Privacy Policy

Story Wall Systems (“SWS,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates a software platform that helps professional photography studios manage their businesses. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. It applies to storywallsystems.com and app.storywallsystems.com.

Story Wall Systems is a product of The Photographer’s Framer. For privacy questions, contact us at hello@thephotographersframer.com.

Photographers using SWS act as the data controller for the client information they enter into the platform. SWS acts as the data processor on their behalf, in accordance with our Terms of Service.

We collect the minimum data needed to operate the service. Specifically:

• Account information — name, email, password (hashed by Clerk), and authentication tokens.
• Studio information — business name, address, branding (logo, colors), tax/payment configuration, staff members.
• Client records — names, contact info, and session details that photographers enter about their own clients.
• Session, project, and order data — bookings, proposals, contracts, invoices, payments, frame and album designs, and gallery images.
• Calendar data — when you connect Google Calendar, we read events (to check availability) and create events (for confirmed bookings) on the calendars you authorize. See “Google Calendar API Usage” below.
• Payment data — handled by Stripe; we receive metadata (subscription status, invoice IDs, last 4 of card for display) but do not store full card numbers.
• Usage data — pages visited, features used, errors encountered. Used to improve the product.
• Cookies — for authentication sessions, preferences, and security.

• To provide, operate, and improve the SWS platform.
• To authenticate you and protect your account.
• To process subscription payments and, for tenant photographers, to facilitate client payments via Stripe Connect.
• To sync calendar events between SWS and your authorized Google Calendar for scheduling.
• To send service-related communications (account changes, payment receipts, security alerts). We do not send marketing emails without your opt-in.
• To respond to your questions, troubleshoot issues, and provide support.
• To comply with legal obligations and protect against fraud or misuse.

When you connect your Google account, SWS requests access to two scopes:

• calendar.readonly — read access to your calendars and events, used to (a) list which calendars you can sync with and (b) check your availability when scheduling client sessions to avoid double-booking.
• calendar.events — read and write access to events on the calendars you authorize, used to create, update, and cancel calendar events for confirmed client bookings.

Limited Use Disclosure: Story Wall Systems’ use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically:

• We use Google Calendar data only to provide the scheduling and booking-management features the user requested.
• We do not sell or transfer Google user data to third parties for advertising, market research, or any unrelated purpose.
• We do not use Google user data to train or improve generalized AI/ML models.
• Humans do not read Google user data except (a) with your explicit consent, (b) for security purposes such as investigating abuse, (c) to comply with applicable law, or (d) for internal operations where the data has been aggregated and anonymized.

You can revoke SWS’s access to your Google Calendar at any time from your Google Account permissions page or from within SWS Settings.

Some photographers use an optional feature that groups a gallery’s photographs by the people in them. When it is enabled for a gallery, each face in that gallery’s photographs is converted into a face template — a mathematical representation of facial geometry, created by Amazon Web Services on our behalf. A face template is a biometric identifier under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, Washington HB 1493, and Article 9 of the UK/EU GDPR.

The feature is off by default for every studio, and a studio must confirm, for each gallery, that they hold the consent of the people in it before any scan can start. We record that confirmation.

• Kept apart. A template created for one gallery is never compared against another gallery, session, or photographer’s galleries. No identity follows a person between galleries.
• Never sold, never shared. We do not sell, lease, trade or otherwise profit from biometric data, and we disclose it to nobody except the processor performing the analysis for us, or where the law compels us.
• Never used to train anything. Face templates are not used to train models, build profiles, or target advertising.
• Destroyed on a schedule. Immediately when the gallery is deleted or its face data cleared, and automatically after a fixed period in any case. The full schedule is published in our Biometric Data Retention & Destruction Policy.
• Deletable on request. If you appear in a gallery and want your face data destroyed, contact the photographer or us. No reason needed, no charge, and your photographs are untouched.

We use automated systems in a few places, and it is worth being plain about which:

• Face grouping — described above. Optional, off by default, and the only feature that creates biometric data.
• Photograph labelling — an image-recognition service suggests descriptive tags for gallery photographs (for example “cake” or “rings”) so a studio can find images faster. These labels describe objects and scenes, not people, and create no biometric data.
• Assistive text — some features draft text a photographer reviews and edits before it is sent. A person decides what goes out.
• Studio Memory — for studios who connect a mailbox, a scheduled job sends correspondence with their existing clients to a large language model (Anthropic, via the Vercel AI Gateway) to suggest facts worth remembering, such as a spouse’s name or a preference. This one runs automatically, without a person choosing each message. It is limited to clients already in the studio’s records and to messages those clients are a participant in — unmatched mail is never read — and every suggested fact stays a suggestion until the photographer confirms it.

None of these makes a decision with a legal or similarly significant effect on you. We do not use your data, your clients’ data, or your photographs to train third-party AI models, and our AI providers are contractually barred from doing so.

We use third parties to operate the platform, each receiving only what their function needs:

• Infrastructure — hosting, the database, image storage and processing, and delivery.
• Authentication and payments — sign-in, and subscription billing plus Stripe Connect for the payments your clients make to you.
• Communications — email delivery, and SMS if you enable it.
• Optional integrations — calendar sync and address lookup, which receive nothing unless you connect them.
• Automated processing — face grouping and image labelling, and the AI provider behind Studio Memory and assistive drafting. These are described in their own sections above.
• Monitoring — error reporting, which receives stack traces and request metadata.

Every one of them is named individually — with what it receives, why, and where it processes the data — on our Subprocessors page. That page is the current list; if it and this section ever disagree, it wins.

We do not sell your data. We do not share data with third parties for advertising purposes, and none of our providers may use it to train their own models.

• Active accounts: data is retained while the account is active.
• Cancelled accounts: data is retained for 90 days after cancellation in case you reactivate, then permanently deleted.
• Backups: encrypted backups are retained for 30 days for disaster recovery.
• You may request earlier deletion of your account data at any time by contacting us.

You have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate data.
• Request deletion of your data.
• Export your data in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent for any processing based on consent (such as Google Calendar sync).
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority (for users in the EEA, UK, or other jurisdictions with such authorities).

To exercise any of these rights, contact hello@thephotographersframer.com.

We use industry-standard practices to protect your data: encrypted connections (TLS), encrypted storage at rest, hashed passwords, scoped API tokens, regular security audits of our dependencies, and the principle of least privilege for all internal access. No system is perfectly secure; if you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately.

SWS is not intended for use by anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

SWS is operated from the United States. By using the service, you consent to the transfer of your information to the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your country. We rely on standard contractual clauses where applicable.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced via email or in-app notice. The “Last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent revision. Continued use of SWS after changes constitutes acceptance.

Questions about this policy or your data? Email hello@thephotographersframer.com.