GlowSync is a photo editor for editing photos together with friends. This policy explains what information GlowSync collects, why, who can see it, how long we keep it and the choices you have. We've tried to write it plainly. If anything is unclear, write to us at support@glowsync.me.
The short version
- Where editing happens. GlowSync analyzes and edits photos on your device. In a shared edit, the GlowSync apps of the people editing together do this work; GlowSync's servers don't.
- The photos we receive. GlowSync's servers receive only the photos in shared edits and your profile photo, without location or camera details. Style learning keeps a description of each photo you finish editing, never the photo or its location (section 3.13).
- Faces. Faces are never used for ads, and GlowSync's servers never receive faceprints. In a shared edit, we receive where each person's face appears in the photos and which face each person picked (section 4). Style learning keeps the Beauty settings you choose for each face, how many faces a photo shows and roughly how large they are, and, in a shared edit, which face is yours, never where a face sits or its shape (section 3.13).
- Friends can find you. People on GlowSync who have your phone number in their contacts, or who search for your username, can see that you're on GlowSync, with your username and profile photo (section 3.2).
- Invitations show the edit. Anyone who opens an invitation to a shared edit in the app sees the host's name, username and profile photo, up to six of its photos and who else is in it or invited (section 5).
- No ads, no tracking, no selling. GlowSync shows no ads, doesn't track you across other companies' apps or websites, and doesn't sell your personal information.
- Optional analytics. Usage analytics and crash reports are off unless you turn them on. Our own records of account and shared-edit events, and the measurement of our Premium pages, don't depend on that switch (sections 3.6 and 3.9).
- No AI training on your photos. Your photos aren't used to train AI models.
- Style learning. While it's on for your account, when you finish editing photos we keep how you edited them, a description of each photo made on your iPhone and most of your sign-up answers, never the photos themselves, to train GlowSync AI on your style. For new accounts it's on unless you turn it off in Profile › Personalization (section 3.13).
- Deleting your account. Once you've finished signing up, you can delete your account in the app at any time. A few records stay afterwards; section 11 lists them.
- Your rights. Wherever you live, you can ask for a copy of your information, have it corrected or deleted, and object to how we use it (section 12). Bronze Cut Studio, Inc. is responsible for your information (section 1).
1. Who we are
GlowSync is provided by Bronze Cut Studio, Inc. ("GlowSync", "we", "us"). We decide how and why your personal information is used, so under European and UK data protection law we are its "controller".
This policy covers the GlowSync app for iPhone, our website glowsync.me (including its invitation and referral pages) and e-mail you send us.
You can reach us at support@glowsync.me.
2. Editing, your photo library and your answers
- GlowSync analyzes and edits photos on your device. In other words, it finds what's in your photos, such as faces, applies your edits and draws the result. In a shared edit, the GlowSync apps of the people editing together do this work (section 4). Your iPhone also describes each photo you finish editing, such as its light and the kind of setting it shows, for Style learning (section 3.13).
- GlowSync asks for access to your photo library and camera so you can pick, take, edit and save photos, and to your microphone to record sound with camera videos. GlowSync's servers receive only the photos in shared edits and your profile photo (see section 3).
- During sign-up, GlowSync also asks how you identify, your birth year, which editing styles you like, what you want to use GlowSync for and how you heard about us. For Style learning, GlowSync's servers receive your answers about how you identify, your birth year (and whether you moved the year wheel), your editing styles and what you want to use GlowSync for (section 3.13). Your answer about how you heard about us stays on your device.
- GlowSync never asks for your device's location, and the photos we receive carry no location details. Style learning never records location of any kind (section 3.13). Our Premium-pages provider may work out an approximate location from your IP address (section 3.6).
3. What we collect, and why
3.1 Your account
You create an account by signing in with Apple, Google or your e-mail address, and by verifying a phone number. We collect:
- Your name and e-mail address, from Apple or Google, or the ones you enter. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we receive that relay address instead of your own.
- Sign-in details: an ID from Apple or Google, our own account IDs, and a record of each sign-in: when it happened, which service you used, and the details that service shared with us at that moment, such as your name, e-mail address and profile-picture link. A service provider runs sign-in accounts for us (section 8). If you sign in with e-mail, we send you a sign-in code by e-mail; while the code is waiting to be used, we keep your address in encrypted form. If you use Sign in with Apple and stop using it with GlowSync, we sign you out; if you delete your Apple Account, we delete your GlowSync account.
