Privacy Policy

Four kinds of thing, and no more than we need for each of them.

• Account data. Your email address, a hashed version of your password, and the plan you are on. We never store your password itself.
• Billing data. Your plan, billing period, renewal dates, invoice history and the last four digits and brand of the card, as reported back to us by our payment service provider. We never receive, transmit or store your full card number, expiry date or security code — those are entered on the provider’s own PCI-DSS compliant page and never touch our systems.
• Content data. The photographs you upload, the text you write about a job including the hidden-work notes, the stage labels and dates you type, and the comparison sheets and films produced from them.
• Technical data. IP address, browser and device type, pages requested, timestamps, error traces, and the cookies described in the Cookie Policy.

It is removed before the photograph is uploaded, by default, without you having to ask.

Photographs taken on a phone usually carry an EXIF header containing GPS coordinates, and often the device identifier and the exact time. When you add photographs to a job, your browser re-encodes each one through a canvas before anything is sent to us. That process keeps the pixels and discards the entire header, so the coordinates of your customer’s house never leave your device and never reach our servers. The workspace tells you how many photographs had location data in them so you can see the removal happening.

The one field we read before discarding the header is the capture date, and only so we can offer it to you as a suggested stage date. You can change it or clear it, and it is stored as ordinary text you typed rather than as photo metadata.

• To provide the service. Producing the record you asked for is the whole purpose of the content data. Lawful basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To take payment. Managing subscriptions, renewals, invoices and refunds. Lawful basis: performance of our contract, and legal obligation for tax records.
• To keep the service working and safe. Diagnosing faults, preventing abuse and fraud, and enforcing the Acceptable Use Policy. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in a service that is not being abused.
• To contact you about your account. Renewal reminders, service notices, security notices, and answers to things you ask us. Lawful basis: performance of our contract.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

No. Your photographs and the text you write about your jobs are not used to train any model — not ours, and not any third party’s.

They are processed to produce the output you asked for, and that is the end of it. Where a third-party model provider processes your content in order to generate that output, they act on our instructions under a contract that forbids using it for their own training.

We do use aggregate operational signals to keep the service working — how often a generation fails, how long a step takes, which errors recur. Those signals carry no personal data and no image content.

Only the suppliers we need to run the service, each under a contract that limits them to acting on our instructions:

• Our hosting and content delivery provider, which serves the site and stores uploaded content.
• Our payment service provider, which handles card details and takes payment. They receive your email and the amount; we receive back the plan status and the last four digits of the card.
• Our authentication and database provider, which stores account records.
• Our model provider, which processes job content to generate the output you requested, and is contractually forbidden from training on it.
• Our email provider, for account and receipt messages.

Beyond that, we disclose personal data only where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim. If we are ever compelled to hand over your data we will tell you, unless we are legally barred from doing so.

• Content data — 30 days, unless you save the job to your account, in which case until you delete it or close your account.
• Account data — until you close your account, then removed within 30 days.
• Billing records — seven years, because tax law requires it. This is invoice-level data, not card data.
• Technical logs — 90 days.
• Abuse records — where we have removed content or suspended an account, a minimal record for up to two years so the same abuse is not simply repeated.

Deleting a job removes it from live storage straight away. Operational and backup copies age out within 30 days after that.

If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, or the EU GDPR, give you the right to:

• Ask what we hold about you and get a copy of it.
• Have inaccurate data corrected.
• Have your data deleted.
• Restrict or object to how we process it, including objecting to processing based on our legitimate interests.
• Receive your data in a portable, machine-readable form.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we relied on consent, without affecting what was lawful before you withdrew it.

If you are in California, the CCPA as amended gives you the right to know what is collected and why, to delete it, to correct it, to opt out of sale or sharing, and not to be treated worse for exercising any of those rights. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined, and we honour Global Privacy Control signals as an opt-out.

Other regions give comparable rights, and we apply the same process to everybody regardless of where you live. Email support@johncharlescontractors.com and we will answer within 30 days. We do not charge for this and we do not ask why.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled a request, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, or to the data protection authority in the country where you live. You do not have to come to us first, though we would rather you did.

Probably, yes. Our suppliers operate in several countries including the United States, so your data may be processed outside the country where you live.

Where data leaves the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, we rely on adequacy decisions where one exists, and otherwise on Standard Contractual Clauses together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, plus the technical measures described here. You can ask us for details of the safeguards used for any particular supplier.

The whole site is served over HTTPS. Content is encrypted in transit and at rest. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Access to production systems is limited to the people who need it and is logged.

No system is perfect. If a breach happens that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell you and the relevant supervisory authority within the time limits the law sets, and we will tell you what we know rather than what sounds best.

Not under 13. The service is not intended for and not offered to anyone under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you are between 13 and 17 you may only use the service with the agreement of a parent or guardian, who is agreeing to the terms on your behalf.

If you believe a child under 13 has given us data, email support@johncharlescontractors.com and we will delete it.

The effective date at the top changes and the previous version is superseded. If a change materially affects your rights, we will email registered users at least 14 days before it takes effect, so there is time to close the account if you disagree.