Privacy Policy

bushido is a platform where Subscribers can support and engage with creators. This updated Privacy Policy applies to Subscribers, creators and all users of our platform, and is part of our Terms of Use.

bushido is a global company. By using our platform, you agree that your personal information that you provide directly to us, or that we collect through your use of the platform, may be transferred to and stored in the United States and handled as described in this Policy.

This is information that you provide to us through text fields, such as your name, payment information and benefits. The information we collect differs depending on whether you make an account, become a Subscriber or become a creator.

• First and Last Name
• Email Address
• Username

You also have the option to add more information to your public profile, such as a location, social media links and an about section, which we store along with any comments or messages you submit on bushido.

A subscriber is someone who joins bushido’s membership platform to support a creator’s membership content. As a Subscriber you provide your payment information to our payment processor, Stripe. You can read Stripe’s Privacy Policy on their site. bushido does not receive your full card number. Payment processors provide us with a token that represents your account, your card’s expiration date, card type and the last four digits of your card number. If you are required to provide your name and email address to the payment processor then they also provide us with that information.

We collect and process information about the creators you support, the level at which you support them, what benefits you receive and how often you support them. As a Subscriber, if you select a benefit tier with a physical benefit then you will provide your shipping information, including phone number, so the creator or bushido can ship you the benefit or provide updates related to the shipment.

A creator is someone who creates and provides content for their Subscribers through bushido’s membership platform. To become a creator, you must create a page that describes what you are creating and any benefits you are offering. To receive payouts you have to create an account with our payment partner, Stripe. We may also require your bank account information to process payouts. You must also provide additional information for tax purposes. Depending on your location you may have to fill out a form with some combination of your:

• First and Last Name
• Address
• Social Security Number or Employer Identification Number
• Country of Citizenship
• Foreign Tax Identification Number
• Date of Birth
• Your Nonprofit Registration Number, if you are a nonprofit business
• Bank Account Information for Payouts
• Phone Number

Automatically Collected Information

We collect information automatically as you navigate the site or through our third-party analytics providers. We may store usage information such as the type of device you use to access bushido, your operating system, browser type, IP address, device ID, the pages you visit or request, links clicked, referring sites, user interactions and your search terms. We also derive your location from your self-disclosed country, your IP address and your payment card.

Messaging

When you participate in messaging, we collect the comments you make as well as record how many times users visit, the activity on the site, where users have replied, with whom they’ve communicated, private messages, IP address and from which location the user was last logged in.

Cookies

We use Cookies on our website that collect information to allow us and third parties to understand your use of bushido. Please see our Cookie Policy for more information on our use of cookies on bushido. You can change what you accept, and record a Global Privacy Control signal, at Privacy Choices.

Social Media Features and Widgets

We process your information to:

• verify your identity to comply with US federal, state, and international laws
• allow you to sign in to your account
• allow you to support a creator’s membership programme on bushido
• process membership payments and payouts
• send merchandise to your shipping address
• send you emails relevant to your usage, as controlled by your email preferences
• reply to your questions
• provide to you existing and enhanced services related to your bushido account
• promote your bushido account for greater discoverability
• spotlight and celebrate creators
• market bushido products and services to you or to audiences similar to you based on your networks and common factors that others have with you, unless you opt out, as controlled by your email preferences
• understand how you use the service and create better tools for creators to serve Subscribers
• conduct research and development to improve bushido and develop future products
• prevent fraud and abuse on bushido
• provide you with reasonable accommodation if you notify us of a disability

By becoming a Subscriber of a creator, you agree to have the following information shared with that creator:

• your name and email address, and other profile information you’ve provided
• any messages you send creators through bushido
• all information about your pledge, including amount and start date but not your full payment card information
• some aggregated and anonymised data about how you use bushido that cannot be linked back to you or to any individual user

Creators agree to the terms of our Data Processing Agreement (DPA) when they start their membership programme. This DPA is called the Creator Privacy Promise. The Creator Privacy Promise is a creator’s promise to protect the privacy of their Subscribers during and beyond their bushido relationship. You can view the Creator Privacy Promise.

The Creator Privacy Promise has not been written, and it has not been decided whether a creator is a processor, a joint controller, or an independent controller. The page linked below records that status. It is not a data processing agreement.