- Your phone number. You confirm it with a code we send by text message through our text-message provider. We keep the verified number with your account.
- Your username and profile photo. We give you a username, which you can change in Profile › Username. A profile photo is optional; when you add one, we receive it without location or camera details. When you change or remove it, the old one is deleted.
Why: to create and secure your account, sign you in, let the people you edit with recognize you, and provide the features you use.
3.2 Finding and inviting friends
- Your contacts, only if you allow it. GlowSync shows your contacts so you can invite friends. To show who's already on GlowSync, we check only phone numbers with our server, never names, and don't keep them. Our server turns them into a protected form, compares them with the verified numbers of GlowSync accounts and sends back the matches.
- How friends find you. If someone on GlowSync has your verified phone number in their contacts, GlowSync can show them that you're on GlowSync, with your username and profile photo. Anyone on GlowSync can also find you by searching for your username. We don't keep what people search for.
- Invitations. You can invite people who already use GlowSync from the app (they get an invitation in the app and a notification), or share an invitation link yourself, for example in Messages. GlowSync doesn't text or e-mail your contacts. People you invite in the app can be seen by others who open that edit's invitation (section 5).
3.3 Shared edits
A shared edit is a set of photos that several people edit together. Each person retouches only their own face and chooses the look of their own copy of the finished photos: its filter, adjustments and crop, and any objects removed. Each person's app applies that look to their own copy; the look isn't shared with the others.
If you start a shared edit (you are its "host"), we receive:
- the photos you add, without location or camera details;
- where each face appears in each photo (see section 4);
- who you invite in the app (we note each invitation with that person's username);
- your invitation link, which we store only in scrambled form;
- your choices as host, such as the deadline, pausing new people from joining, removing people, and finishing or extending the edit.
If you join a shared edit, as a member or a guest, we receive:
- the name you use in that edit;
- which face you pick as yours. Your pick is saved with that shared edit; if Style learning is on for your account, it also notes your pick (section 3.13);
- your retouching, such as how strong each retouch is and its brush strokes, including, for each face you edit, the rectangle where your GlowSync app found that face;
- whether you're done;
- when the edit is finished, the finished photos, which the GlowSync apps of the people editing together create and upload for everyone.
Why: to run the shared edit you asked for, so that each person's retouching applies only to their own face and everyone gets the finished photos with everyone's retouching. With Style learning, your pick also tells us which face in the edit's photos is yours (section 3.13).
3.4 Notifications
If you allow notifications, we receive your device's notification token. We keep your notification settings (including settings for each shared edit and for each person), your language and time zone so notifications use your language and local time, and which shared edit you have open so we don't notify you about something you're already looking at.
3.5 GlowSync Premium purchases
You buy GlowSync Premium through Apple. We receive the details of your subscription from Apple: the plan, when it started, renews or ended, and its price and App Store country. Apple doesn't give us your name, your Apple Account or your payment details. A random ID connects your purchase to your GlowSync account. We also record Premium time you receive as a reward.
Why: to give you Premium, restore it when you reinstall, and keep records of purchases.
3.6 Premium pages
We use a service provider (our "Premium-pages provider") to show the pages where you can get Premium and to learn which of those pages work. Its service starts only after you've accepted our Terms of Service and this policy: when you continue from the welcome screen to sign up or sign in, or from an invitation to a shared edit to join as a guest or sign in (section 4). From then on, it starts whenever you open the app, whether or not you've turned on usage analytics (section 3.8), because it is how Premium is offered in the app. The provider receives your GlowSync account ID once you've signed in, the ID Apple gives GlowSync for your device, details about your device and app (such as the model, iOS version, language, region settings and App Store country), whether you have Premium, the details the Premium pages use (such as whether you can get a free trial and, when you reach the monthly limit, how many shared edits you've hosted this month), and which Premium pages you see and what you buy. The provider can also work out your approximate location, such as your country or city, from your device's IP address. We don't connect the provider to any advertising or install-attribution service.
Why: to show you the right Premium options, start purchases through Apple, and understand which Premium pages work.
3.7 Referrals (when we run a referral program)
If you enter a friend's referral code, or open their referral link, while you sign up, we record the code and who referred you, and we add Premium time for both of you when the conditions shown in the app are met. When you get your own code, use one, or join a shared edit through an invitation that counts as a referral, we keep a scrambled version of the ID the app creates for your device, to spot rewards being collected repeatedly from one device. The person who referred you sees how many friends joined and were rewarded, not who they are.
