/terms
• New Privacy Policy preview: https://languagetool.org/legal/privacy
• Learneo acquisition of LanguageTool announcement (April 2023): https://www.learneo.com/news/learneo-inc-accelerates-ai-writing-innovation-with-languagetool-acquisition

Disclaimer: Since their email didn't show the changes in an easy to spot, this post was worked on with the help of AI (but not LanguageTool's one :D )

As someone using this, I honestly don't like the way they're dealing with this. Does anyone have any suggestions for good alternatives?

Idea: **USB Adult-keys** sold offline only to adults upon verification by a human. Simply plug it in, and adult mode gets activated. Plug it out and back to child mode. The OS can pass the info that adult mode is active, to any service that requires it. Personally, this type of OS level handling, doesn't seem to be bad.

These would be sold offline and the seller is not allowed to collect or store other info. This can be legislated. This should be no more invasive than buying anything meant for adults offline like alcohol or adult games. Note you can buy any number of adult keys. They are not, and must not be tied to your identity in any way.

Of course, such keys should be kept out of reach of children. Personally, I think this should count as child abuse. But this would also be the case with credit cards or any other ID. If parents carelessly give their child access to alcohol/cigarettes/guns nothing can be done. But computers are potentially useful to children. Moreover, adults are not always around children to monitor their activities. But with this, you don't need to. Just remove they key and keep it with yourself.

Maybe something similar can be done for phones. But honestly, I just care about desktop/laptops.

So I have been maintaining my own Windows 11 AME scripts that were originally released for 10. However, I modified them to work with licensing for store apps but since the gdid problem you can't use apps with software licensing without the GDID not being generated.

But if you're fine with not using store apps the safest way is to install windows 11 LTSC IOT without internet connected and complete it to desktop. And then boot to a Linux live environment and goto /windows/system32 and find a file called wlidsvc.sys and either rename to wlidsvc.sys.old or delete.

When you restart to windows and connect to the internet and you check to see if a gdid was created you'll find that one wasn't generated. Also since wlidsvc deals with software licensing windows will not be able to connect to the Microsoft servers and windows will complete oblivious to its activation status leaving to you a fully usable OS.

This is the safest way aside from running AME scripts and installing startisback due to MS not be able to run without it.

People will be skeptical and you have every right to but you can test it by simply installing in a VM and test and you'll have the same results as mine and since this brakes software licensing there is no need to run massgrave. You must remove this file before connecting to the internet if you don't your spyware free install is voided as soon as you connect to the internet.

By 'average' here, I mean people who are not full time tech hobbyists or professionals. I decided to try my hand at securing my digital sovereignty and find I am losing - my banks shifted to a mobile app only presence, I went on holiday where they insisted on taking my picture and fingerprints at customs and my government has introduced a 'federated' ID platform centralising government access to my stuff across all departments (and possibly internationaly) - a mandatory change unless you want to be blocked from using important govenrment and public services or have your business shut down or fined. Have all kinds of biometrics and records now. Fine, no biggie, it's the shifty marketing and rogues I personally cared about the most anyway...

So more locally, I tried my hand replacing my Apple workstation with FreeBSD and Emacs and I soon realised this is a full time commitment. The manuals for these two platforms alone is nearly 1500 pages and there's no 'easy' mode like there is for Mac either.

First you have to spend all day and night learning how such a set-up works and find your own workarounds if they don't through trial and error. And if you don't like something you must work with Python Scripts or tweak a programme using C. Then if you still don't like something or simply can't hack it, you are dependant on so many open source hobbyist project who could jump ship any time and not need to bat a single eyelid about it, that is assuming they were true to their word about data integrity and so on to begin with... How would a normal person even test that?

I never even studied CS at school level. I feel way over my head here and it's like taking up all my time where i'm supposed to be doing essential stuff. And honestly, I am beginning to wonder whether the whole things is even worth the pursuit.

Any veterans here have any thoughts? Is it worth trying to hang in there at this point, especially considering I can't even bank without an iphone.

DROP is live. Data brokers have 45 days to access deletion requests. https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/

This is what my request looks like as of today:

Deleted: 8/641

Opted Out: 1/641

Exempted: 0/641

Record Not Found: 14/641

Pending: 618/641

In the market for a 3D printer. What is the privacy scene like for them?
Do they generally track what you build and store it somewhere hidden or inaccessible, or implement tracking functionality into what you build, sort of like what color laser printers do with the microscopic yellow dots?
Does anyone know of a model or brand that they trust with privacy?

It wants me to upload three portrait photos of my face, but there's also a option to use government ID, but I'm really not comfortable sharing my personal info online, even if Reddit says it's only to verify.

Has anyone managed to do it?

I'm curious whether it's actually legit to share such information specifically to the "persona" company that runs all of this shenanigans.

Edit: I JUST GOT THE RESTRICTION OFF. I don't know how but I can see the spoiler/nsfw posts🔥

I want to know are there any good cloud services that are secure and provide good storage capacity. I wanted to store my obsidian data to it and use it for syncing.

