Privacy Policy

Who we are

Shared Gallery is made by Kerem Serinkan, an independent developer in Türkiye. Throughout this policy, “we” and “us” mean Kerem Serinkan. We are responsible for your information as described here, and you can reach us at privacy@sharedgallery.app.

In short

• We don’t sell your information, show ads, or track you across other apps and websites.
• Your photos are shown to the people in the galleries you add them to, and as a limited preview to someone who holds a valid invite to that gallery.
• The location is removed from photos and videos before they are uploaded.
• You can delete your account, and what you added, in the app at any time.

Information we collect

Your account. Your email address, which we use to send you sign-in codes, and the name you choose. If you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive an identifier for your account and, the first time, your name and email address; with Apple’s Hide My Email we only see the relay address. Your name is shown to the people in your galleries. Your email address is never shown to other users.

Guest previews. If you open an invite without an account, the app starts an anonymous guest session so you can preview the gallery. A guest session has no name or email address.

Photos and videos. The photos and videos you add, a small preview of each, and technical details such as file type, size, dimensions, video length and when it was uploaded. Before a photo or video leaves your phone, the app removes its location (GPS coordinates and place names), along with the owner’s name and the camera’s serial numbers written in the file. The camera model, lens, exposure settings and the date it was taken are kept. Previews are made without any of this information. In the rare case that removal fails, the file is uploaded as it is. We don’t analyze the content of your photos; we look at a photo only if it has been reported to us.

Galleries and activity. Gallery names, covers and settings, who is in which gallery and since when, who added each photo, likes, and invite codes.

Reports, blocks and feedback. If you report a photo, video or person, we store the report, its reason and any note you add. When a gallery owner removes or blocks someone, we keep a record of it. If you send feedback, we store your message with your app version, device model, operating system version and language.

Emails to us. If you email us, we keep your message, your email address and anything you include, so we can answer you and keep a record of the conversation.

Purchases. Subscriptions are bought through Apple’s App Store or Google Play. We and our subscription provider RevenueCat receive the subscription’s status, product and expiry date, linked to your account ID. We never receive your payment card details.

App usage. To understand how the app is used and where it breaks, the app sends usage events (for example, that a gallery was created or that the subscription screen was opened) to our analytics provider PostHog. Events include your app version, device model, operating system, language, region and appearance settings and screen size, and are linked to your account ID once you have an account; events from before you sign up are linked to the account you create. They never include your name, email address, photos, gallery names or invite codes. Finding your location from your IP address is turned off, the IP address is not stored, and there is no advertising identifier. In the latest version of the app you can turn this off under Profile › Privacy: nothing more is sent from that phone until you turn it back on or reinstall the app. Crash reports aren’t affected. Guests have no profile, so the switch is available once you have an account. If you want data already sent deleted, delete your account or write to us.

Crash reports. When the app or our servers run into an error, a report goes to Sentry, stored in the European Union. It contains technical details about the error and your device, and your account ID — not your name, email address or photos. Sensitive details such as sign-in information and invite codes are removed before a report is sent, and IP addresses are not stored.

Invite links. When you open an invite link on a phone that doesn’t have Shared Gallery yet, we briefly keep the invite code together with a coded form of your network address and your screen size, language, time zone and operating system version, so the app can open that invite after you install it. The record is deleted as soon as the app picks it up, or after one hour at the latest, and is never used for anything else. The first time the app opens on an iPhone, it sends these same details to check for such a record, whether or not you came from an invite; the details it sends aren’t stored. On Android, the invite code is passed to Google Play with the install instead, and we keep no record of it.

Your photo library. If you allow it, the app reads your photo library on your phone to offer recent photos to add, such as today’s; nothing is uploaded until you add it. Photos you download are saved to your library.

Network data. Like any online service, our servers and our network provider process your IP address to deliver the service and protect it from abuse. We don’t store IP addresses in our database; server logs that contain them are kept only briefly. If you sign in with Google, Google may use your IP address to estimate your approximate location to protect sign-in against fraud; this happens under Google’s privacy policy, and we don’t receive that location.

How we use it

• To provide the service: your account, your galleries, storing and showing photos to the people you share them with, and invitations.
• To send you sign-in codes by email. We don’t send marketing email.
• To handle subscriptions and restore them on your devices.
• To answer your emails and requests.
• To keep the service safe: reviewing reports, enforcing our Terms of Use, and preventing abuse.
• To fix errors and understand how the app is used, so we can improve it.
• To tell you about important changes to the service or to this policy.

