Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

When you use PicMotif, we may collect the following types of information:

• Account Information: Email address, username, and name when you create an account.
• Photos: Images you upload to create mosaics. These are stored on our servers to enable mosaic creation and saving.
• Mosaic Data: Your created mosaics, including shape selections, text messages, and rendering settings.
• Usage Data: Browser type, device information, and interactions with the platform to improve our service.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To provide and maintain the PicMotif service
• To store and render your photo mosaics
• To manage your account and enable sharing features
• To communicate with you about service updates
• To improve and optimize the platform

3. Photo Storage & Security

Your uploaded photos are stored securely on our servers. We take reasonable measures to protect your data, including:

• Encrypted data transmission (HTTPS)
• Secure password hashing using bcrypt
• Access controls to prevent unauthorized access to your content

Photos uploaded for mosaic creation are associated with your account. Unpublished mosaics and their photos are only accessible to you.

4. Importing Photos from Google Photos

If you choose to import photos from Google Photos, you sign in to Google and pick the photos you want inside Google’s own picker. We only ever receive the specific items you select there. PicMotif cannot browse, search, or list your Google Photos library, and we never see photos you did not choose.

• What we access — only the photos you select in the Google picker, requested with the read-only scope photospicker.mediaitems.readonly.
• What we do with them — each selected photo is copied into your PicMotif photo library and used solely to create and render your mosaics, exactly as if you had uploaded it from your device. It is stored and protected the same way, described in section 3.
• Metadata — we keep each photo’s capture date so your photos can be ordered sensibly. Google removes location data from downloaded photos, so imported photos carry no location.
• Your Google credentials — we never see or store your Google password. The temporary access token Google issues is held encrypted on our server only for the duration of the import, expires within about an hour, and is then deleted. We do not request or store long-lived refresh tokens, so PicMotif has no standing access to your Google account between imports.
• Revoking access — you can remove PicMotif’s access at any time from your Google account permissions. Photos you already imported stay in your PicMotif library until you delete them, the same as any other photo.

We do not use Google Photos data for advertising, we do not sell or transfer it, no human at PicMotif reads it, and we do not use it to develop, improve, or train generalized artificial intelligence or machine learning models. PicMotif’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

5. Sharing & Publishing

When you publish a mosaic, it becomes publicly discoverable on the picmotif.com website. Otherwise, only those who have the share link to your mosaic can view it. You control who to send share links to, as well as when to publish and make your mosaics discoverable on the picmotif.com website.

6. Data Retention

We retain your account data and mosaics as long as your account is active. You may delete individual mosaics at any time. First-party usage records (see section 7) are tied to your account or anonymous identifier and are deleted together with it. If you wish to delete your account entirely, please contact us at hello@picmotif.com.

7. Subprocessors

We use a small number of trusted third-party services to run PicMotif. We do not sell your personal information to anyone.

• Stripe — processes subscription payments. Stripe sees your billing contact info and card details; we never see or store raw card numbers.
• Resend — delivers our transactional emails (verification, password reset, order requests, contact-form notifications).
• Backblaze B2 — stores your uploaded photos, generated thumbnails, and rendered mosaics.

We may also use privacy-respecting analytics to understand aggregate platform usage; no analytics service has access to your photos or mosaic content.

Separately, PicMotif keeps its own first-party usage records of how its features are used — for example when a preview is rendered, shared or downloaded. These records are stored on our own servers, tied to your account or anonymous identifier, are never shared with any analytics service, and are used only to understand and improve the product.

8. Cookies

PicMotif uses three cookies, all for essential site functionality:

• picmotif-token — your session token after you log in. Used to keep you signed in for 7 days.
• picmotif-anon — a random identifier for anonymous visitors so we can preserve work-in-progress mosaics across page reloads and keep the first-party usage records described in section 7 (for example, that a preview was downloaded). Kept for 365 days.
• picmotif-anon-key — a security key that proves the anonymous identifier above was issued to your browser, so nobody else can use it to reach your work-in-progress. It cannot be read by scripts on the page. Kept for 365 days.

We do not use advertising, tracking, or third-party marketing cookies.

9. Email Communications

We send transactional emails: account verification, password reset, billing receipts, and responses to contact-form submissions. We do not send marketing emails unless you have separately opted in, and you can reach us any time to unsubscribe from anything non-essential.

10. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Correct inaccurate information
• Delete your account and associated data
• Export your mosaics

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify registered users of significant changes via email.

Your Choices

You can opt in or out of product analytics at any time. This choice is stored on this device and (once you’re signed in) with your account.

This setting controls third-party product analytics. The first-party usage records described in section 7 are kept regardless of this setting; they never leave PicMotif and are deleted with your account or anonymous identifier.

12. Contact Us

If you have questions about this privacy policy, please contact us at hello@picmotif.com or visit our Contact page.