Privacy

What we hold

Your email address, the photographs you upload, the note and revision instructions you give, the story our system writes from them, and the page pictures copied from your photographs. We do not store passwords, because there are none — sign-in is by emailed link or with Google, which is why we need your email address for as long as you have an account.

When you order a printed copy we also hold the name, delivery address, phone number and email address on the order. Thirty days after it has shipped or been cancelled, these are removed and only the country is kept. A checkout that is never paid is removed, usually within a day and at most after thirty.

Photographs of people

When you upload a photograph you confirm that you hold the rights to it and have the consent of everyone shown. We record that confirmation with the date, your IP address and the version of these terms you agreed to.

Every uploaded photograph is re-encoded when it is uploaded, before any other use, which removes embedded metadata (EXIF) including GPS coordinates. We do this because photographs of children routinely carry the location of the home they were taken in, and the copy we keep, show and print must not.

Before that, we read a few things the camera recorded, so the story can match what really happened: the date and time the photograph was taken, its GPS position and altitude if it has one, and whether the flash fired. These are stored with your book, not in the image, and are used only to write its story. They are deleted with the photograph, the book or your account.

Your photographs are the pages of your book, so they are kept for as long as that book exists. When you delete the book, its photographs are removed from storage.

When a page picture is made again, the older one is deleted a day later. A PDF of your book is deleted once the book has changed since it was made, a day after the change, unless a printed copy being made from it still needs it.

How the site is used

To learn what works and what confuses people, we count what happens on the site: which pages are opened, which buttons are pressed, and steps such as writing a story or buying credits. We record this ourselves; no analytics company receives it, and no cookie or other file is stored on your device for it. We keep no IP address and no browser details with it. If you are not signed in, nothing in it says who you are. If you are, it is linked to your account, so we can see how one book was made; when you delete your account, that link is removed. All of it is deleted after 400 days.

Suggestions

A suggestion you send is kept by us until we delete it: its title and text, the page you sent it from, the email address if you gave one (only to reply to you), and your account if you were signed in. When you delete your account, the suggestions you sent while signed in lose both your account and your email. Each suggestion is also emailed to us through our mail provider, so we see it quickly.

Shared books

If you share a book, or add its QR code page, anyone with the link or the printed book can read it, download it and order a copy. They see only what is printed in the book, and you can switch sharing off at any time. Someone who orders a copy that way gives us their own address and email, which are handled like any other order and never shown to you.

Who else processes your data

• Anthropic — receives reduced-size copies of your photographs, your note and your revision instructions, to check the photographs for safety, to suggest how to frame them and to write the story. To write the story it also receives when each photograph was taken and, where the camera recorded it, its position, altitude and whether the flash fired. The position is sent only to Anthropic and to Geoapify.
• Geoapify — when the story is written, receives the position of each photograph that has one, rounded to about 100 metres, and returns the names of the town and of lakes, beaches, parks and mountains near it (map data © OpenStreetMap contributors). Nothing else about you or the photograph is sent.
• Stripe — takes your payment. We never see your card details.
• Lulu — prints and ships a printed copy, and so receives its pages and the name, delivery address, phone number and email address on the order.
• Resend — sends our emails: sign-in links, an order confirmation when you ask for one, and the tracking link when a printed copy ships.
• Cloudflare — stores your photographs and book files.
• Google — only if you sign in with Google, which tells us your name and email address, or import from Google Photos: we fetch the photographs you pick, and nothing else.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time. Your email address and name are erased immediately, every session is ended, and your photographs and book files are removed from storage within a day. A printed copy already on its way is still delivered; its files go once it has shipped, and its address thirty days after that.

Records of payments are kept, without your name attached, because we are required to retain them for tax and accounting purposes.

Contact

Questions, or a request to see or export your data: privacy@talebindery.com.