Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 3, 2026
Sidecar Photo provides a service that turns travel photos into structured, shareable albums. This policy explains how our website and mobile application collect, use, and protect information.
Information We Collect
We collect information necessary to operate the service.
This may include:
- Account information such as email address and login credentials
- Photos and videos you choose to upload or connect from external sources
- Photo metadata such as timestamps, device information, or GPS location when available
- Information derived from photos you make available to the mobile application, including photos you add to the curation flow, such as visual features, embeddings, quality measurements, similarity information, subjects or scenes, non-identifying facial attributes such as whether eyes are open or a person is smiling, and recommendation scores
- Photo-selection activity, such as which photos you select, skip, remove, or accept
- Album content generated from your photos
- Basic usage information such as browser type, device type, IP address, and access logs
How We Use Information
We use information to operate and improve the service, including:
- Processing photos to generate albums
- Organizing photos into moments based on time and location
- Ranking photos, identifying likely keepers, reducing duplicate or low-quality suggestions, and personalizing recommendations
- Generating album titles, summaries, or text descriptions
- Providing album viewing and sharing functionality
- Maintaining, securing, testing, evaluating, developing, and improving the service and related features
Photo Library Analysis
With your permission, the mobile application accesses and analyzes the photos and videos you make available to it. This analysis runs on all photos selected as input to the curation step.
Original photos you do not select for upload remain on your device and are not uploaded to Sidecar Photo. Derived information about those photos and your selection activity may be transmitted to and retained by Sidecar Photo.
You can limit or revoke the application's access to your photo library through your device settings. Doing so stops future analysis of photos that are no longer available to the application, but does not automatically delete information already transmitted to us.
Machine Learning and Personalization
We use automated systems, including machine-learning systems, to analyze and rank photos, organize albums, generate album content, and personalize the service. We may use derived photo information and selection activity to learn your preferences and predict which photos you are likely to consider keepers.
We may detect the presence and characteristics of faces to assess photo quality, but we do not use this information to identify or verify the identity of people in your photos.
When shared model improvement is enabled in the mobile application, we combine your contributed derived photo information and selection activity with contributions from other participating users. We use these aggregated contributions to train, fine-tune, test, validate, and improve machine-learning models and algorithms used by Sidecar Photo.
Shared model improvement is optional. You may opt out or change your choice in the mobile application at any time. Opting out stops future contributions from being used for shared model improvement. It does not require us to delete aggregate statistics or retrain models that were created before you opted out and that are not maintained as records about you.
We may conduct experiments, compare model or feature versions, evaluate quality and accuracy, identify errors or bias, and develop new photo-selection, recommendation, organization, generation, and album-building features reasonably related to the Sidecar Photo service.
Photo Ownership
You retain full ownership of the photos you upload or connect to the service.
By using Sidecar Photo, you grant us a limited permission to store, process, analyze, and display your photos and derived information for the purposes described in this policy.
Storage
Uploaded photos, derived photo information, selection activity, and album data may be stored on cloud infrastructure operated by third-party providers. Information generated and kept only on your device remains there until it is removed by the application, you clear its data, or you delete the application.
We retain account-associated information while your account is active and as reasonably necessary to provide, secure, evaluate, and improve the service. Uploaded photos and related album data may remain stored until you delete them, delete the album, or delete your account. Information may be retained longer when required for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, or resolving disputes.
Sharing
Albums may be shared using private links. Anyone with access to a shared link may be able to view the album.
You control whether an album link is shared.
Third-Party Services
We use third-party infrastructure providers such as hosting, storage, content delivery networks, analytics, and AI processing services to operate, evaluate, and improve the platform.
These providers may process uploaded photos, derived photo information, selection activity, and album data only as necessary to provide services to us and subject to privacy and security obligations consistent with this policy. We do not permit them to use this information for unrelated advertising or for their own independent purposes.
Data Deletion
You may delete albums or your account at any time. When deleted, associated uploaded photos, derived photo information, selection activity, and album data will be removed from active systems within 30 days. Copies may remain temporarily in backups until they are deleted through our normal backup lifecycle.
Deletion does not require us to remove aggregate information that is no longer maintained as a record about you or to retrain shared models that were created before deletion. We may also retain information that has been de-identified so that it can no longer reasonably be associated with you.
Security
We take reasonable measures to protect user data. However, no internet service can guarantee absolute security.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy as our services develop. We will post the revised policy and update the date above. If a change materially affects how we collect, use, or share personal information, we will provide additional notice and obtain consent when required.
Contact
For privacy questions, contact: