Privacy Policy — CaptionYourPhoto apps

1. Who this policy covers

This policy describes the CaptionYourPhoto apps for Android and iOS, published by Sandbyte Technologies (www.sand-byte.com). In this policy, "we" and "our" mean Sandbyte Technologies, and "the app" means either app: both handle your information in the same way, and where the two platforms differ this policy says which.

It describes the app only. The CaptionYourPhoto website and the shop are separate services with their own terms; where the app hands you over to one of them, this policy says so.

This policy covers what happens to your information. What you may and may not make and share with the app is covered by the Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy.

2. Information we do not collect

The app does not ask for, and has no way to collect:

• your name, email address, phone number or postal address;
• any account or sign-in, because the app has none;
• your location;
• your contacts, calendar, call logs or messages;
• your advertising ID or any device identifier.

The app contains no advertising network, no analytics service and no crash-reporting service. Nothing in the app reports back to us about how you use it, and we have no way of counting, profiling or identifying individual users.

On Android the only permission the app requests is internet access, which it needs to fetch a mug mockup, upload an image you have chosen to share, and show the in-app image search. It does not request camera, location, contacts or storage permissions. On iOS the app asks only for access to the photo you pick, at the moment you pick it, and for nothing else.

3. Your photos

You choose the photos you work with, either from your device or through the in-app image search described in section 7. Everything the editor does to them happens on your phone:

• cropping, rotating, filters and the drawing effects;
• adding speech bubbles and text;
• face detection, which is used to decide where a speech bubble's tail should point;
• subject cut-out, which separates a person from their background.

Face detection and subject cut-out use Google's ML Kit, which runs on the device. Your photos are not uploaded for any of this work, and we never receive a photo simply because you opened it in the editor.

4. When an image leaves your phone

There are exactly two things that send an image to our server:

• Sharing a mug mockup. To show your design on a mug and give you a link to share, the finished image has to be on the server that produces the mockup.
• Going to the shop. Ordering a mug means the printed design has to reach the shop, so the image is uploaded and the shop link identifies it.

What gets sent, and nothing else, is:

• the finished captioned image, as a PNG — the picture with your bubbles and text on it;
• a hash of that image: a long string of letters and numbers calculated from the image itself (SHA-256), which names the folder the image is stored in.

The upload carries no name, no account, no device identifier and no advertising ID, because the app holds none of those. Our server stores the image and builds the mug mockups from it. As with any internet service, our web server may record ordinary request information such as the IP address the upload came from and the time it arrived; this is used to run and protect the service, not to identify you.

If you share the same image twice, the app checks whether it is already on the server and skips uploading it again.

5. Who can see an image you have shared

An uploaded image lives at an address built from its hash, and the link you share — the one that opens the mug in the shop — contains that hash:

• https://app.captionyourphoto.com/files/<hash>
• https://shop.captionyourphoto.com?caption=<hash>

The hash is not guessable, and our server offers no index, gallery or listing of uploaded images: there is no page anywhere that shows what has been uploaded, and no way to browse from one image to another. In practice that means only someone who has your link can see your image.

The other side of that is equally important: anyone who has the link can open it, without signing in. Whoever you send it to can pass it on. Please treat the link the way you would treat a public web address — share it only with people you are happy to have see the image, and do not put anything private or sensitive into an image you share.

6. How long we keep shared images

Images uploaded from the app are deleted from our server within two weeks of being uploaded. A link stops working once its image has been deleted. If you share the same design again afterwards, it is uploaded again and the two-week period starts over.

Deleting a shared image yourself

You do not have to wait for the two weeks, and you do not have to ask us. Go to https://app.captionyourphoto.com/delete and paste in any link to the image — the shop link you shared, the address of the picture itself, or just the long code from the end of either. It finds the image, shows it to you, and asks you to confirm.

Confirming deletes the image and the mug mockups built from it, immediately and permanently. Every link to it stops working at that moment, including links you have already sent to other people. Nothing on your phone is affected.

Anyone holding the link can do this, not only the person who created the image. That is deliberate: there are no accounts here, so we cannot tell one holder of a link from another, and we would rather someone who appears in a picture they did not want shared could take it down at once than make them wait on us. The trade-off is that a person you send a link to can delete it, which is another reason to treat the link as public.

If you have a mug in your basket at the shop, each one there carries its own Delete my image from the server link, which does the same thing for that design — and takes the mug out of your basket, since it can no longer be printed.

If neither works for you, email info@captionyourphoto.com with the link or the hash and we will delete it by hand.

Images you have not shared are never uploaded, so there is nothing on our server to delete.

7. In-app image search

The app can open Google Image Search, and Google's Gemini, inside a web view so you can find or generate a picture to caption. When you use it, you are using Google's service: your search terms and whatever else your browser session normally sends go to Google, and Google's own privacy policy applies to them. We do not receive your searches.

A picture you bring back from a search is treated exactly like a photo from your phone — it is yours to edit on the device, and it only leaves the device if you share or shop as described in section 4. You are responsible for making sure you have the right to use an image you import.

8. Buying a mug

Ordering opens shop.captionyourphoto.com in your browser. The purchase itself — your delivery address, your payment details, your order history — happens on that store, under the store's own privacy policy and the terms of its payment and printing providers. The app never sees or stores your payment details.

The store is a website, so unlike the app it uses cookies: a few that are strictly necessary for the basket and the currency, and optional ones you are asked about on your first visit. The store's privacy policy lists them by name. Refusing the optional ones does not stop you ordering.

9. What is stored on your phone

The app saves your work in progress — the images you have imported and the bubbles, text and settings on them — in its own private storage on your device, so that your design is still there when you come back to it. This stays on the phone.

Each platform's own backup may include a copy of that saved work: on Android, the backup the system makes to your Google account; on iOS, an iCloud or computer backup of the device. Those backups are made by the operating system, held in your Google or Apple account, and governed by Google's or Apple's privacy policy — we have no access to either. Both can be turned off in your device settings.

Uninstalling the app removes its saved work from your phone. It does not delete images you have already shared; those are removed on the two-week schedule in section 6, or on request.

The app sets no cookies — it is not a web browser. Neither does app.captionyourphoto.com, the address a shared image is uploaded to: it takes the picture and serves it back to whoever holds the link, and stores nothing on your device. The only part of this service that uses cookies is the shop, described in section 8.

10. Children

The app is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone. Because the app has no account and collects no personal details, there is no profile for a child — or anyone else — for us to hold.

11. Security

Uploads and downloads between the app and our server use encrypted HTTPS connections. Shared images are stored under unguessable hash-named folders that are not listed or linked anywhere. No internet service can promise perfect security, which is why section 5 asks you to treat a shared link as public.

12. Your choices and your rights

• Do not want anything uploaded? Do not use the mug mockup sharing or the shop. Everything else in the app works with no network connection at all.
• Want a shared image deleted? Go to https://app.captionyourphoto.com/delete, paste the link and confirm — it goes immediately. See section 6.
• Want your saved work gone? Uninstall the app — or, on Android, clear its storage in the system settings.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct or erase personal data we hold about you. We do not hold accounts or personal profiles, so in most cases there is nothing to access or correct — but if you believe we hold something about you, email info@captionyourphoto.com and we will answer.

13. We do not sell your data

We do not sell, rent or trade your images or any information about you, and we do not share images with anyone except as needed to run the features you have used — producing your mug mockup and fulfilling a mug you order. We may disclose information if the law requires it.

14. Google Play Data Safety summary

This is how the above maps to the Data Safety section of our Google Play listing. The App Store privacy labels for the iOS app say the same thing in Apple's wording: data is not collected for tracking, not linked to you, and no identifiers are gathered.

Data type	Collected	Shared	Notes
Photos and images	Yes — only when you share a mockup or shop	No	The finished captioned image is uploaded so a mug mockup can be built and a mug can be printed. Not collected for editing. Deleted within two weeks. Not linked to any identity. Optional: the rest of the app works without it.
Personal info (name, email, address)	No	No	The app has no account and asks for no personal details.
Location	No	No	No location permission is requested.
App activity / analytics	No	No	No analytics or advertising services are present in the app.
Crash logs and diagnostics	No	No	No crash-reporting service is present in the app.
Device or other IDs	No	No	No advertising ID or device identifier is read or sent.

Data is encrypted in transit. You can request deletion of a shared image by email, as described in section 6.

15. Changes to this policy

If we change how the app handles your information, we will update this page and change the "last updated" date at the top. Substantial changes will be noted in the app's release notes on Google Play.

16. Contact us

Questions about this policy, or about an image you have shared:
info@captionyourphoto.com
Sandbyte Technologies — www.sand-byte.com
20 Ailesbury Drive, Dublin 4, Ireland
+353 86 106 1660