New ad-free social network Ello is pro-privacy, but with caveats

However, Ello itself does gather quite a bit of data. And while it may not "sell" it to third parties, there are still circumstances under which it will share it.

For starters, Ello also uses cookies to let its servers recognize your Web browser and provide information to Ello about how and when you use the site. That's standard fare these days, but Ello's privacy policy reveals it may also embed cookies in email to track whether the messages are being read.

If you delete your account on Ello, the site says it may still store backups of your data on its servers.

The site also uses an anonymized version of Google Analytics to gather and aggregate general information about user behavior and IP addresses.

"To the best of our knowledge, the information gathered by Google on Ello's behalf is collected in such a way that neither Ello, nor Google, can easily trace saved information back to any individual user," Ello says.