Privacy policy

This policy explains how Tally Tells handles personal information when you use our website, make a preview, or order a book. Tally Tells is made for parents, guardians and gift-givers, who are adults. It is not directed to children, and children should not use it on their own.

Our Biometric data notice covers photos and face data in more detail. The plain-words version is on our Photo privacy page.

You give us

• About you: name, email, shipping address, and messages you send us.
• About the child: first name, age, the pronouns to use in the story, the photo you upload, and your dedication.
• For a gift: the gift-giver’s details, the parent’s email, and the gift note.
• Your consent: the name you sign with, the date and time, the exact consent text and its version, and your IP address and browser.

Collected automatically

• Basic technical data needed to run the site securely, such as IP address, browser type and pages visited.
• Your cart, which is stored on your own device.

Payments

Card payments are handled by our payment provider. We never see or store your full card number.

• To draw your child’s character, make the pages, and make your preview and book.
• To take payment, print, ship and track your order.
• To email you about your preview and order, and to answer you when you write to us.
• To keep the site secure and prevent fraud.
• To send occasional news, only if you opt in. Every marketing email will include a way to unsubscribe.

We use AI to draw your child into illustrations made for Tally Tells, and a person checks every book. We don’t use your photos, your child’s character or your book to train AI.

We never use your child’s book in our marketing unless you give us separate permission.

We never sell your personal information or share it for advertising. We share only what each service provider needs to do its job, under contract:

• Photo safety screening: Google Cloud Vision, which checks each photo before any drawing is made and does not keep it.
• Illustration processing: our illustration service providers, to make the drawings.
• Storage: Cloudflare, which stores photos and files privately, encrypted, until we delete them.
• Printing and shipping: our print partner and the carrier receive the finished pages and your shipping address. They never receive the photo.
• Payments: our payment provider.
• Email: the service we use to send order and preview emails.

Only these service providers see the photo, and it’s never sold. We may also disclose information if the law requires it.

You can delete your photo, character, preview and book files at any time, before or after ordering. While a book is being paid for, made or printed, write to hello@tallytells.com and we’ll cancel and delete it.

Wherever you live in the US, you can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you and your child, and give you a copy;
• correct it;
• delete it (every preview email and preview page also has a one-click “delete everything” link);
• stop sending you marketing emails.

Write to hello@tallytells.com. We’ll confirm it’s you (usually by replying from the email on your order) and answer within the time the law requires, and usually much sooner.

If you live in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act gives you the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect, use and disclose, and why;
• Delete and correct personal information;
• Opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we have not done so in the past 12 months;
• Limit use of sensitive information. We use photos and face data only to make your book, which is a permitted purpose;
• Not be treated differently for using these rights.

You can also use an authorized agent. Contact hello@tallytells.com to make a request.

Washington’s My Health My Data Act and Nevada’s similar law treat face imagery that could be used to make an identifier as consumer health data. Our Consumer health data privacy policy explains what we collect, why, who receives it and how to use your rights.

Tally Tells is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. A child’s information (name, age and photo) is provided by their parent or guardian, who must be 18 or older and sign our consent first.

In line with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a parent can review the information we hold about their child, ask us to delete it, and refuse further use at any time by writing to hello@tallytells.com. If we learn that a child gave us information directly, we delete it.

Photos are sent over an encrypted connection and stored privately with restricted access. Only the people and providers who need them to make your book can reach them. No system is perfect, so we keep as little as we can, for as short a time as we can.

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.

We use only what we need to run the store, such as remembering your cart on your device and letting your browser get back to your preview. We don’t use advertising cookies.

Do Not Track. Our site does not track you across other websites, and no third party collects personal information on our site for that purpose. We treat every visitor the same whether or not their browser sends a Do Not Track signal.

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we’ll update the date at the top and, where it affects you, tell you by email. Questions: hello@tallytells.com. We reply within one business day.