PhotoCircle Privacy Policy

Last Updated: June 19, 2024

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, store, share, maintain, and otherwise use the personal information that we gather on the subdomains and websites on photocircleapp.com (the “Site”), through the use of our native mobile Android and iOS applications (the “App”), and any other services offered as part of the PhotoCircle platform (collectively with the Site and App, the “Services”). The Site and App are operated by PhotoCircle, Inc. (“PhotoCircle”, “we”, “us,” and/or “our” as used in this Privacy Policy).

This Privacy Policy does not apply to the way we process End User information on behalf of our Customers. In those situations, we process and safeguard information on behalf of our Customers in accordance with our agreements with our Customers.

Table of Contents

1. Whose Personal Information We Collect

2. How We Collect Information from You

3. How We Use Your Information

4. How We Share Your Information

5. Do Not Track

6. Cookies

7. Family Education Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)

8. Privacy Rights & Additional Disclosures for EEA & UK Individuals

9. How We Secure Your Information

10. How We Retain Information

11. Children’s Privacy

12. Change of Control

13. Account Deletion

14. Contact Us

1. Whose Personal Information We Collect

We obtain information from various entities and individuals. These entities and individuals are defined below by what they are referred to in this Privacy Policy and when their information is collected. Definitions may overlap and are not exclusive categories.

The use of “you” and “your” throughout this Privacy Policy will, depending on the context, refer to a Customer, Consumer End User, or Website Visitor.

All capitalized terms used in this Privacy Policy shall have the meaning given to them in the Terms of Use unless otherwise defined or stated herein.

2. How We Collect Information from You

Information You Give Us. You may give us information by signing up for an account, entering information through forms or surveys, inputting information while using our services, or by contacting us by phone or email for information or customer service.


The categories of information include:

Information About End Users We Collect for PhotoCircle Customers. If your company or school or other institution engaged our Services, we may collect information from you on their behalf as a service provider. This information may be passively recorded from interactions on your browser or device, or it may be through integrations with the Customer’s software. This information may include:

If a Customer has engaged us, we may collect information from you on their behalf as a service provider. However, because we process and safeguard information on the Customer’s behalf, you should contact the Customer directly for information regarding how they use and share personal information gathered from using our Services.

When you are invited to become an End User, your End User account and activity therein is associated with the End User account. If you use the same email to accept an End User invitation that you used with an existing PhotoCircle account, information from the existing account will be transferred to the End User account. You will be given an opportunity to move existing Media to a new account prior to the transfer. If you have any issues with this transfer, please contact privacy@photocircleapp.com.

When you Visit our Website. Like many websites, we collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Website. This includes log data, such as IP address, browser type, browser version, pages of our Website that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics, and how you reached our Website. This may be collected via several technologies, including cookies. You can control cookies in your browser to enable or disable them. Learn more at your Cookie Policy.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your personal information for the following purposes:

Marketing. We may use your personal information to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in any email we send, or you can contact us using the contact details provided in the “Contact Information” section below. You will still continue to receive service-related messages concerning products and services you have purchased (unless we have indicated otherwise).

Showing Quality Advertisements for Free Users. When you use the free version of the App, we may show you advertisements within the App based on your interests. This involves using identifiers assigned by Apple on iOS and Google on Android, respectively, to entice advertisers to bid to occupy ad space on the PhotoCircle App when they want to offer a product or service that might suit a user.

You can control this process on both Apple and Google platforms.

If you are using the iOS App and do not have an ad-free subscription, as of the date of this Policy, we use Apple’s IDFA, and you may be prompted to Allow tracking across apps and can tap “Ask App not to track” to opt-out of seeing personalized advertisements on PhotoCircle. If you allow tracking, we will show ads on PhotoCircle that are personalized to your interests. If you use an earlier version of iOS, you can disable tracking by going to your phone’s “Settings” menu. If you do not allow tracking, we will not use IDFA to show you personalized ads on PhotoCircle. You will instead still see general ads on PhotoCircle, but they will not be personalized.

If you are using Android and do not have an ad-free subscription, we use Google’s Advertising ID (GAID). As of the Date of this Policy, you can opt out of personalized ads on PhotoCircle by heading to Settings on your Android device. Once you do so, we will stop showing you personalized ad recommendations on PhotoCircle. However, you will still see ads on PhotoCircle as a free user, but they will not be personalized.

We refer to the GAID and the IDFA collectively as “Ad Identifiers” in this Policy.

