Privacy and internet service

Privacy and internet service

Privacy and internet service

Your privacy is of paramount importance to us. We ask for the bare minimum of information at all times and keep it only as long as required. We also want to offer you a few additional suggestions for how to increase your privacy online.

What information does Calyx need?

When you sign up for a Calyx internet membership, there are three main pieces of information we ask for:

• Your name
• Shipping address
• Payment information

So that we may ship you a device, we require that you specify a name and shipping address when you enroll. We do not validate the accuracy of your name or shipping address, but the address does need to be one that can receive packages. However, if you enroll in person–for example, at one of our events—we can hand you the device on the spot and thus do not require an address.

How does Calyx process your information?

Your information is sent to both Mobile Citizen and T-Mobile. However, once your membership is established, you can at any time log into your member control panel and change this information, which will also update the records maintained by Mobile Citizen and T-Mobile. For credit card payments, Calyx retains a history of every payment you have made and the corresponding PayPal transaction, which is tied to your email address if you have a PayPal log-in. Calyx does not have access to your credit card information—only PayPal does. For cryptocurrency payments, Calyx retains only the receiving address and which coin the payment was made with.

Information Stored by T-Mobile

T-Mobile keeps records of which tower your device is using (which reveals your location) and how much bandwidth it has used.

Unless you have modified your settings to use a different DNS provider (and if you’re curious about that, please visit the DNS Privacy Project), T-Mobile also records a list of which domains you have visited and the IP addresses of the sites and services you contact. For more information, please see the T-Mobile Privacy Center.

What you can do to protect your privacy

Calyx does not track internet connections provided through our internet memberships. However, since the upstream service providers, such as T-mobile, have access to your device and internet traffic data. To make your internet connection as private as possible, we recommend taking extra steps to protect your personal data, such as:

1. Run a VPN service at all times. This prevents your internet service providers from seeing your internet traffic. You can use our free CalyxVPN or any VPN you find trustworthy.
2. Make your default browser a privacy-focused browser, such as Tor browser, Firefox Focus, or DuckDuckGo browser.
3. Use end-to-end encryption for your texts, calls and video chats with private messaging apps, such as Signal.
4. Once your device has shipped, you are welcome to change your shipping address at any time. If you need a replacement device in the future, please remember to log in and update your address so the replacement hotspot ships to the correct location.