Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• Account: your email address, and your name if you sign in with Google, and your consent records (for example that you are 18+ and accepted these terms).
• About the book: each character's first name and what they are (a person, a pet, an object), the theme, the reader's age range if you give one, any details or words you type in, the story, and the illustrations and files we make.
• Photos: the photos you upload for each character drawing. These are deleted as described below.
• Payments: handled by Dodo Payments, or in India by Cashfree Payments. We receive a record of the order (product, amount, status and your country), not your card details.
• Technical data: what we need to keep the service running and safe. Service logs record what happened, such as which account and book a request was for, how long it took and any errors, so we can fix problems. They are built to leave out your story, the names you type and your photos. Crash reports carry no photos, no story details, no email address and no IP address. Our sign-in provider records your IP address and browser when you sign in, to spot attacks on accounts. To limit free books per network address each day, we keep a one-way code made from the address, never the address itself, and delete it within about a day; the same kind of code is kept with your consent records, as proof of who agreed. A bot check, run by our website delivery provider, reads technical signals such as your IP address and browser to confirm that a sign-in, a request for a free book or a message sent with our forms comes from a person. For the free book's device mark, see Cookies and browser storage below.
• Export codes and picture fingerprints: Every PDF you download carries an export code, printed on its back cover or in its small print. We record which account made each file, and keep a fingerprint of every picture we draw, so a book or a picture found anywhere can be traced to the account that made it. The record is the code, your account, the book and its title, and when the file was made. The picture can't be rebuilt from a fingerprint.
• Messages: if you use our Feedback or Contact us form, what you write, what it is about, your email address if you give it, and your account if you are signed in. We don't store your IP address or anything about your browser with it.
• Website statistics: counts of page views, with no cookie and nothing stored on your device (see Cookies below). These are numbers, not records about a person.
• Website use: how visitors move through our website's own pages (the home page, prices, answers, these legal pages and TuckJoy's own books), never where you upload photos or make or read your books, such as clicks and scrolling, so we can improve them (see Cookies below).

2. Why we use it

• To make and deliver your book (performing our contract with you).
• To process the photos you upload, on the basis of the explicit consent you give when you upload them (for a photo of a child, as their parent or guardian or with their permission).
• To keep the service safe: checking uploads and illustrations for harmful content, preventing abuse of the free preview and of the referral programme (legitimate interests and legal obligations).
• To send service emails about your book, such as when your book is ready, and book-related reminders. We don't track whether you open them.
• To trace a book or a picture found elsewhere back to the account that made it, when it may break our terms or the law (legitimate interests, and our legal obligations).
• To read and answer what you send us with the Feedback or Contact us form, and to act on a request, report or complaint (legitimate interests, and our legal obligations for privacy requests and complaints).
• To count how many people visit the site and which pages they read, and to see how visitors use our website's own pages so we can make them better (legitimate interests).
• We don't use your data for advertising, and we don't sell it. The provider that records visits to our website's own pages may also use what it records there under its own privacy policy, including for its advertising.

3. Photos, including children's

Photos are used only to check them for safety and to draw the character. They are deleted as soon as the character drawing is made, whether or not that succeeds, and every page after that is drawn from the illustration. Photos uploaded but never used are deleted within about 2 hours, and never more than 1 day after upload. If our safety checks refuse a photo as sexual content or as harmful to a child, a copy is kept privately for our safety team to review, and deleted after 30 days. Your browser removes metadata such as location and the camera's details before a photo is uploaded; if your browser can't read a photo, it is uploaded as it is, and the copies we check and draw from are made without the metadata. We never create face templates or other biometric identifiers. Children do not use TuckJoy; accounts are for adults (18+), and for a photo of a child you must be their parent or guardian or have their permission.

4. AI processing

Stories are written, and uploads and illustrations are screened for safety, using commercial AI cloud APIs. Under the standard terms of service for these paid developer services, customer prompts, text, and photos are not used to train or fine-tune public foundation AI models. Requests may be briefly cached for operational delivery (up to 24 hours), or kept for up to 90 days in restricted security systems if an automated safety filter is triggered; these requests can be handled in any region, not only in the European Union. Illustrations are rendered by image models running on cloud servers we rent in the European Union. We do not train any AI models on your photos, stories, or finished books.

