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Privacy policy

Effective date: 15 July 2026

This policy describes how the Tether project handles data. It covers both the Tether desktop application and this documentation website (https://bioedca.github.io/tether/). Tether is free, open-source software (GPL-3.0-or-later) developed for the Mondragón Lab at Northwestern University.

In short: Tether does not collect, transmit, or sell your personal data. The application runs entirely on your own computer, and your research data never leaves it.

The desktop application

  • Local-only processing. Tether analyses your microscopy movies and single-molecule FRET data entirely on your own machine. Your data — image movies, .tether project files, exported results — stays on your computer (or wherever you choose to save it).
  • No telemetry or analytics. The application contains no usage tracking, no analytics, no crash/telemetry reporting, no advertising, and no account or login. It makes no network connection as part of normal analysis; it neither sends your data to us or to any third party, nor "phones home".
  • Local provenance metadata. For scientific reproducibility and to coordinate one-writer-at-a-time editing, Tether records technical metadata inside your own local files. The .tether project store records the application version, your analysis parameters, and your operating-system username (as the curator, or "labeler", of your annotations). A separate sidecar .lock file records your computer's hostname, username and process id while a project is open, so that a second copy of the application can tell who currently holds the write-lock. This information is stored only in your files, on your machine, and is never transmitted to the project or to any third party. If you share a .tether file with a collaborator it carries your OS username (the .lock sidecar is a separate local file and is not part of the shared project) — so treat shared project files as you would any working document.
  • Bundled components. The installers bundle open-source libraries (for example napari, PySide6, and the tMAVEN reference tool) and, optionally, local machine-learning models. These run locally, and Tether does not configure them to collect or transmit your data.

The documentation website

  • This site is a static site hosted on GitHub Pages. It uses no advertising or tracking cookies, no third-party analytics, and no third-party asset requests (it uses your system fonts rather than an external font service); the documentation search runs entirely in your browser.
  • As the host, GitHub may process standard technical request data (such as your IP address and browser user-agent) to serve and protect the site, as described in the GitHub General Privacy Statement. The Tether project does not receive, store, or use that data.

Downloads, releases, and code-signing

  • Installers and source releases are distributed through GitHub Releases, subject to GitHub's own privacy practices (linked above).
  • Windows installers are code-signed through the SignPath Foundation program for open-source projects; SignPath's own privacy practices apply to that service. Signing does not give the project any data about who downloads or runs Tether.

Children's privacy

Tether is a research tool and is not directed at children. It does not knowingly collect or transmit personal data — it processes only the scientific imaging data you supply, locally on your machine.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the project evolves. Material changes will be posted on this page with a new effective date.

Contact

Questions about privacy or this policy can be sent to bioedca@u.northwestern.edu, or raised via the project's issue tracker.