3.8 Usage analytics and crash reports, only if you turn them on
In Profile › Personalization, "Share usage & diagnostics" stays off until you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time. While it's on:
- Usage analytics: which features you use, whether your edits succeed, how you use invitations and notifications, and your Premium purchases (such as the plan, price and App Store country), with your app version, iOS version and language and random IDs that don't show your name or e-mail address. Our servers keep these and pass them to our analytics provider. Photos, face and body measurements, and detailed edit shapes are never included.
- Crash reports: when the app crashes or runs slowly, it sends our crash-reporting provider technical details, such as where in the app the problem happened and your app and iOS versions, with a random ID. Crash reports don't include your name, e-mail address, account ID, photos or screenshots.
Style learning (section 3.13) is separate from this switch and isn't part of usage analytics.
3.9 Keeping GlowSync safe and working
- A device ID. The app creates a random ID for your iPhone and sends it with its requests, to secure your account and limit abuse. Deleting GlowSync doesn't remove this ID from the iPhone; erasing the iPhone does, and the ID isn't carried over to a new iPhone.
- App verification. To check that requests come from the genuine GlowSync app, your iPhone uses a security check that Apple provides in iOS, and one of our service providers verifies it (section 8). This doesn't identify you.
- Your IP address. Our servers use it only briefly. To limit repeated attempts, such as requests for sign-in codes, we keep a scrambled code made from it for up to about an hour. We don't store your IP address with your account. Our hosting and network providers see IP addresses when your device connects to them.
- Event records. We keep a record of account and shared-edit events, such as when an edit was created or finished, to run GlowSync, fix problems, prevent abuse and produce statistics about how GlowSync is used.
- Logs. Our app servers keep logs for 7 days, and we write them so that they never contain sign-in codes or invitation links. Our website host keeps request logs for up to 1 day; they include the address of the page you open, and for an invitation that address contains the invitation link.
3.10 Joining as a guest
You can join a shared edit you're invited to without creating an account. We create a temporary guest account for you and record that you accepted our Terms of Service and this policy. We collect what section 3.3 describes for people who join. If you later create an account, your part in the edit moves to it. Guest accounts are deleted automatically after 30 days without use; if a shared edit you're in is still in progress, we wait up to 90 more days.
3.11 When you write to us
If you e-mail us, we use your e-mail address and your message to answer you. Our e-mail is hosted by an e-mail provider (section 8).
3.12 Our website
glowsync.me uses no cookies, ads or analytics. When you open an invitation link there, the page shows who invited you and how many photos there are. To limit abuse, it uses a code made from your IP address that changes every day. Our website host processes your IP address to deliver its pages and keeps short request logs (section 3.9).
3.13 Style learning
Style learning helps train GlowSync AI on your editing style, so GlowSync can learn how you like your photos to look and improve its editing tools. It covers signed-in accounts, never guests. For accounts created, or upgraded from a guest account, since Style learning was added to this policy on September 29, 2026, it's on unless you turn it off; for older accounts, it's off unless you turn it on. Its switch is "Personalize editing to your style", in Profile › Personalization.
What we keep. While it's on, each time you finish editing photos in GlowSync's photo editor, on your own or in a shared edit you host or joined, we keep a record of your part of that edit. Finishing the same edit again usually adds a record only if you changed something. A record holds:
- The edit: a random ID for the record and another that ties it to Style learning being turned on for your account, the version numbers of the app, this policy and the record's format, the date you finished (never the time), the app's language, whether you had Premium, whether it was your own edit or a shared edit you hosted or joined, how many photos it had, and the Explore template it started from, if any.
- The look you ended with: the filter and its strength, your Adjust settings, including color and curves, the export size, and whether you used a brush on a photo or added text, stickers or other layers (never the text, the marks or where anything sits).
- Framing and clean-up, for each photo: the crop shape, rotation, flips, straightening and perspective correction, and roughly how much of the photo you kept (never which part); how many times you used Remove, by type, and the brush size (never where); and the settings of any part of the photo you adjusted on its own (never where that part is).
- Each photo's source and shape: whether it came from your photo library, GlowSync's camera, a sample photo or a shared edit; for a photo taken with GlowSync's camera, the camera look you chose there, such as its beauty preset, filter and warmth; and whether the photo is portrait, landscape or square, with its aspect ratio.