We share personal information with the service providers listed below, each of which processes it only for the purpose described. This list is generated from the same registry the engineering team maintains in code, so it cannot quietly fall out of date.

• Payments and payouts — Taking membership payments and paying creators. Card details are entered on the processor's own hosted form and never reach bushido's servers. Stripe.
• Email, SMS and messaging — Sending transactional email, text and WhatsApp messages, running in-app chat, and routing internal operational notices. Postmark, Twilio, GetStream, Slack.
• Advertising and creator platforms — Running campaigns and publishing content on connected advertising and creator platforms. This includes building custom and lookalike audiences and uploading hashed identifiers. See the automated decision-making section. Meta, Facebook SDK and Pixel, Google Ads, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok.
• Analytics and performance monitoring — Measuring how the product is used and detecting errors. Optional analytics load only after you accept them on the cookie banner. New Relic, Plausible, Vercel Analytics.
• Media hosting, processing and recognition — Storing, transcoding and delivering audio and video, extracting stems, and fingerprinting recordings against the licensed catalogue. Mux, Transloadit, Audioshake, Audible Magic, Higgsfield.
• Hosting, storage and infrastructure — Running the site and storing its data. These providers hold personal information because they host the systems that process it. Neon, Vercel, Amazon Web Services.
• Sign-in providers — Letting you sign in with an existing account. The provider shares your email address and, depending on the scope you grant, your name. Sign in with Apple, Sign in with Google.
• AI and content generation — Generating campaign suggestions, creative copy and assistant replies from text you provide. OpenAI, Google Gemini.
• Music metadata and rights — Looking up recording, work and rights-holder metadata. These services receive professional identifiers rather than listener account data. Songstats, Holy Grail, Graphite.
• Documents and e-signature — Preparing and signing contracts, and searching catalogue files supplied for ingestion. OpenSign, Dropbox.
• Events and ticketing — Syncing ticket orders and attendee details for creator events. Eventbrite.
• Links, maps and previews — Generating deep links, suggesting event locations from the address you type, and fetching previews for links you paste. Firebase Dynamic Links, Google Maps, Jina.
• Former providers — No longer receives data. Listed because information shared before removal may remain within the provider's own retention period. Highlight.io.

The full list, including each provider’s role and the sub-processors behind it, is published at Sub-processors.

Data processing agreements with these providers are not yet executed. The sub-processor list shows the agreement status on file for each one.

The following information is publicly accessible:

• your profile and your social media links and location if you add that information
• the creators you support are publicly displayed by default. If you flag your account as private, we will not display the creators you support
• any posts, likes or comments you make
• your aggregated or anonymised usage data in blog posts, press releases or in other ways to share information about bushido’s usage. Aggregated or anonymised data cannot be linked back to any individual bushido user
• monthly pledge value and goals that creators choose to make public
• number of Subscribers

Choosing Your Preferences

The Settings link is located by clicking on your avatar or profile at the top right-hand of your screen, after your log into your bushido account. Settings lets you see your account preferences. You can see and adjust your settings by viewing your preferences and, if you wish, by changing your selections.

Accessing, Updating or Exporting the Information in Your Account

You can access and update certain information associated with your account on the settings pages. Additionally, you can delete your account or export your personal information by going to privacy@bushido.is.

Deleting Your Account

You may self-initiate a deletion of your account directly by emailing privacy@bushido.is by clicking on the Make a Privacy Request button and submitting an "Erase" request. Please be aware that this action is final and cannot be reversed. If you would like to transport your data, please be sure to download your data first before you delete your account.

bushido is an international company that complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We act as Data Controllers, as defined under the GDPR, and we process personal data based on our legitimate interests and for contractual necessity in providing you the Service, as described in "How We Use Your Information". We also process and share personal information based on notification and users’ consent, which our users may revoke at any time.

bushido is a global company and all of its infrastructure is located in the United States. If you use bushido from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, your personal information is transferred to the United States.

The instrument selected for these transfers is the 2021 Standard Contractual Clauses (Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914), with a transfer impact assessment, and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework only where a recipient is itself certified. Those clauses are selected. They are not yet executed, so this is not a statement that an Article 46 safeguard is in force today.