5. Who processes data for us

We share personal data only with the service providers we need to run, secure and deliver the service:

• Core infrastructure: cloud hosting, database, sign-in and file storage providers, with our main data storage in the European Union.
• AI processing and safety checks: paid commercial AI APIs for writing stories and screening content for safety, under terms that forbid using your inputs to train public foundation models.
• Payments and billing: payment gateways and merchant-of-record providers that process orders, currency conversion and the taxes that apply. We receive the status of each payment, never your card details.
• Communications and monitoring: an email delivery service for service emails and the messages you send with our forms, and an error-tracking service (in the European Union) to diagnose crashes.
• Security and website delivery: content delivery, bot protection and cookieless website statistics providers.
• Website analytics: a provider that records visits to our website's own pages and shows us heatmaps of them.

You can email [email protected] at any time for the names of the providers we use today.

International access and processing. Our main databases and the servers that draw the illustrations are in the European Union. Because TuckJoy is based in Bengaluru, India, our team may view account details from India to answer support requests and maintain the service. Some of our providers, such as AI safety screening and payment processing, handle requests in regions around the world. Most of these providers' standard terms include a data processing agreement and the European Commission's standard contractual clauses for transfers outside the EU, the EEA and the UK; write to [email protected] for a copy of those safeguards.

6. How long we keep it

• Uploaded photos: until the character drawing is made; unused uploads, about 2 hours (never more than 1 day). A photo our safety checks refuse: a private copy for review, 30 days.
• Anything flagged by our safety checks is kept private, reviewed by our safety team, then deleted.
• Books you make while signed in (character drawing, illustrations, PDFs including print-ready files, flip-book and share link): until you delete them, whether or not you paid for them. Anything made without an account: 24 hours after it was made.
• Feedback and Contact us messages: 90 days after we have dealt with them, then deleted from our systems. A copy also reaches our support inbox, where we keep it only as long as we need it to answer you.
• Account data, including your consent records: until you delete your account. Order records are kept as long as tax law requires.
• The free book's device mark: 12 months in your browser (unless you clear it) and with your book on our side.
• Export codes and picture fingerprints, and the email address of a deleted account that made any: 2 years after the book or the account is deleted, so a file made with TuckJoy can still be traced, then deleted.
• Backups: every night our database is copied to encrypted backup storage, and so are the files of finished books (character drawings, illustrations and PDFs), to help us recover from a disaster. Data you delete, including a deleted account, can remain in the database backups for up to 31 days, and in the book-file backups for up to 31 days, before it is erased. Backups contain none of the photos you upload.
• Crash reports and service logs: for the limited time our providers keep them, and no longer than 90 days. Sign-in records: with your session while you are signed in, and in our sign-in provider's logs until your account is deleted. Website statistics are just counts, with nothing personal in them. Recordings of visits to our website: 30 days, then a small sample for up to 13 months.

7. Your rights

Depending on where you live (including under the GDPR, UK GDPR and India's DPDP Act), you can ask to see, correct, export or delete your data, withdraw consent, or object to processing. To delete your account and everything in it, email [email protected] from the address on your account; we confirm it is your account and delete it within 30 days, and email you when it is done. For anything else, email the same address. If we don't resolve your complaint, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live (in India, the Data Protection Board of India).

8. Grievance Officer

TuckJoy Grievance Officer, Bengaluru, India. Email [email protected]. We aim to acknowledge a complaint within 2 business days and to resolve it within 15 days.

9. Cookies, browser storage and website statistics

Where you make and read your books, we use cookies and browser storage only for what the service needs, never for advertising or tracking. Your browser's storage keeps you signed in and keeps your work in progress, so you don't lose it. A short-lived cookie (24 hours) lets your browser open your own book files. When you ask for a free book, a device mark (a random id, with nothing about you in it) is kept in a cookie and in your browser's storage for 12 months, so the free book stays one per device. Clearing your browser's data may sign you out or remove saved work; it does not delete your books or account data on our servers. For website statistics we use a cookieless service: it sets no cookie, stores nothing on your device and cannot identify you or follow you across websites. It counts page views, the page, the country, where the visit came from and how fast the page loaded. We also keep our own totals, such as how long the wait for a book is, how far books are read and which games are played, with no id and nothing stored on your device. On our website's own pages (the home page, prices, answers, these legal pages and TuckJoy's own books), never where you upload photos or make or read your books, the provider that records visits sets its own cookies, kept for up to 12 months, to tell one visit from the next; in the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland it sets none without your consent. Blocking cookies, or your browser's tracking protection, stops it. We don't use social media trackers of any kind.

10. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access to it is limited to what each part of the service needs. If a breach affects you, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

11. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll email you before the change applies.