- A description of each photo, made on your iPhone from its pixels: its light and color before and after your edit, such as brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, tint, sharpness and how its tones and colors are spread; the kind of setting it seems to show, such as a beach, a concert, a restaurant, a bar or a wedding, and up to ten words for what it shows from a fixed list of everyday scenes and things, such as food, sky or snow, each with how sure your iPhone is; and, where your iPhone supports it, a score for how the photo looks overall and whether it's a practical picture, such as a screenshot or a document.
- Faces: how many faces your iPhone finds in each photo and, for up to ten of them, a number from left to right, roughly how large each is and which is largest; the Beauty settings you chose for each face, such as smoothing, makeup and its colors, and reshaping, and the Beauty look they match; how many repair and reshape strokes you made and how strong they were (never where); each Beauty change you made to a face, with its value before and after; and, in a shared edit, which of these faces is the one you picked as yours.
- How you got there: which tools you opened, in what order and for about how long; each change you applied, with its value before and after; how often you cancelled, undid or redid a change or compared before and after; the looks you tried before the one you kept; how long the whole edit took and how many times you opened it; and, in app versions that record them, the timing of each step, how you moved each control, how long you looked at each look you tried and compared before and after, and how many times you tried a Premium tool you don't have.
- How it ended: whether you saved the result to Photos or shared it, and how you shared it (such as Messages, Mail, AirDrop, Save to Photos or Copy, or another app, never which app).
- Your sign-up answers and favorites: how you identify, your birth year and whether you moved the year wheel, the editing styles you like and what you want to use GlowSync for, if you answered in the app on that iPhone; and the looks you've marked as favorites and the Explore templates you've liked, with what you added or removed since the last record (only what you changed, when that iPhone's favorites and likes may not all be yours).
What we never keep. Style learning never keeps:
- your photos in any form: not the pixels, a smaller copy or part of a photo, or a code made from one;
- exactly where a face is in a photo, its shape, the position of its features, its angle or expression, anything about the person worked out from their face, such as age, gender or skin tone, or who someone is (the gender and birth year it keeps are your own sign-up answers);
- the marks and masks you draw, which part of a photo you kept or adjusted, where text, stickers or other layers sit, or the text you type;
- location of any kind: where a photo was taken, where you are, your time zone or your App Store country;
- a photo's technical details, such as the lens, exposure or flash, when it was taken or how old it is, or your phone's model;
- the names or IDs of your photos, files, drafts or shared edits, what time of day you edited, or the ID our usage analytics use;
- your name, e-mail address, username or phone number, how you sign in, how you heard about us, or a referral code;
- other people's edits, names, photos, IDs, usernames or contacts, or which app you shared to;
- the age range Apple may tell GlowSync (section 13);
- scene words for religious symbols or religious holidays; medical care or disability aids; alcoholic drinks, such as beer or wine; tobacco or drugs; gambling; weapons or combat; political symbols, the military or the police; a person's age group or family role, such as a baby or a bride; traditional or ethnic dress, such as a kimono or a sari; the body, such as swimwear or tattoos; or death.
Why. To train GlowSync AI to learn your editing style and apply it for you, and to improve GlowSync's editing tools and AI. Learning your style is a kind of profiling of your editing preferences; we never use it for decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects. We don't use it for ads, don't sell it, and never give it to other companies for their own use, including AI companies. Our hosting providers (section 8) store it for us.
Linked to your account. We keep your records under a random ID linked to your account, never your name or contact details, so we can delete them when you ask and use them for features that learn your style. Copies we prepare for training carry nothing that names you.
How long. We keep each record for up to 3 years after we receive it. When you turn Style learning off or delete your account, we delete your records; copies in our encrypted backups are deleted within 40 days, and copies we prepared for training within 90 days. A style model or profile made for you alone is deleted then too. AI models trained on many people's records keep what they learned; they contain no photos and are never used to identify anyone.
On your iPhone. The app keeps each record on your iPhone until it's sent to our servers, for at most 90 days, and deletes the records when you turn Style learning off or delete your account. After you sign out, they wait on the iPhone until you sign in again; deleting the app removes them.
Turning it off. Turn off "Personalize editing to your style" in Profile › Personalization at any time. The app stops recording and deletes the records it hasn't sent, we delete the ones we have, and nothing else in GlowSync changes.