4. How We Share Your Information

We share your personal information with third parties in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Ad Identifiers. For free Users, the applicable Ad Identifiers may be shared with advertising networks to allow ad publishers to submit bids to fill our ad spaces. The App shares these identifiers directly and solely for the purpose of finding a personalized ad directly for your device.

Affiliates and Service Providers. We share your information with our third-party service providers, affiliates, and any subcontractors as required to offer you our products and services. The service providers we use help us to:

Some external service providers may also collect information directly from you (for example, a payment processor may request your billing and financial information) in accordance with their own privacy policy. These external service providers do not share your financial information, like credit card number, with us, but may share limited information with us related to your purchase, like your zip code.

Aggregated Data. We may also aggregate or otherwise strip information of all personally identifying characteristics and may share that aggregated, anonymized data with third parties or publish it. We reserve the right to make use of any such aggregated data as we see fit.

Disclosures Required by Law. We may be required to disclose your data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet law enforcement requirements. We may be under a duty to disclose or share your personal information to comply with any legal obligation, to enforce or apply our terms and conditions and other agreements, to protect our rights, property, or safety, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection.

Third Party Marketing. Additionally, if you are a California customer, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits you to request information regarding the disclosure of your personal information to third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. However, we do not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.

5. Do Not Track

Our Site does not currently respond to all Do Not Track signals, as we are awaiting consensus from the Internet policy and legal community on the meaning of Do Not Track and the best way to respond to these signals.

6. Cookies

To make certain aspects of our Services work, we may request placing small data files called cookies on your device. A cookie is a text file that a service saves on your device. The cookie enables the service to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, shopping cart, etc.) over a period of time, so you do not have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the service. To learn more, please see our Cookie Policy.

Google Analytics. We may use Google Analytics. We use the information we get from Google Analytics only to improve the Site. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information. Please refer to Google’s Privacy Policy for more information. You may also choose to download the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

7. Family Education Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)

Some of our customers may include public schools and institutions. In the United States, FERPA restricts the disclosure of personally identifiable information from a student’s education records, unless an exception applies. Our data protection and privacy policies and practices support such customers in complying with FERPA. For example, if a public school or institution uses our services for students, we maintain the privacy of those student Users and only use that information to deliver our services.

Students and parents of students may have specific rights under FERPA related to access and/or updating the students’ information. Students and parents (where applicable) may edit their personal information by accessing their account and updating their information.

8. Privacy Rights & Additional Disclosures for EEA & UK Individuals

Lawful Bases for Processing (EEA and UK Individuals). If you are from the European Economic Area (EEA) or United Kingdom (UK), our legal bases for collecting and using your personal information is as follows:

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided at the end of this Privacy Policy.

EEA or UK Individuals’ Rights. If you are from the EEA or UK, you have the right, under certain circumstances, to:

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the contact details provided at the end of this Privacy Policy, and please specify which privacy right(s) you wish to exercise. We may need to verify your identity to honor your request.

Right to Lodge a Complaint. If you have any issues with our compliance, you have the right to lodge a complaint with an EEA supervisory authority. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to first address your concerns and would welcome you directing an inquiry to us via the contact information at the bottom of this Privacy Policy.

Data Privacy Frameworks & International Transfers of Data. We may transfer information from or about you or your devices to countries other than the country where you are located (including to the United States), which may not have the same data protection laws as your jurisdiction. For more information regarding our compliance with the U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework to authorize these data transfers, please review the following disclosures.

PhotoCircle complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (“EU-U.S. DPF”), the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF (“UK-U.S. DPF”), and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (“Swiss-U.S. DPF”) (collectively, the “DPF”) as set forth by the US Department of Commerce. PhotoCircle has certified that it adheres to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles (“EU-U.S. DPF Principles”) with regard to the processing of personal data received from the European Union in reliance on the EU-U.S. DPF and from the United Kingdom (and Gibraltar) in reliance on the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. DPF. PhotoCircle has certified to the U.S. Department of Commerce that it adheres to the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Principles (“Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles”) with regard to the processing of personal data received from Switzerland in reliance on the Swiss-U.S. DPF. If there is any conflict between the terms in this privacy policy and the EU-U.S. DPF Principles and/or the Swiss-U.S. DPF Principles (collectively, the “DPF Principles”), the DPF Principles shall govern. To learn more about the, DPF program, and to view our certification, please visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov.

