Privacy policy
This explains what we collect, where it lives, how long we keep it, and how to have it deleted. It is written to be read, not to be survived.
Last updated
TakeUrOwn is owned and operated by Coderize, which is the data controller for everything described here. If anything is unclear, or you want your data removed, email hello@takeurown.com and a person will answer.
Two kinds of people use this
Organisers book an event and hold an account. Guests scan a QR code at that event and upload photos without signing up for anything. We collect different things about each, and guests can stop at any point simply by not uploading.
What we collect
From organisers
- Email address, and a name if you give one.
- A password, stored only as a bcrypt hash. We cannot read it, which is why a forgotten password is reset rather than looked up.
- The events you create, and the settings on them.
- Billing records. Card details go directly to Stripe — they never reach our servers and we never see them.
From guests
- The photos and clips you upload, and the name you optionally type before uploading.
- Technical information that arrives with any web request: your IP address and browser, used to apply rate limits and to spot abuse. It is not used to build a profile of you and is not sold.
We do not ask guests for an account, an email address, or a phone number. There is no advertising network and no advertising pixel.
Analytics
The pages your guests use (uploading, the gallery and the slideshow) run no analytics at all: your guests never chose TakeUrOwn, you did. To understand how people find us and how hosts use the service, this site and the account pages of the app (sign-up, sign-in and your dashboard) run Google Analytics. It records the pages viewed, the device and browser type, roughly where the visit came from, and how the visitor arrived, with IP addresses anonymized. This site, but not the app, also runs Metricool's website analytics, which measures visits and the links and social posts that brought them. Neither one receives your photos, your guests' names, or your account details, and we use what they report only in aggregate.
Cookies
For people who sign in, a session cookie keeps you logged in. It is HttpOnly, so no script can read it. Google Analytics sets first-party cookies to tell new visits from returning ones, and Metricool may store a similar identifier in your browser; the pages your guests use never load either. There are no advertising cookies. You can block the analytics cookies in your browser's settings or with a content blocker, and the site keeps working.
Where your photos are kept
Photos and clips are stored in Amazon S3 in the United States, encrypted at rest, and delivered over HTTPS through a content delivery network. The storage bucket blocks all public access — only our delivery network can read from it.
Each file gets a random, unguessable address. Anyone who has that exact link, or the link to an event's gallery, can view the photos there. That is deliberate: guests need to see the gallery without making an account. It also meansan event gallery link should be treated as semi-private — share it with the room, not the internet. If you need an event locked down harder than that, tell us before the day.
How long we keep things
| Plan | Photos and clips kept |
|---|---|
| Free | 7 days after the event ends |
| Single Event | 30 days after the event ends |
| Plus | 90 days after the event ends |
| Agency | 365 days after the event ends |
After that the files are deleted automatically. An organiser can ask for a longer window before the event, or ask us to delete everything sooner — both are a single email.
One thing we keep after deletion. When a photo is deleted we keep a row recording that it existed and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the file. We do not keep the image. The fingerprint exists so that a photo a moderator removed cannot simply be uploaded again and put back on the screen. It cannot be turned back into the picture.
Account records and invoices are kept while your account is open, and for as long afterwards as we are required to keep financial records.
Face search
Some events switch on a feature that lets a guest take a selfie and find the photos they appear in. This involves processing biometric information, so it works like this:
- It is off unless the organiser turns it on for their event. It is never on by default and never applied across the platform.
- Nothing happens without your agreement. You are told what it does and asked to agree before the camera opens. Declining costs you nothing else.
- Your selfie is not stored. It is compared, the matches are returned, and it is discarded. It is never added to any index and never written to disk.
- The face data derived from the event's photos is held in a store belonging to that event alone. It cannot be searched from any other event.
- It is deleted when the event's photos are deleted, and a photo removed by a moderator stops being findable this way at the same moment it comes off the screen.
If you would rather not be matched at all, do not use the feature — and if you want the face data derived from photos you appear in removed sooner, email us and we will remove it.
Who else touches it
These are the only companies that process data on our behalf. We do not sell data to anyone, ever.
| Company | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Photo and video storage, delivery, email, face matching | United States |
| Neon | Database hosting (accounts, events, no photo content) | United States |
| Stripe | Payment processing | United States |
Your rights
Whatever law applies where you live, we will do these on request: tell you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy. Email hello@takeurown.com. We do not require you to prove a legal basis for asking, and we will not charge you.
If you are in a photo someone else uploaded and you want it removed, email us with the event and we will take it down. You do not need to be the person who booked the event, and you do not need an account.
Photos of children
Events often include children. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children, and guests upload photos on their own account. If a photo of your child is on an event and you want it gone, email us and it will be removed.
Security
Photos are encrypted at rest and in transit. Passwords are hashed, never stored. Moderator credentials are stored as hashes, so a copy of our database would not hand anyone a working key. Access to production is limited to the people who run the service.
No system is perfect. If we ever discover a breach affecting your data, we will tell the people affected directly rather than hoping nobody notices.
Changes
If we change this in a way that affects what we do with your data, we will update the date at the top and email account holders. We will not quietly broaden what we collect.