Privacy Policy

Effective: September 26, 2026 · For orders placed on kindlevale.com.

1. The short version

You send us photos of your family so we can draw your children into a storybook. We use them for that and nothing else, and then we delete them — automatically, by a job that runs every day, not by someone remembering to. We have never sold personal information and we don't share it for advertising. There are no tracking pixels on this site. Everything below is the same promise, said precisely.

2. Who we are

Kindlevale is a brand of Tamás Horváth, sole proprietor (egyéni vállalkozó, registered in Hungary) · Szénbányászok útja 57., 2521 Csolnok, Hungary · Hungarian tax number: 56819650-1-31 · email: [email protected]. We are the business responsible for your information — the "controller", in the language of the law.

Because we are established in the European Union, the GDPR applies to everything we do with your data, wherever you live. That is not a technicality you can ignore: it is the reason this policy promises things US law would not require. US customers keep every right their own state's law grants them on top. Where the two differ, you get the stronger protection.

3. What we collect, and why

• Your children's first names and ages — to write the story. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• Your email address — to send your digital copy, order updates, and any questions about your photos. Basis: performance of contract.
• Uploaded photos — solely to create your book's illustrations. The photos typically show children, so only a parent or legal guardian may upload them. Basis: your explicit consent, given by its own checkbox at upload.
• The note field — to personalize the story, only if you fill it in.
• Shipping address and phone — collected by Stripe at checkout, for delivery only (printed books only).

That is the whole list. We do not store your IP address, your browser fingerprint, or any technical profile alongside your order — the order intake is written so that it never records them in the first place. Payment card details go directly to Stripe and never reach us; there is no card field anywhere on this site.

4. The photos, and the faces in them

To make your family recognizable across all 19 illustrations, our pipeline analyzes the faces in the photos you upload and builds an internal character reference — a stylized description of how each hero should be drawn. This involves processing facial features, which is among the most sensitive things a business can do with a photograph, and of a child at that. So we hold ourselves to the strictest standard we know of, for every customer, whatever state they live in:

• We ask for your separate, explicit consent before any of it — its own checkbox, never bundled into "I agree to everything" — and we store the record of that consent (timestamp and policy version) with your order.
• The photos and character references are used only to create your book. We do not sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from them. We never train an AI model on them, and we never license them to anyone else to do so — every company in section 6 receives them under instructions that permit your book and nothing further.
• We strip all embedded metadata — including GPS location — from every file the moment it arrives, before it is stored.
• They are stored outside the public web root, so no web-server misconfiguration can serve them, and they are destroyed on the schedule in section 5, automatically.

What our pipeline produces from a photo is a drawing — a character reference in our illustration style, which is what the artwork is made from. We do not build, store or use a mathematical face template of the kind that could match your child against another photograph somewhere else, and we do not run face recognition or face matching on anything you send. The illustrated heroes are a stylized likeness, not a photograph. Section 6 names every company involved.

5. Retention Schedule

This is our written retention and destruction schedule. Two of these rules are enforced by a job that runs every day without a human in the loop — those are marked automatic. The others are commitments we keep by hand, and we would rather tell you which is which than let you assume.

• Uploaded photos and derived character references — automatic. Deleted two days after your book ships (or, for a digital order, two days after we send your PDF). The two days exist only so that a mistaken click on our side can be undone; nothing else uses your photos after that point, because a reprint is made from the finished book files, never from the originals.
• Photos from orders that were never paid for — automatic. Deleted 14 days after upload. If payment never arrives, your book never starts and your photos do not linger.
• The finished book files (your PDF and the print-ready file): kept for 30 days after delivery so we can resend or reprint if something goes wrong, then deleted. They contain the finished illustrations, not your photos.
• Order and consent records (names, ages, email, order details, and the record that you consented): kept as long as tax and accounting law requires us to keep transaction records, then deleted. These stay behind when the photos are deleted — that is deliberate, and legally required of us.

You can ask us to delete any of it sooner. See section 9.

6. Who else touches your information

These are every company that processes anything for us. They act on our instructions, for these purposes only.

• Higgsfield AI — the illustration system. Receives the photos to build the character references and draw the artwork. No other use is permitted.
• Anthropic — before any illustration begins, a person here looks at each photo to check it will actually work: is the face sharp enough, can we tell who is who. Our team does that review inside Claude, the AI assistant we work in, so your photos pass through Anthropic for that step. Anthropic's published commercial terms state that it does not train its models on what customers send through them. We name this step because it is true, not because anyone would have noticed.
• Stripe — payment processing, and collection of your shipping address and phone at checkout.
• Our US print-and-ship partner — receives the finished book file and your shipping address, and nothing else. Never your photos. Ask us and we will tell you who it currently is.
• Google Analytics — anonymous usage statistics, and only if you consent via the cookie banner. See the Cookie Policy.
• Our hosting and email providers — run the site and deliver our email.

7. What we never do

We have never sold personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising — not for money, and not for anything else of value. We have no advertising, retargeting, or social-media pixels on this site. We do not use your family's photos or your book in our own marketing without asking you separately, in writing, for that specific thing. And if your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as an opt-out and act on it — see the Cookie Policy for exactly what happens.

8. Children

Kindlevale is a service for adults. We sell to parents and guardians; children cannot create accounts, place orders, or submit anything on this site, and we do not knowingly collect anything directly from a child.

Your child is, of course, the whole point of the book — so their name, age and face are in what you send us. That information reaches us from you, as their parent or legal guardian, under the consent you give at upload. By uploading, you confirm you are that parent or guardian and that you are consenting on your child's behalf. You can withdraw that consent at any time, and we will delete the photos; if the book has not been made yet, withdrawing means we cannot make it.

9. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to: tell you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, give you a copy of it, limit what we do with it, or withdraw a consent you gave. Write to [email protected] and a person will answer. We honor these requests for every customer, not only where a law requires it, and we will never charge you or treat you worse for asking.

We answer within 30 days. If we need to verify who you are first, we will ask for the least we can get away with — usually just a reply from the email address on the order. You may use an authorized agent; we will ask for proof that you authorized them. EU residents may also complain to their supervisory authority (in Hungary, the NAIH).

10. California

If you are a California resident, the CCPA as amended by the CPRA gives you the rights in section 9 by name: to know, to delete, to correct, to opt out of sale or sharing, to limit the use of sensitive personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of them.

Two of those need no button here, because there is nothing to switch off: we do not sell or share your personal information, so there is no "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link to click — and we do not use sensitive personal information (that includes the photos) for anything beyond providing the book you ordered, which is the exempt purpose the statute describes. The categories we collect, why, and how long we keep them are in sections 3, 4 and 5 rather than repeated here, so there is only one version of the truth to keep current.

11. Cookies

See the separate Cookie Policy. You can change your choice at any time via the "Cookie settings" link in the footer of any page.

12. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters — especially anything about the photos — we bump the policy version shown at upload and ask for your consent again, rather than quietly relying on the consent you gave to an older version.