With respect to personal data received or transferred pursuant to the DPF, PhotoCircle is subject to the regulatory enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Pursuant to the DPF Principles, EU, UK, and Swiss individuals have the right to obtain our confirmation of whether we maintain personal information relating to you in the United States. Upon request, we will provide you with access to the personal information that we hold about you. You may also correct, amend, or delete the personal information we hold about you. An individual who seeks access, or who seeks to correct, amend, or delete inaccurate data transferred to the United States under the DPF should direct their query to privacy@photocircleapp.com. If requested to remove data, we will respond within a reasonable timeframe.

We will provide an individual opt-out or opt-in choice before we share your data with third parties other than our agents, or before we use it for a purpose other than which it was originally collected or subsequently authorized. To request to limit the use and disclosure of your personal information, please submit a written request to privacy@photocircleapp.com.

As explained in this Privacy Policy, we sometimes provide your information to third parties to perform services on our behalf. If we transfer personal information received under the DPF to a third party, the third party’s access, use, and disclosure of the personal data must also be in compliance with our DPF obligations, and we will remain liable under the DPF for any failure to do so by the third party unless we prove we are not responsible for the event giving rise to the damage. We may be required to disclose personal information that we handle under the DPF in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

DPF Complaints Involving Personal Data We Process as a Controller. For EU, UK, and Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding our handling of personal data received or collected as a controller in reliance on the EU-U.S. DPF, the UK-U.S. DPF, and the Swiss-U.S. DPF, please first contact us at: privacy@photocircleapp.com.

If your DPF-related complaint cannot be resolved through this channel, PhotoCircle commits to refer unresolved complaints to JAMS DPF Dispute Resolution, an alternative dispute resolution provider based in the United States. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your DPF Principles-related complaint from us, please visit DPF Dispute Resolution for more information or to file a complaint. The services of JAMS DPF Dispute Resolution are provided at no cost to you.

If your DPF complaint cannot be resolved through the above channels, under certain conditions, you may invoke binding arbitration for some residual claims not resolved by other redress mechanisms. See DPF Annex 1 at https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/framework-article/ANNEX-I-introduction.

9. How We Secure Your Information

Like most applications today, we use cloud server infrastructure to run our App and Website. We license server spaces that encrypt data sent to the App and displayed by the App, both while “at rest” in our database and “in transit” between the App and those databases. Only we can access the database(s) we created to operate the App, and we do so only through accounts approved and provisioned for senior security engineers on our team. The service provider who supplies the database infrastructure does not have access to the data we store there.

When we generate QR codes or links to add members to a Circle, we share these only with the user and device that requested them. You choose who to share it with from there.

Note that SSO information is controlled and accessed by the relevant SSO provider, such as Google, Microsoft, or Apple. Please refer to the privacy policies of these platforms for more information about how they operate their SSO.

While we take reasonable precautions against possible security breaches of the Website, PhotoCircle and our customer databases and records, no website or Internet transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or other breaches will never occur. We urge you to use caution when choosing what information to share with us, just in case.

10. How We Retain Information

We retain information from or about you only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. When the information is no longer necessary for these purposes, we delete the information or keep it in a form that does not identify you, unless we are required by law to keep the information for a longer period. When determining the retention period, we take into account various criteria, such as the services requested and the mandatory retention periods provided by law and the statute of limitations.

11. Children’s Privacy

PhotoCircle does not intentionally collect any information from or about persons under 16. In the event that we learn that we have inadvertently gathered personal information from children under the age of 16, we will use our best efforts to erase such information from our records.

If you believe we have inadvertently collected information about a minor 16 years or younger, or if you find someone is using the App to upload photos of a child for whom they are not a guardian and do not have the appropriate legal guardian’s consent, please contact us at privacy@photocircleapp.com with a description of the potential issue.

Notwithstanding the above, you are allowed to invite Permissible Minor Users into a Circle if you acquire sufficient Parental Consent in accordance with our terms.

Moreover, Customers, including entities covered by FERPA, may provide PhotoCircle access to students under the age of 16 in accordance with the Customer’s privacy policies and practices. We will maintain the privacy of those Users and only use that information to deliver our services, as instructed by the Customer.

12. Change of Control

Information may be transferred to a third party because of a sale, acquisition, merger, reorganization, or other change in control. If we sell, merge, or transfer any part of our business, part of the sale may include your information.

13. Account Deletion

You can delete your account and data from the Account section of the app’s settings panel. Alternatively, you can email us at support@photocircleapp.com to request account deletion. Please review our FAQ for more details.

14. Contact Us

Questions or concerns? Reach us anytime at privacy@photocircleapp.com

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