About Us

“Terms of Service; Didn't Read” (short: ToS;DR) is a young project started in June 2012 to help fix the “biggest lie on the web”: almost no one really reads the terms of service we agree to all the time.

Background. The rough idea behind ToS;DR emerged during the 2011 Chaos Communication Camp near Berlin, with people from Unhosted a movement to create web apps that give users control over their valuable user data and privacy. In the summer of 2012, Hugo Roy (@hugoroyd) started the legal analysis and brought the project to life. Since then, more people have joined the team and have contributed through the reviewer community. Ultimately, all the work is transparent and the discussions happen in public. Our work is funded by non-profits organisations and individual donations and gets released as free software and open data.

Please bear in mind that the project is still in the early phase and that most data is subject to important changes. More information about our classification.

What does “ToS;DR” mean? the name is inspired by internet acronym TL;DR which stands for "Too Long; Didn't Read" and is often used on blogs and emails when a block of text is just really long and that people are too lazy to read the whole stuff. It was intended more as a code name than as a real name. But it seems that people like it (do you?)

image

Michiel de Jong

Code Communist

Michiel de Jong is an independent freedom hacker, travelling the world while programming for the revolution from his laptop. Apart from ToS;DR he is also involved in The Unhosted Unconference and he is a co-author of the remoteStorage protocol.

image

Jan-Christoph Borchardt

Design Dictator

Jan-Christoph Borchardt is a free culture interaction designer, advisor & educator. He curates open source web projects, designs unhosted web apps & ownCloud and teaches better usability.

image

Hugo Roy

Legal Liberator

Hugo is an attorney at the Paris bar, and a volunteer at the Free Software Foundation Europe. He currently lives in Paris, where he is often referred to as a Zappa Freak.

image

Ian McGowan

Ian received his MA in Forensic Linguistics, the study of language within a legal context, from Cardiff University, investigating consumer motivation behind reading, or not reading, online Terms & Conditions. He is currently living and teaching English in Seville, Spain in addition to contributing to ToS;DR.

image

Jimm Stout

Jimm is traveling and working from "offices" around the world. Most of his time is going to developing a new version of ToSBack, but he also likes to act like a photographer

image

Suzanne Azmayesh

Analysis Anarchist

Suzanne does not know what she wants to do with her life, so until then she reads terms of service. (Oh, and she has a law degree.)

image

Madeline O'Leary

Developer

When not developing the Edit Tool for ToS;DR, Madeline O'Leary is a software developer for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. She also spends considerable time making weird music.

image

Vincent Tunru

Developer

Vincent is a front-end engineer from the Netherlands focused on civil rights. If he has the time and energy, he occasionally does some coding work for ToS;DR.

image

Christopher Talib

Working for a better Internet everyday.

image

Evan Mullen

Privacy Philanthropist

Evan is dedicated to making the world a better place by giving consumers more information about what they agree to in the fine print. He currently resides in San Antonio, Texas.

image

Justin René Back

System Administrator

Software Developer and System Administrator at ToS;DR! I am responsible to get things going. E-Mail me Dog pics, you'll get one back, I promise!

image

Guennadi Maximov Cortés

Self Taught

19 year-old Guennadi (AKA "Dr.Jeff") has yet a lot to learn, but is determined to help in any way he can. He currently resides in Mexico, and is barely starting his career on Philosophy, expecting to someday focus his research on Privacy. Also learning to code.

image

Dmitri Pedersen

Privacy Philanthropist

Dmitri is dedicated to making the world a better place, giving people advice, and helping people. He currently resides in Washington.

image

Inés Rubio

Inés Rubio (alias Agnes de Lion) is a teenage girl committed to informing people about their rights online. Strangely enough, she enjoys spending time reading long and tortuous terms of service. She currently resides in France.

image

Arlo James Barnes

Tautogrammatic Telecommunicator

Arlo is a netizen who has been involved in the free culture movement for around a decade, and who discovered the wonderful world of ToS;DR indirectly through volunteering at Wikidata...and now can be found tooling about the discussion community in the hopes of helping others to add to the ratings database and also to find new and exciting uses for the data. IRL Arlo has a career at a public utility in a desert, but spends much time on the web nonetheless. Arlo is agender and may be referred to by whichever pronoun system you wish to use.

image

Erik Hering

Browser Extension Lead Developer

A young, sarcastic person from Germany with keen interest in any kind of Development you can see with your eyes. Feel free to e-mail me cat and dog pics.

image

Evan Radkoff

AI Lead Developer

Evan dreams up ways to utilize AI at ToS;DR. For work he freelances as a data scientist and ML engineer. For fun he travels the world and makes music.

image

Moritz Beneke

Community Manager

TBD

image

Tomasz Gębarski

Phoenix- and Community Manager

Tomasz is a talented and passionate Python programmer with a strong interest in AI. He is also a dedicated reader of fiction and enjoys creating random programs and Discord bots. In his spare time, Tech enjoys doing some light translation work for open source projects. This allows him to use his skills and knowledge to help others and make a positive impact on the world.