Keeping Track of What Terms Change
Why I started tos.watch, how it works, and how to chip in from $1 if you want it to keep running.
I started building tos.watch when seemingly every app I used was adding an AI service, and I wanted to understand what those changes meant for my data. Reading a privacy policy once only gets you so far when the terms can change after you’ve signed up.
The project now tracks the terms and privacy policies of about 40 services, with 190 alerts recorded so far. You can subscribe for free and get each change explained in plain words, without having to compare the documents yourself.
I put it aside for a while because reviewing every change by hand became more than I could keep up with. An inexpensive classification step made that work manageable, so I’ve picked it back up. The classifier flags which changes look real, but I still read and send every alert myself.
The policy history comes from Open Terms Archive, a public project, along with pages I fetch directly where their coverage stops. It’s a small operation built around something I want for myself: a way to keep track of what companies say they can do with our data, even after we’ve clicked “agree.”
If that sounds useful, you can subscribe at https://tos.watch. If you’d like to help cover the email service and the cost of tracking more services, you can chip in from $1 at https://tos.watch/support.