Last reviewed: 25 September 2026

This page says what we agree on when you use the Lumen Circles site. It is kept short so that it gets read. The courses and articles on this site are free, and will stay free.

Lumen Circles is an educational institute for civic activists and civil society, offering circles of learning on activism, holistic security and care.

• You need an account to enrol in courses. You do not have to use your real name, but give an email address you can get to, because it is the only way to recover the account.
• Take care of your password. If you think someone else can get into your account, let us know.
• You can close your account whenever you like. The privacy page says how.

• Harassing others, or sending anything threatening, insulting or defamatory.
• Trying to get into other people's accounts, or into parts of the site that are not meant for you.
• Automated or bulk use of the question-and-answer assistant, or anything else that disrupts the service for others.
• Republishing course material or translations under your own name, or selling them.

If an account breaks these terms, we may limit its access or close it.

The course texts, the articles and the illustrations belong to Lumen Circles; the articles are its own writing. You may use this material for your own learning or your group's, and link to it; to republish it or use it commercially, ask us first.

The course assistant takes its answers from the text of the course itself, and it sometimes gets things wrong. What it says is not the expert view of Lumen Circles, and it does not replace talking to a person. Each member has a weekly questions allowance, so that the service stays available to everyone.

Please take this seriously: our courses deal with digital security and with mental health. Nothing on this site — and above all, none of the assistant's answers — is legal, medical, psychological or personal security advice. For decisions that carry risk for you, talk to someone who knows your situation.

We look after this site carefully, but we cannot promise it will always be available without interruption. A course may change, a part may be added or removed, or a service may stop working for a while. As far as the law allows, we are not responsible for any loss that comes from an outage or from relying on what is on this site.

If these terms change, the date at the top of the page is updated, and we will announce any important changes. Have a question? Write to info@lumencircles.org. See also the Privacy notice.