ForeThought Office Suite Privacy Policy

This policy covers the ForeThought desktop application for Windows and macOS (Word/Excel/PowerPoint/PDF/Markdown/Mail processor and its AI assistant), the ForeThought apps for Android and iPhone (Section 3A) and, where you connect ForeThought Mail to it, a FalconMail account. It does not cover third-party services you choose to connect to (your existing mail provider, Hugging Face, Mozilla) beyond describing what ForeThought sends them.

Your documents, what you type, what the AI assistant generates, its short- and long-term memory, and the local search index are all stored on your device only. ForeThought has no account system and no sign-in. We do not collect usage data or analytics, and no error report leaves your device unless you choose to send one (see item 6 below). There is no cloud AI: inference runs entirely on your machine.

Apart from these seven, the desktop application makes no network connection at all. Each is described here exactly as it is disclosed in the in-app terms you accept before first use (ForeThought's terms, version 11):

1. Opt-in web search. Off by default. Asks your permission every single time. When used, that request leaves your device, as any web search must.

2. Update check. The installed app asks our release server whether a newer version exists, and downloads one only if you choose to. The request carries no account, no licence key, and nothing from your documents, only what any network request unavoidably reveals: the network address you're connecting from. You can turn this off entirely in Settings.

3. AI model download. If you choose to download a language model, the bytes come from Hugging Face, a third party we do not control. It happens only when you start it, carries no account or licence key, and nothing from your documents.

4. Mail account access. If you set up a mail account in ForeThought Mail, the app connects directly to your mail provider's own IMAP and SMTP servers to send and receive your mail, the way any mail application does. For a FalconMail account it instead uses FalconMail's own protocol, JMAP over HTTPS, with the FalconMail server your organisation gives you. To help you set that up, it may look up your provider's published autoconfiguration file (your provider's own servers first, then Mozilla's public autoconfig.thunderbird.net directory as a third party). That lookup carries only your email address or its domain, never your password, and nothing from your mail.

5. Mailbox migration. If you choose to migrate mail from a previous provider into a new account, ForeThought additionally connects, read-only, to that previous provider's IMAP servers with credentials you enter for it, and writes the copied messages into the new account (JMAP, over HTTPS, when the destination is FalconMail). The previous account is never modified or deleted, only read, and nothing is migrated unless you start it.

6. Opt-in error reports. If ForeThought runs into an error, it shows you what happened and asks whether to send an error report to our support desk at support.louis-innovations.com, so the fix can ship in the next update. It asks only while your device is online, sends nothing unless you click Send, and never retries on its own. The report contains the technical details of the error only: the error message, the lines of ForeThought code involved (as paths relative to the application), the first of those lines as the probable root cause, the app version, the operating system family and release number, the CPU architecture, the Electron version and the UI language. Before sending, ForeThought removes every file path outside the application, every email address and every network address from the report. It never contains your documents or their names or contents, your user name, your machine name, your licence, or any identifier for you or your device. Like any network request, sending shows our server the network address you are connecting from; we keep the report to resolve the defect and do not use it for any other purpose.

7. Optional online activation. If you choose Activate online instead of sending your activation code yourself, ForeThought sends that code, your company name, your commercial registration number and the email address on your licence to our licensing server (office.louis-innovations.com), and collects the signed activation from it. It happens only when you click Activate online. The server stores your company details encrypted so that only we can read them, and the activation it returns is encrypted so that only your device can open it. Like any request to any server, it shows that server the network address your device is connecting from.

Your licence and its activation are always verified on your device, offline, using our own hybrid Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65 signature scheme. To activate a device, the application shows a code made from salted, one-way hashes of four hardware identifiers (such as the board and disk identifiers). You can send that code to us yourself, by any channel you choose, and we send back a signed activation; that path never contacts any server. Item 7 above only carries the same code for you. Either way, the hardware identifiers themselves never leave your device.

The ForeThought apps for Android and iPhone keep your documents on your device and make no network connection of their own. Links you tap (our website, this policy, the terms) open in your browser.

If you buy ForeThought inside a phone app, the purchase is handled by Google Play or Apple's App Store under their own terms and privacy policies, not by us. The app confirms the purchase by checking the store's signed purchase record on your device; it does not send that record to us. Google's billing component contacts Google Play to complete and restore purchases and may send Google diagnostic information about its billing service, under Google's privacy policy. The phone apps do not read or send hardware identifiers, and there is no activation code to send us.

The Android app is sold as a yearly subscription through Google Play, with a free trial for new subscribers; you manage or cancel it in Google Play. So that the app keeps working without a connection, it stores on your device the time it last confirmed your subscription with Google Play. That record never leaves your device.

Because a Windows or macOS licence is issued to your organisation or to you, when you purchase or activate one we hold, on our own systems (not a third-party processor), the minimum needed to issue and support it: your organisation's name, a contact email, the licence's commercial registration reference, and, for each activated device, a hash derived from the activation code you sent us, which is how we count seats. That hash cannot be turned back into your hardware identifiers. This is the one place ForeThought-related personal data exists off your device, and it exists because a licence has to be issued to someone. We do not sell it, and we do not use it for anything except issuing, renewing, and supporting your licence.

If you use online activation (Section 3, item 7), our licensing server also holds your request: the details listed there and the network address it came from, encrypted with a key that is not kept on that server, together with a tamper-evident log of when each request arrived and was answered. The server runs on a machine we rent from a hosting provider; the encryption means the provider cannot read your details. The notifications our own staff receive about each request carry only a request number, never your details.

When you buy through Google Play or the App Store, the store processes the payment. We receive only the order information that store reports to app publishers, which does not include your payment card details, and we use it only to support your purchase.

Where processing is not necessary to provide the product or service you requested (the licence records above, or delivering mail you asked us to send), we rely on your explicit, opt-in consent, which is why items 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7 in Section 3 only happen when you take an affirmative action. Under Law No. 13 of 2016, you have the right to:

access the personal data we hold about you (Section 4 covers the only such data);

request correction of inaccurate data;

request deletion of data we are not otherwise required to keep (for example, for licence and tax record-keeping);

withdraw consent at any time, which for ForeThought simply means turning off the relevant feature in Settings, or not using it.

To exercise any of these, contact info@louis-innovations.com.

In line with PDPPL's requirement for appropriate technical, administrative, and financial precautions: the AI assistant's local cache is encrypted at rest; licence signatures use a hybrid classical/post-quantum scheme (Ed25519 + ML-DSA-65) so a licence cannot be forged even by a future quantum computer; the signing key that could forge a licence is never present in the shipped application; and the application's own network access is default-deny, limited to exactly the seven disclosed cases in Section 3, and independently verified by an automated build gate before every release.

ForeThought is developed and sold from Qatar, and Qatar's PDPPL is the controlling law for the personal data described above. For users outside Qatar, we apply the same practices, data minimisation, purpose limitation, and no undisclosed processing, regardless of jurisdiction, consistent with internationally recognised privacy standards.

ForeThought is a productivity application for businesses and professionals and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

If we change what data ForeThought's network exceptions cover, we update both this policy and the in-app terms (which carry their own version number and require re-acceptance), the same way we would for any other material change to what the product does.

This policy is governed by the laws of the State of Qatar.

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E-commerce activity reference under Ministerial Decision No. 25 of 2026: Commercial Registration No. 173808 (confirmed by the owner 2026-08-20: no separate e-commerce licence number exists, online sale is covered under the same CR).