EU Standard Contractual Clauses do not by themselves cover a transfer from the United Kingdom. A UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum would be required, and a UK representative may be owed. Neither is in place.

Onward transfers to the providers listed in Sub-processors are covered by the same instrument.

bushido’s headquarters are located in California, USA, and we are subject to the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Effective 1 January 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) allows California residents to request access to the specific pieces and categories of personal information that the business has collected about the consumer, the categories of sources for that information, the business or commercial purposes for collecting the information, and the categories of third parties with which the information was shared.

bushido provides California residents and all users with the right to view, access or transport their information at the bushido Privacy Centre. All users also have the right to submit a request to delete information by going to the bushido Privacy Centre, clicking on the "Make a Privacy Request" button and requesting "Erase".

Users in certain locations may have certain rights under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) regarding data that bushido controls as a Data Controller as defined under the GDPR, including:

• the right of access to their personal data,
• the right to correct or rectify any inaccurate personal data,
• the right to restrict or oppose the processing of personal data,
• the right to erase or delete their personal data,
• the right to personal data portability, and
• the right to opt out of the sale of personal information.

You can exercise rights over your data on bushido in the following ways:

• accessing, reviewing, modifying and updating your data by logging in to your account at bushido and going to your account settings.
• viewing our Privacy Policy or viewing our data practices by emailing privacy@bushido.is, where the Data Practices tab describes how we use your data and the Policies tab shows you our Privacy Policy.
• downloading your data to port it or deleting your data altogether by clicking on the "Make a Privacy Request" button at the bushido Privacy Centre.
• deleting a previously-disabled account by emailing bushido at privacy@bushido.is.

If you are unable to log in to your account and are unable to recover your account with a password reset in order to lodge your privacy request then you may reach out to privacy@bushido.is. We reserve the right to decline you access to or recovery of your account, at our discretion, in order to prevent an unauthorised takeover of your account.

No Data Protection Officer has been designated, and no Article 27 representative has been appointed. Privacy questions reach us at privacy@bushido.is, which is a monitored mailbox and not a designated officer.

You can exercise your rights yourself from your account settings, adjust what you accept at Privacy Choices, and read how cookies are used in our Cookie Policy.

If you think we have handled your personal data unlawfully, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. In the European Economic Area that can be the authority in the Member State where you live, where you work, or where the alleged infringement took place; the European Data Protection Board lists every authority at edpb.europa.eu. In the United Kingdom it is the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

We would appreciate the chance to address your concern first, so please consider contacting privacy@bushido.is before you do, but you do not have to.

We do not discriminate against users who exercise their privacy rights.

We keep your account information for as long as your account is active. When you ask us to erase your account we do so, except where we are required to keep specific records — tax and payment records, for example — for a defined period.

We do not apply a fixed ten-year period to inactive accounts. No legal or tax obligation requiring that period has been identified.

The security of your personal information is important to us and we follow industry standards to protect it. You can learn more by emailing us at privacy@bushido.is

bushido is not intended for children under the age of 13 and children may not create an account or otherwise use bushido.

We may sometimes make changes to this policy. If we make material changes that adversely affect your rights under this policy, we will let you know by posting an announcement on the site or sending you an email in advance of the changes coming into effect. Continuing to use bushido after a change to this policy means you accept the new policy. If you have any questions, please email privacy@bushido.is

Last updated 23 September 2026. This version adds our processor list, international transfer safeguards, your right to complain to a supervisory authority, and how to exercise each of your rights.

Almost Famous, for an organisation that connects an ad account, can build custom and lookalike audiences and upload hashed identifiers to Meta, Google, TikTok, and Spotify. A visitor to bushido.is is not added to those audiences. The Meta and Google tags on this website load only after you allow marketing cookies.

Campaign recommendations are suggestions. A person reviews and launches a campaign. Interest and behaviour rankings are computed at organisation level. Real Skinny may show artist accounts that an operator-supplied detector flagged; an unreviewed flag is not used on its own to take action.

The consequence is whether an ad can include or exclude a hashed identifier the organisation already holds. That is not a legal decision about you. To object, reject marketing cookies, turn on Do Not Sell or Share, or email privacy@bushido.is.