Privacy policy

Updated 20 October 2026

Picling (picling.com) is a family photo album. This policy explains what we store about you, why, who else handles it and what you can do about it. If anything is unclear, write to support@picling.com.

Who is responsible

Picling is run by Roman Gurinovich, a private individual in Poland. He is the controller of your personal data under the GDPR. Contact: support@picling.com.

What we store

• Account. Your name, email address and language. If you sign in with Google: your Google account ID, name, email address and the address of your profile photo. If you sign in with Apple: your Apple ID identifier, your email address (it may be a hidden Apple address) and your name, if you share it. We never see or store passwords.
• Viewing without an account. The name you type when you open an album link, and the reactions and favourites you leave under it.
• Photos and videos you add, with the information inside them: date and time, camera and, if the photo has it, the location. From the location we work out the city and country.
• What happens in albums. Albums and their settings, captions, comments, reactions, favourites, who has access and what they may do, requests to add photos, invitations (including the email address of the person invited) and when someone last opened an album.
• Devices. For each browser or phone you are signed in on: a sign-in key (we keep only its hash), the type of device, when it was signed in and last used.
• Letters. Sign-in codes and the letters we send you: codes, invitations, notifications.
• Usage. Two marks, at most one a day each: that you used the filters, and that you were asked to sign in. They show us whether the album is easy to use.
• IP address. We use it to protect the service from abuse, for example to limit how often codes can be requested. We do not save it with your account; the server's technical logs, which may contain it, are overwritten automatically.
• Moving from Yandex Disk. If you move photos from Yandex Disk, we receive a key to read your Disk and the list of photos and videos on it: folders, file names, sizes and dates. The key is kept encrypted and deleted as soon as the move is finished or stopped, or after a day if you never choose anything. We only copy the photos and videos you chose and change nothing on the Disk.
• Moving from Google Drive. If you move photos from Google Drive, you choose the files in Google's window yourself, and we receive a key to those files only: names, sizes, dates and the files themselves. We do not see the rest of your Drive. The key is kept encrypted; as soon as the move is finished or stopped, we revoke it at Google, and if you never choose anything, we delete it after a day. We only copy the photos and videos you chose and change nothing on the Drive.

Why we use it

• To run Picling for you: store and show your photos, make previews, sort them by date and place, share albums the way you choose, send codes and notifications. Legal basis: performance of our agreement with you (GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)).
• To keep Picling safe and working: prevent abuse, fix faults, make daily backups of the database. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a secure and reliable service (Art. 6(1)(f)).
• To improve Picling using overall usage figures. Legal basis: our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)).

We do not sell your data, show ads or use your photos to train artificial intelligence. Picling has no advertising or analytics trackers.

Who sees your photos

A new album is private: only you see it. Others see it only after you share it.

• Anyone with the album link can view it. Viewers by link never get the location: previews contain no metadata, and originals they download have the location removed.
• People you invite by name and people you allow to add photos see the album with locations, for the "Where" filter.
• People in an album see the names of those who added photos, reacted or commented, and their Google profile photo if they signed in with Google.
• The album owner and editors see who has access and when they last opened the album.

Who handles data for us

• Contabo GmbH (Germany): servers and storage for photos, in data centres in the European Union.
• Scaleway SAS (France): sends our emails.
• Google and Apple, only if you choose to sign in with them. Signing in happens on their side, under their privacy policies, and they pass us the data listed above. The Google sign-in button is loaded from Google and may set Google's own cookies. If you move photos from Google Drive, our server takes the files you chose from it.
• Yandex (Russia), only if you move photos from Yandex Disk yourself. Signing in and giving permission happen on Yandex's side, under its rules; our server takes the photos and videos you chose from the Disk. We pass Yandex none of our data about you.

Your data is stored in the European Union. We do not send it outside the European Economic Area ourselves; Google and Apple may process sign-in data in other countries under their own safeguards.

Data from Google

When you sign in with Google, we receive only your name, email address, profile photo address and Google account ID (the openid, email and profile scopes). We use them only to create your account and sign you in, and to show your name and photo to people in the albums you take part in. Our server fetches the profile photo itself, so Google does not learn who views an album. We do not pass this data to anyone, do not use it for advertising and do not use it to train artificial intelligence. Picling's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

When you move photos from Google Drive, we get access (the drive.file scope) only to the files you choose in Google's window. We use them only to copy those photos and videos into your album and to show you what is being moved. The rules above apply to them too: we do not pass them to anyone, do not use them for advertising and do not use them to train artificial intelligence.

How long we keep it

• Account data and photos: as long as you have the account.
• Photos removed from an album stay in the trash for 30 days, then they are erased.
• When you delete your account, your name, email address and sign-in identifiers are removed at once, together with your devices, reactions, comments, favourites and access to albums. Your albums are deleted and their files erased within 30 days. Photos you added to other people's albums stay there, because they are part of those albums; their author is shown as "—".
• Database backups are kept for 30 days. Account data disappears from them within 30 days after deletion, data of deleted albums within 60 days. Backups contain no photo files.
• Sign-in codes are erased a day after they expire, copies of letters after 30 days, unfinished uploads after 7 days.
• The list of files of a move from Yandex Disk or Google Drive and its report are kept for 30 days after the move ends.

Cookies

Picling sets only the cookies the site needs:

• picling keeps you signed in on this device, for up to 400 days;
• picling-text remembers "Large text", only if you turn it on.

There are no advertising or analytics cookies, so we do not ask for consent to them.

Your rights

At any time you can:

• download all your photos with dates, places and captions: Settings, "Download all my photos";
• change your name in Settings;
• delete your account: Settings, "Delete my account";
• ask for a copy of your data, its correction or deletion, limit its use, or object to its use based on our legitimate interest: write to support@picling.com. If you viewed albums without an account, tell us the album and the name you used. We reply within one month.

You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Poland, the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO, ul. Stawki 2, 00-193 Warszawa, uodo.gov.pl), or the authority in the country where you live.

Children

You must be at least 16 to create an account. Parents often add photos of their children: share such albums only with people you trust.

Security

All connections to Picling are encrypted (HTTPS). Album links contain a random key that cannot be guessed, and album pages are hidden from search engines. The photo storage is closed: files are given out only through signed links that expire. Sign-in keys, links and PINs are stored only as hashes.

Changes

When we change this policy, we publish the new version here with a new date. We tell you about important changes in advance by email or in Picling.