Your setting. We also keep a record of each time Style learning is turned on or off for your account: when, in which app version and under which version of this policy, with a scrambled form of a random ID the app makes only for Style learning on that iPhone. We keep these while your account exists; section 11 says what stays after you delete it.
4. Faces
- Finding faces. GlowSync finds the faces in your photos so you can edit each one. GlowSync analyzes and edits photos on your device. In a shared edit, the GlowSync apps of the people editing together find the faces in the edit's photos and, when the edit is finished, create the finished photos with everyone's retouching. GlowSync's servers do neither.
- Accepting face-aware editing. When you create an account, or join a shared edit as a guest, you accept the Terms and this Policy, including face-aware editing as described here. When you join someone else's shared edit, the screen where you pick your face tells you that your pick is saved with that shared edit. If Style learning is on for your account, it also notes which face you picked (section 3.13).
- In a shared edit. To tell which faces in the edit's photos belong to the same person, the host's GlowSync app compares the faces. That comparison is used only to group the faces, is discarded as soon as they're grouped, and GlowSync's servers never receive it. When you share an edit, GlowSync receives the photos and, for each person, a rectangle marking where their face appears in each photo. Each person who joins taps the face that's theirs. Their pick is saved with the shared edit, so their retouching applies only to their own face. The edits each person sends include, for each face they edit, the rectangle where their app found it.
- What we never do. We never use face data for advertising, marketing or identifying who someone is, and we never give it to advertising platforms, analytics providers or data brokers. GlowSync's servers never receive faceprints or the positions of facial features. Style learning keeps the Beauty settings you choose for each face, how many faces a photo shows, roughly how large they are and, in a shared edit, which face is yours, never where a face sits or its shape (section 3.13).
- People who don't use GlowSync. A shared edit's photos can show people who aren't in the edit. The rectangles marking their faces are part of the host's shared edit. When you start a shared edit, you confirm that the people shown in the photos have agreed to be in it (see our Terms of Service).
- How long. Face rectangles and picks are kept with the shared edit. A person's pick is removed when they leave the edit before it's finished, or when they delete their account. When the host deletes their account, the edit's photos and face rectangles are deleted.
- Changed your mind? You can stop using Beauty and shared edits at any time. To take back your pick in someone else's shared edit, leave it before it's finished; deleting your account removes all your picks and edits. To stop Style learning, turn it off in Profile › Personalization; we then delete what it kept (section 3.13). You can also write to us (section 12).
5. Shared edits: who sees what
- People in the edit see its photos, each other's names (the name each person uses in that edit) and profile photos, which face each person picked, who has finished, and the finished photos.
- People who open an invitation. Someone who opens an invitation in the GlowSync app, whether you invited them in the app or sent them a link, can see your name, username and profile photo, up to six of the edit's photos, and who else is in it or has been invited in the app (their names, usernames and profile photos) before deciding to join. While you've paused new people from joining, they don't see the photos. On glowsync.me, and in the link's preview in apps like Messages, an invitation link shows only your name and how many photos there are. Share invitation links only with people you want in the edit.
- The host is in charge of who joins. The host can replace a link, pause new people from joining and remove people. Invitation links also expire on their own.
- Finished photos. Everyone in the edit can save the finished photos to their Photos library and share them. Deleting can't reach copies someone already saved — for example, a finished photo a member saved to their Photos library or shared elsewhere.
6. How we use information, and what we never do
We use information to:
- run your account, shared edits, invitations, notifications, Premium and referrals;
- keep GlowSync secure, prevent abuse and fix problems;
- answer you when you write to us;
- understand and improve GlowSync: with statistics from our event records, with the measurement of our Premium pages (section 3.6), and with usage analytics and crash reports only if you turned them on;
- train GlowSync AI on your editing style and improve GlowSync's editing tools and AI, with Style learning (section 3.13);
- meet our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.
We never:
- sell your personal information;
- show you ads, or share your information for advertising;
- track you across other companies' apps or websites;
- use your photos to train AI models;
- use face data for advertising, marketing or identifying who someone is.