We don’t sell your personal information and we don’t use it for advertising.

Who can see your content

Everyone in a gallery can see all the photos and videos in it, who added each one, the names of the people in it and how many likes a photo has. Who liked a photo is not shown to anyone.

Anyone holding a valid invite code or link can preview the gallery before joining: its name, cover photo, number of items, the names of the people in it, and small previews of up to 100 of the newest photos and up to 20 of the most liked. Treat an invite like a key and share it only with people you want in the gallery. Codes expire 24 hours after they are created, and anyone in the gallery can replace the code at any time.

Service providers

We use these service providers to run Shared Gallery:

• Servers, database and sign-in (United States)
• Photo and video storage, this website and network protection (United States and a global network)
• Sign-in emails (European Union)
• Support email (United States and other countries)
• RevenueCat — subscriptions (United States)
• PostHog — app usage analytics (United States)
• Sentry — crash reports (European Union, Germany)
• Apple — Sign in with Apple and App Store purchases
• Google — Sign in with Google, Google Play purchases, and the app’s check of whether you are online

These providers process information on our behalf, only to provide their service to us, and their agreements with us require them to protect it with the same care this policy describes. When you use Apple’s or Google’s sign-in, the App Store or Google Play, Apple and Google also act under their own privacy policies.

Where your information is processed

We are based in Türkiye, and our providers store information mainly in the United States, with crash reports and sign-in emails handled in the European Union. Emails you send us are stored by our email provider in the United States and other countries. Using Shared Gallery means your information is processed in these countries, whose data protection rules may differ from those where you live.

How long we keep it

• Your account: until you delete it.
• Photos and videos: until they are deleted — by you or another member, when you leave or are removed from the gallery, when the gallery is deleted, or when you delete your account. Deletion is permanent and there is no trash.
• When a subscription ends, nothing is deleted: the gallery goes back to the free plan’s limits. If we change this — for example, by moving the content of galleries without an active subscription to cheaper storage, or deleting it after a period — we’ll tell you in advance and update this policy.
• Backups: deleted information can remain in our database backups for up to 7 days. Photo and video files are not kept in backups.
• Reports, and the record of removals, blocks and deleted galleries: 2 years. If you delete your account, your identity in these records is replaced with a random identifier.
• Storage records: when you delete your account, a record needed to enforce storage limits is kept for 30 days without your account ID, then deleted.
• Uploads that never finish: cleaned up after 7 days.
• Guest sessions: removed in periodic clean-ups.
• App usage data: deleted when you delete your account; removal at our analytics provider can take up to about a week.
• Crash reports: deleted automatically after at most 90 days.
• Invite link records: at most one hour.
• Feedback: deleted with your account.
• Emails to us: deleted 2 years after the conversation ends.
• Purchase records: Apple, Google and RevenueCat keep them under their own policies. The RevenueCat record is linked only to your account ID; write to us if you want it deleted after you delete your account.

Your choices and rights

• Change your name in your profile in the app.
• Download the photos and videos you want to keep from the app.
• Delete your account in Profile › Account › Delete account. This deletes your account, the galleries you created (including photos other people added to them) and the photos you added to other galleries. It doesn’t cancel a subscription — cancel it on iPhone in Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions, or on Android in Google Play › Payments & subscriptions › Subscriptions.
• Usage data can be turned off in Profile › Privacy.
• Photo library access can be changed at any time in your phone’s settings.
• If you signed in with Apple, you can also stop using Apple sign-in with Shared Gallery in your Apple Account settings.

You can ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, to delete it, or for more detail about how we use it. Write to privacy@sharedgallery.app from the email address on your account; we answer within 30 days. You can also complain to the data protection authority where you live.

Users in Türkiye: your rights under the Turkish Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK) are explained in the Turkish version of this policy.

Children

You must be at least 13 years old to use Shared Gallery. If we learn that someone under 13 has an account, we delete it. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us.

Security

Connections to Shared Gallery are encrypted. Photos and videos are stored privately and can only be opened by the people allowed to see them, and access to our systems is limited. No service can promise perfect security, but we work to protect your information and fix problems quickly.

Changes to this policy

When our practices change, we update this page and the date at the top. For important changes, we tell you in advance in the app or by email.

Contact

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@sharedgallery.app. Anything else: support@sharedgallery.app.