Privacy

What we collect

Your name and email address, the photographs you send us, and anything you tell us about them (who's in the picture, what to know). For paid albums, Stripe handles your payment details directly — we never see or store your card number. If you came to us from one of our ads or links, we note which one with your order (just the campaign name, nothing about you), so we know which ads are worth running.

Where it's kept

Photographs are stored in a private cloud storage bucket that only we can access — there's no public link to your photos, ever. Your sample and your finished album play on private pages whose links are long and random, so only the people you share them with can find them. Order details (your name, email, and order status) are kept in a private database. Emails are sent through our email provider, and payments are processed by Stripe.

How your photographs are animated

To bring each photograph to life, we upload it to Higgsfield, an AI video service run by Higgsfield Inc. in the United States. If a photograph has glare, dust or is very small, we first use one of Higgsfield's AI image tools to clean it up gently and enlarge it a little, and animate the cleaned-up copy. Under Higgsfield's own terms, images uploaded to it may be used to improve its AI models. To keep that to a minimum, we delete your photographs, any cleaned-up copies and the clips made from them from our Higgsfield account as soon as your sample or album is delivered; Higgsfield says deleted content leaves its active systems within 30 days. If you'd rather your photographs didn't go through Higgsfield, please write to us before you send any.

Before animating a photograph, we check it: we send a copy through OpenRouter, a service run by OpenRouter, Inc. in the United States, to an AI model that describes the photograph and tells us how well it is likely to animate. OpenRouter passes it to one of the companies that run that model, and we only let it choose companies that don't keep what we send once they've answered and don't use it for anything else. OpenRouter doesn't keep it either. The copy we send has no location or camera details in it.

How long we keep it

We keep your photographs and finished album for up to 90 days after delivery, in case you need us to resend a link or make a change, then remove them. If you'd like your photographs deleted sooner, just ask.

What we don't do

We don't sell your photographs or details to anyone, and we don't share them beyond the services named above that we need to run Gift of Yesterday. We don't use your photographs for anything beyond making your sample or album — including in our own marketing — unless we ask you first and you say yes.

Using your video in our marketing

We'd love to be able to show people what a finished album looks like, using real examples. We will never use your photographs, video, or story in advertising, on the website, or anywhere else public without asking you first, one order at a time. If you say no, or don't reply, we simply don't use it — there's no obligation either way.

Where your data is handled

Some of the services we rely on — Higgsfield for animation, OpenRouter and the companies it passes them to for checking photographs, Stripe for payment, PostHog for visitor statistics, Google for advertising, and our email provider — are based overseas and may process or store your details outside Australia as part of providing that service to us, mainly in the United States. Higgsfield also has a location in Kazakhstan.

Cookies and tracking

We use cookies for two things, and you can switch either off at any time from "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page. If you're in the UK, the European Union or Switzerland, we ask first and set none until you say yes.

Site statistics. To understand which pages help people and where they get stuck, we use PostHog, a statistics service run by PostHog Inc. in the United States. It sees the pages you visit, the steps of ordering you reach, and the technical details any website receives, like your browser and rough location. With cookies allowed, it can also tell when the same person comes back another day. If you say no, it still counts visits, but anonymously, and the only thing it keeps on your device is a note that you said no. Either way it never receives your name, email address, photographs or private upload, sample or album links, nor the click codes ad services add to links, and it never records your screen. With cookies allowed, your browser also remembers which of our ads brought you until you close the tab, so a purchase can be matched to it.

Advertising. We advertise on Google. With advertising cookies allowed, Google Ads, run by Google in the United States, sets a cookie so it can tell us when someone who clicked one of our ads goes on to send a sample or buy an album, and how much the album cost. That helps us stop paying for ads that don't help anyone. Google receives the page address (with private links removed), your browser details and IP address, as it does on any site using its ads. We never give Google your name, email address or photographs.

Separately, your browser keeps a small note of the cookie choices you made here, so we don't ask again on every page.

Your photographs, your rights

You can ask us at any time what we hold about you, to correct it, or to have your photographs and details deleted. If you're ever unhappy with how we've handled your personal information, you can also raise it with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

Questions

Write to us any time at hello@giftofyesterday.com.