7. Our legal bases (European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland)
| What we do | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Your account, sign-in and sign-in records, phone check, shared edits (including finding faces, the face rectangles and the picks of the people in the edit), invitations, notifications you allow, Premium purchases and the referral program you take part in | Performing our contract with you |
| Showing you to people who have your number or search for your username; checking your contacts' numbers for you; storing where the faces of people who aren't in an edit appear; showing the people invited in the app to others who open the edit's invitation | Our legitimate interest, and yours, in helping friends find each other and edit their shared photos |
| Security, preventing abuse and fraud, rate limits, logs, and the website's invitation page | Our legitimate interest in keeping GlowSync and its users safe |
| Event records and the statistics we make from them | Our legitimate interest in running and improving GlowSync |
| Style learning (section 3.13) | Our legitimate interest in improving GlowSync's editing tools and AI; you can object at any time by turning it off in Profile › Personalization |
| Our Premium pages and their measurement (section 3.6) | Performing our contract with you when you buy; our legitimate interest in offering Premium and learning which pages work |
| Usage analytics and crash reports | Your consent, which you can withdraw at any time in Profile › Personalization |
| Answering e-mails you send us | Our legitimate interest in answering you, and our contract with you when you write about your account |
| Purchase records, the record that an account was deleted, and answering legal requests | Our legal obligations and our legitimate interest in keeping accurate records and keeping deleted accounts deleted |
You can object to what we do on the basis of legitimate interests; see "Your right to object" in section 12.
You need to give us your name, an e-mail address or an Apple or Google sign-in, and a verified phone number to create an account. Without them you can't create an account; you can still join a shared edit you're invited to as a guest. We don't make decisions about you based only on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
8. Who we share information with
The people you edit with, as described in section 5.
Our service providers. We use the kinds of service providers below. They process information only to provide their services to us:
| Provider | What they do for us | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud hosting, database, storage and network providers | Run our servers and database and host our website; store photos, our event records and our encrypted database backups; route and protect connections to our servers | The United States for our servers, database and website; North America for other stored data; a global network for connections |
| Sign-in service provider | Runs sign-in accounts | United States |
| App-verification provider | Checks that requests come from the genuine app | United States |
| Text-message provider | Sends phone verification codes by text message | United States |
| E-mail providers | Send sign-in code e-mails and host our e-mail, including the e-mails you send us | United States |
| Premium-pages provider | Shows Premium pages and measures how they're used | United States |
| Analytics provider | Usage analytics, only if you turn them on | United States |
| Crash-reporting provider | Crash reports, only if you turn them on | United States |
Each of these providers is bound by an agreement with us to use your information only for the service it provides to us and to protect it at least as well as this policy does.
Apple and Google, when you choose them. If you sign in with Apple or Google, buy Premium through the App Store, or receive notifications, Apple or Google also processes your information under their own privacy policies.
Legal reasons. We may disclose information if the law requires it, for example to answer a valid legal request.
If GlowSync changes hands. If GlowSync is sold or merged, your information may move to the new owner, who must respect this policy.
We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for advertising.
9. International transfers
We are based in the United States. GlowSync's servers are in the United States, and our service providers process information mainly in the United States and elsewhere in North America, whose data protection rules may differ from those where you live. When we transfer personal information from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK and Swiss additions) in our agreements with providers, or on a provider's certification under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.
10. How long we keep information
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Your account: name, e-mail address, username, phone number, profile photo and settings | While your account exists. Section 11 explains what happens when you delete it. |
| Sign-in records | While your account exists. |
| Shared edits you host: photos, face rectangles and picks, everyone's edits, finished photos | While your account exists. We may delete an ended edit's original photos and edits sooner; its finished photos stay as long as your account does. Section 11 explains what happens when you delete your account. |
| Your part in someone else's shared edit | While the host's account exists. Your face pick is removed if you leave before the edit is finished; your edits, pick and the name you used are deleted when you delete your account. After the host deletes their account, only a record that you took part remains (internal IDs and dates; no photos, edits or names). |
| Invitations | An invitation that isn't answered expires 7 days after it was sent. The record that it was sent stays with the shared edit. |
| Photos uploaded for a shared edit that was never started | Until you delete your account, or sooner. |
