Biometric data notice

Some US state laws, including the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and laws in Texas and Washington, protect “biometric identifiers” such as face geometry. Drawing your child from a photo may involve analyzing facial features, so we treat it as biometric data and follow this notice for every customer, wherever they live.

Washington and Nevada residents: see also our Consumer health data privacy policy.

• The photo you upload of your child.
• Temporary face data: while the photo is checked and the illustration is made, our systems and our service providers’ systems may measure facial features (such as face shape, eye spacing or hair line) from the photo. This exists only during processing.

We do not create or keep a face template (“face print”) that could identify your child, and we never use face data to recognize or track anyone.

The illustrated character we draw is artwork, not a biometric identifier. It is kept 30 days so you can return to your preview, then deleted unless it’s part of an order.

Only to check the photo and to draw your child’s character and the pages of the book you asked for. Never for AI training by us, marketing, advertising, identification or any other purpose.

Before you can upload a photo, a parent or legal guardian aged 18 or older must:

1. read the written consent in the upload step, which links to this notice;
2. confirm they are the child’s parent or legal guardian;
3. tick the biometric consent and sign it by typing their full name, which is their electronic signature.

We record the signed name, the date and time, the exact consent text and its version (currently 2026-10-23), and the IP address and browser used. Your signed consent (name, date, time, consent text, IP address and browser), and a note of when you withdrew it, are kept for six years as proof, even after the photo and drawings are deleted. These records never include the photo or drawings.

You can withdraw consent at any time with the “delete everything” link, and we then delete the photo straight away. While a book is being paid for, made or printed, write to hello@tallytells.com and we’ll cancel and delete it.

• Original photo: permanently deleted within 72 hours of upload, or sooner when you approve the drawing, or as soon as you ask, whichever comes first.
• Temporary face data: discarded as soon as the photo is checked and each illustration is made, and never written to long-term storage.
• Backstop: biometric data is destroyed once its purpose is met, and never later than the limits set by law (for BIPA, three years after your last interaction with us).

The only exception: if our safety check flags a photo as possible child sexual abuse material, federal law (18 U.S.C. §2258A) requires us to report it and keep it securely for one year. It is not used for anything else.

This schedule covers our systems, including the copies our storage provider holds for us.

We never sell, lease, trade or otherwise profit from your child’s photo or face data.

These service providers process the photo on our behalf, only to make your book:

• Photo safety screening: Google Cloud Vision, which checks each photo before any drawing is made and does not keep it.
• Illustration: our illustration service providers, which make the drawings.
• Storage: Cloudflare, which stores the photo privately, encrypted, until we delete it.

We disclose biometric data to no one else, unless the law requires it. Our print partner receives only the finished pages, never the photo.

Photos are encrypted in transit, stored privately with restricted access, and protected with at least the same care we use for other sensitive information.

We keep a written incident-response plan. If we discover a security incident affecting photos or face data, we contain it, investigate, and notify affected people and regulators as the law requires.

Use the “delete everything” link in any preview email or on your preview page, or write to hello@tallytells.com. We’ll confirm once it’s done. More detail is in our Privacy policy.