Privacy
Your photos, your children's art
Paper Years is an iPhone app that turns photos of children's art into cut-out pieces and framed collages. It is made by EVOQ Sp. z o.o. ("we"). We are responsible for the personal data described here. You can reach us at hello@paperyears.com.
In short: the photos you add are cut out by our engine and then deleted. Your collection lives on your iPhone and in your own iCloud. There are no ads and no tracking, and we never sell data.
Photos you add in the app
When you take or choose a photo, your iPhone first looks at it itself, with Apple's on-device Vision. It finds the sheet of paper and the drawing, and whether a real person is in the photo. The faces of real people it detects are painted out on your phone, before the photo leaves it. It finds most of them, not every one, so keep people out of the frame when you can.
The photo is then sent, encrypted, to our engine, which runs on Google Cloud in the EU. It goes with what your phone found: where the sheet is, the outline of the art, which parts are a person (so they're left out), what kind of thing it is (a drawing, a craft, a toy), and the words your phone could read on the page. The engine cuts the art out of the photo and sends the cut-out back to your phone. The photo and what came with it are deleted as soon as the art has been cut. The cut-out images, and any print preview the engine makes from them, stay on the engine for up to 30 days, then they're deleted automatically. Like every host, Google Cloud records the time and the internet address of each request for up to 30 days, to run and protect the service. To keep the engine running for everyone, it also counts how many requests each installation of the app makes in a day, under a random id the app makes up for itself when it is first opened; the id says nothing about you or your phone, and the counts are deleted after three days.
Children's art can include a child's first name or age written on the page. In the photo that is handled exactly like the rest of the picture. In the words your phone reads out, the names of the children you have added to the app are swapped for a placeholder before anything is sent, so the engine never receives them. The names themselves stay on your phone and in your iCloud.
If you use a test build from TestFlight, it also sends our engine anonymous counts of a few things that happen in the app, for example that a duplicate photo was spotted and what you chose, with the app's version and the time. No image, name, email or anything that says who you are goes with them, and they are deleted after 90 days. The App Store version sends none.
Your collection
The pieces, their dates, the names of the artists you add, and the way you arrange your wall are kept on your iPhone. If iCloud is on, they are also kept in your own private iCloud storage, so they can come back after a new phone and appear on your other devices. That storage belongs to your Apple Account, and we can't see into it. Apple's privacy policy covers iCloud.
To delete a piece, long-press it, choose Details, then Delete. This deletes it from your phone and your iCloud, and from our engine if it's still there. To delete everything, delete the app, then go to Settings › your name › iCloud › Manage Storage, choose Paper Years and select Delete.
The print file
The print-ready file of a year is made on your phone and bought through Apple's in-app purchase. Apple handles the payment and we never see your card or your Apple Account. The app remembers which years you have bought, on your phone and in your iCloud, so a purchase comes back with your Apple Account on a new phone.
If you tap Order
Ordering framed prints isn't available yet. When you tap Order, the app tells our engine what you were about to order, so we know what people want: the size, shape, look and frame, how many pieces, the price shown, the country from your phone's region setting, and the time. That is counted without anything that says who you are. If you leave your email address to hear when ordering opens, we keep it with that record, in the same private storage in the EU, and use it once, to tell you. It is deleted once that email has gone, when you ask us to remove it, or a year after you tapped, whichever comes first. No photo, cut-out or child's name is ever part of it. Before ordering opens, we'll update this policy to say what an order shares with our print and payment partners: the print file, your delivery address and payment details.
The waitlist on this website
If you join the waitlist, we first send you one email with a link to confirm it was you; your address joins the list only when you open that link, and an unconfirmed address is deleted after seven days. On the list we keep your email address and the date you joined. We use it once, to tell you when Paper Years is available, and for nothing else. We keep it until the launch email has been sent, or until you ask us to remove it, whichever comes first. The list is kept in private storage in the EU with Vercel, which hosts this website, and the confirmation email is sent through Resend, our email provider. Each address is filed under a scrambled key, and only we can read it.
This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics, and its fonts come from the site itself, so a visit doesn't send anything to Google. Like every web host, Vercel processes your IP address to deliver the page and to protect it from attacks.
What we never do
- Show ads, or let advertisers track you, in the app or on this website.
- Sell or rent your data, or use your children's art to train AI models.
- Keep the photos you add once they have been cut.
The legal part
We process your data to provide the app's service when you use it (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). For the waitlist and for an email you leave when you tap Order we rely on your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time. Keeping our service secure is our legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f)). The services that process data for us are Google Cloud, where our engine runs in the EU, Vercel, for this website and the waitlist, and Resend, for the waitlist's confirmation email. All are bound by data processing agreements. Apple stores your collection in iCloud under your own account.
You have the right to access your data, to correct it, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to its processing, and to take a copy of it. Write to hello@paperyears.com and we will reply within 30 days. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live or work.
Paper Years is meant to be used by parents and other adults. We don't knowingly collect personal data from children under 16.
If this policy changes, we'll update the date above and, for any significant change, tell you in the app.