| Guest accounts | Deleted automatically after 30 days without use, or up to 90 days later while a shared edit they're in is still in progress. |
| E-mail sign-in codes | A code works for 10 minutes. The request, with your address in encrypted form, is deleted about 15 minutes after that. A scrambled form of the address is kept for 30 days to handle delivery problems. |
| Delivery records of the codes we send by text message and e-mail | Kept by our text-message and e-mail providers under their own retention policies. |
| Your contacts' phone numbers and username searches | Not kept. |
| App Store purchase records | Kept as records of purchases, without a set end date. After you delete your account they're no longer connected to it. |
| Referral device codes | Deleted with your account. Codes attached to a reward that was given are cleared 365 days after the reward. |
| Premium-page data (section 3.6) | Kept by our Premium-pages provider under its own retention rules, until we ask it to delete it. To have it deleted, write to us — if you can, before you delete your account, so we can tell the provider which data is yours. |
| Usage analytics (only if turned on) | As long as they help us improve GlowSync. When you delete your account, we erase them or remove your ID from them, and ask our analytics provider to erase them too. |
| Style learning records | Up to 3 years after we receive each one. Deleted when you turn Style learning off or delete your account, and copies prepared for training within 90 days after that (section 3.13). On your iPhone, until they're sent to us, for at most 90 days. |
| Crash reports (only if turned on) | Up to 90 days, at our crash-reporting provider. |
| Event records | Without a set end date. When you delete your account, your ID is removed from them or they're erased, apart from rare records of support actions our team took, which keep internal IDs but nothing that names you. |
| App server logs | 7 days. |
| Website request logs | Up to 1 day, at our website host. |
| IP address codes for rate limits | Up to about an hour. |
| E-mails you send us | We keep support e-mails only as long as we need them to handle your request and any follow-up, and no longer than 24 months after your last message. |
| Encrypted database backups | Deleted automatically within 40 days. |
11. Deleting your account
Once you've finished signing up, you can delete your account in the app at any time: Profile › Account › Delete account. To confirm, you'll be asked to sign in again.
- If you didn't finish signing up, Profile isn't available yet. Write to us and we'll delete the account, or finish signing up and delete it in the app.
- Guest accounts are deleted automatically (section 3.10). If you joined as a guest and want your guest account deleted sooner, write to us with who invited you, the name you joined with and roughly when, so we can find it.
When you delete your account, we erase your data from our systems, apart from what's listed under "What stays" below; copies in our encrypted backups are deleted automatically within 40 days.
What we delete: your sign-in account and sign-in records, your username, account name and verified phone number, profile photo, edits, face picks and the names you used in shared edits, your devices and notification settings, your Style learning records, and the link between your Apple subscription and your account. You're removed from every shared edit, and in-app invitations sent to you that you hadn't answered are withdrawn. If you signed in with Apple and delete your account in the app, we also revoke GlowSync's access to your Apple Account. We ask our analytics provider to erase your usage analytics.
If you host shared edits, they end, and their photos, including the finished photos, and their face rectangles are deleted for everyone, and the names and invitation usernames in them are removed. Copies people already saved aren't affected.
Deleting your account doesn't cancel a Premium subscription. Cancel it in your Apple Account settings.
What stays
We keep the following without a set end date, unless a period is given:
- If you delete your account, the finished photos of shared edits you took part in stay with the host for as long as the host's account exists; your sign-in account, profile photo, edits, face picks and the name you used in those edits are deleted.
- Deleting can't reach copies someone already saved — for example, a finished photo a member saved to their Photos library or shared elsewhere.
- A minimal internal record that an account existed and was deleted (internal IDs and dates, nothing that names you), kept so the account stays deleted even if we restore a backup.
- For each shared edit you hosted, a record that it existed and who took part — internal IDs and dates only, without its photos, edits, names, invitation usernames or face rectangles.
- Purchase and referral records: App Store purchase records, which are no longer connected to your account, and referral records, from which your account is removed (section 10 explains the referral device codes).
- Records of your Style learning setting: whether it was on or off for your account, when, and in which app and policy version, no longer connected to your account.
- E-mail delivery safety: if our e-mail provider told us that an e-mail to you bounced or was marked as spam, a scrambled form of the address, so we don't send to it again.
- Temporary copies: for up to 24 hours, a copy of a reply our servers sent to someone else's app — which can include the name or username you used — is kept so that app can safely retry a request; it's then deleted automatically.
- At our service providers: they delete what they hold for us on their own schedules; crash reports, for example, are kept for up to 90 days at our crash-reporting provider, and our Premium-pages provider keeps Premium-page data until we ask it to delete it (section 10). If you'd like us to ask a provider to delete something sooner, write to us.
12. Your choices and rights
In the app
- Usage analytics and crash reports: Profile › Personalization › Share usage & diagnostics.
- Style learning: Profile › Personalization › Personalize editing to your style.
- Notifications: Profile › Notifications, and the iOS Settings app.
- Contacts, photos, camera and microphone: the iOS Settings app › GlowSync.
- Your username and profile photo: Profile.
- Leave a shared edit, or as its host, remove people or stop new people joining.
- Delete your account: Profile › Account › Delete account.
By e-mail. Write to support@glowsync.me to ask for a copy of your information, to correct it, to delete it, to limit how we use it, to receive it in a portable format, or to withdraw your consent. We answer within one month, and tell you if we need more time as the law allows. We may need to confirm it's you, for example by asking you to write from the e-mail address on your account. Requests are free.
Your right to object. Where we rely on our legitimate interests (section 7) — for example, showing you to people who have your number, the contacts check, the face rectangles of people who aren't in an edit, our event records, Style learning, security, and the measurement of our Premium pages — you can object at any time by writing to support@glowsync.me. We'll stop unless we have compelling reasons to continue, and we'll tell you what we decided. You can also object to Style learning by turning it off in Profile › Personalization. If you object to being found by your phone number, we stop matching your number with other people's contacts. An app that already found you that way may still show you for up to a day, and people can still find you by searching for your username.
Wherever you live. We honor these requests for everyone, wherever you live. If you're in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you can also complain to your data protection authority.
U.S. state privacy rights. If you live in California or another U.S. state with a consumer privacy law, you can ask to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose, and to delete or correct it. We don't sell or share your personal information (as those laws define "sell" and "share"), and we don't use sensitive personal information for purposes that would give you a right to limit its use. We won't treat you differently for using your rights. An authorized agent can make a request for you with your written permission. If we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer; if we deny your appeal, you can contact your state's attorney general. Nevada residents can send requests to support@glowsync.me; we don't sell covered information.
In the last 12 months we collected these categories of personal information, from you, your device, the people you edit with, Apple and Google, and our service providers, for the purposes in section 6, and we keep each for the periods in section 10:
- identifiers: name, e-mail address, phone number, username, account and device IDs, IP address;
- characteristics of protected classifications: gender and age (your sign-up answers);
- commercial information: your Premium purchases;
- internet or other electronic network activity: how you use the app, including our event records, usage analytics if you turned them on, and your Premium page views;
- audio or visual information: the photos you add to shared edits, your profile photo, where faces appear in shared-edit photos and which face is yours, and Style learning's face facts: how many faces a photo shows, roughly how large they are and the Beauty settings you choose for each;
- approximate location worked out from your IP address by our Premium-pages provider;
- inferences about your editing preferences;
- other information you give us: your edits and settings, and messages you send us.
We disclose these to our service providers (section 8); to other GlowSync users as sections 3.2 and 5 describe; to Apple and Google when you use their services; and when the law requires it.
GlowSync doesn't let advertising or analytics companies collect information about your activity across other companies' apps or websites. Because we don't track you across websites, our website responds the same way whether or not your browser sends a "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control signal.
13. Children
GlowSync isn't for children under 13, and our Terms of Service don't allow them to use it. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 is using GlowSync, write to us. We'll look into it and delete the account if it belongs to a child under 13.
When Apple tells GlowSync that an age-assurance law applies to your Apple Account (for example, some accounts in Texas), GlowSync, on iOS versions that offer this check, asks Apple for your age range each time it starts. The check happens on your device: GlowSync doesn't keep your age range and doesn't send it to us or to anyone else. If Apple's answer shows you're under 13, GlowSync can't be used on that device: it signs out of any account and clears the app's caches there. The account's drafts and profile photo stay on the device, hidden, until that account signs in again; deleting the app removes them. None of this deletes the account itself: a parent or guardian can write to us (section 16) to ask us to delete an existing GlowSync account.
14. Security
- Connections to GlowSync and our providers are encrypted in transit.
- Our storage providers encrypt the data they store for us, and our database backups are encrypted with a key that is kept offline.
- We store invitation links only in scrambled form, and only our servers can recreate a link. Your e-mail address is encrypted while a sign-in code is waiting to be used.
- Requests from the app carry a security check that they come from the genuine GlowSync app.
- Access to our production systems is limited to the people who run GlowSync.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we'll tell you and the authorities where the law requires it.
15. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change matters, we'll give notice before it takes effect, for example in an app update or on this page.
16. Contact us
Bronze Cut Studio, Inc.
support@glowsync.me