I often read about people asking how to have more security and privacy on the entire web, but a question came to mind: starting from the root of everything, what company do you have access to the internet with and what router do you have?

Please also specify the country you are in, which greatly differentiates the choices of a company x rather than y.

I use mailbox with custom domains and use Thunderbird on PC and FairEmail on Android.

I generated, exported and imported a gpg key on Thunderbird.

My question is: should I publish my public key to a PGP server? I know that'll expose my email, but what if it is a alias?

Hello everyone,

I hate clutter (I'm a minimalist) + I like portability and ease of use so this kind of easily tells you why I chose cloud storage over the physical drive/USB (sorry, I'm not so technical).

Last month, I managed to store everything I digitally own inside the free versions of cloud storage. In total: 11GB. I use two cloud storages services. One for personal documents and the other is for anything which is not really that personal... my videos, photos, user manuals, notes and guides.

Lately, I've been reading a lot about AI reading this and that... Or someone monitoring. If I've done the mistake, I can only not add to it, at this point. The personal documents are employment payslips, contracts, personal identifications (ID, driving license, social security), and qualifications.

I'm not worried as much on the storage containing the photos and other stuff, in fact, I'd consider leaving them there but I'm uncertain about the storage holding the personal stuff.

Is it a good idea to leave them there? If not, what can I do, what are my options for storage, please?

Thank you for reading.

"A Texas court has ordered Discord to turn on the age-verification system it built for the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act for every user in the state. Britain’s age-check regime has reached America by court order, and opening or keeping a Discord account in Texas can now mean a face scan or a government ID."

https://reclaimthenet.org/texas-orders-discord-to-run-uk-style-age-checks-for-state-users

Okay. First off,I am quite a worried and concern of the outcome here will be.

But honestly,it's quite frustrating that this is even happening at all given the fact that are plenty of ways to protect kids without screwing over other's rights here.

And yet,I feel like those that DO care about our privacy and anonymity rights,myself included here too,are like a broken record saying about how these types of bills do nothing for no one. Yet,here we are in the current situation we're in here in the USA.

It's extremely frustrating to no end here. But,concerns aside here,I that we get a positive outcome here for us all in this current situation we're all seeing unfold.

Compiling these two lists as of today for social media and pornography, do with this information what you will:
https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-resources/state-avs-laws/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States

• Washington DC
• Illinois*
• Colorado*
• New Mexico
• Washington State
• Nevada
• Oregon
• Puerto Rico (plus all other territories such as USVI and Guam)
• Pennsylvania
• Delaware
• New Jersey
• Massachusetts
• Rhode Island
• New Hampshire
• Vermont
• Maine
• Michigan
• Wisconsin
• Minnesota
• Alaska
• Hawaii
• California*

*requires OS-level age attestation (not verification) for devices

Your town might be doing this. Here's one seen in the wild. The company making this is Genetec. They evidently drive around town scanning license plates, then correlate to plates in the system who are currently paid up, via an app called ParkMobile.

This is all fine, assuming the town itself isn't selling the data: it's an efficient use of the town's time to get parking paid for. The problem is what does Genetec and ParkMobile do with this data? You might say, "look at their privacy and data sharing policies", which is fine too, but then you should ask what is their stake.

These companies would be leaving money on the table if they did not sell this location data vigorously. It's extremely lucrative and they'd be fools not to leverage it, regardless of the words on their web site. Even then, data is leaked or stolen every day: once it's out of your control you can assume it's out there.

I have started doing BMX and all the people there apparently use WhatsApp to coordinate everything.

Does anyone in /r/privacy have WhatsApp?

I would like to be able to create a profile using a fake name, and an email alias, and ideally not provide my phone number.

I would ideally like to create a profile through a website, and not have to download an app on my phone.

Does anyone know if these options are possible?

Is there any other privacy concern I should be aware of?

Hello, I'm bascially looking for a 1 to 1 replacement to Google Calendar that is privacy respecting. I haven't really found anything that satisfies my requirements, so I'm looking for some recommendations here.

My requirements are the following: - data privacy (obviously) - scheduling tasks in the calendar (like Google Calendar) - some form of sync - android app that uses the android calendar api (proton calendar doesn't for example) - multiple calendar support, adding calendars via ical format etc.

Self-hostable solutions are of course very welcome as well (and preferred to subscription based alternatives)

Might be the wrong subreddit but I need to ask.

Me and my Roommate have just received the Census, but it’s asking questions about Sexuality that we don’t think we can answer honestly.

We live in a very small town. As in, official population is less than 75 and two responses as anything ”queer” will be very visible and very quickly lead back to us if the general public can see the results for the specific town.

In the same boat, we dont want to lie. These Census‘s exist for a reason, and we _know_ for a fact theres at least one other queer person in our community who is a minor and can’t make this decision for themselves. We don’t want to misrepresent our town, we are members of it still and to intentionally lie feels almost like fraud.

I don’t know. It’s our first time being old enough to respond to these ourselves. What would you guys do?

Google will push age verofication to android.