Privacy policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Aurowl Studio s.r.o. (“we”, “us”) handles personal data when you use Camfold 1.0.0, visit camfold.app, buy or activate a licence, or contact support.

Camfold works with your photos and videos on your computer. It does not upload them when you scan or organise a folder. Some other features need an internet connection. We explain those features, the information they use and your choices below.

Who we are

Aurowl Studio s.r.o. operates Camfold. We are the data controller for the personal data we use to run the website, licensing service and customer support. This means we decide why and how that data is used.

Our registered address is:

Beňadická 3007/13
851 06 Bratislava
Slovakia

Company Identification Number (CIN / IČO): 57097968
Tax ID (DIČ): 2122572474
VAT ID (IČ DPH): SK2122572474

You can contact us at info@camfold.app or write to the address above.

Your photos and videos

You choose the folders Camfold can work with. The app reads photos, videos and related files. It can also read filenames, folder paths, capture dates, camera details and GPS information stored in those files.

This work happens on your computer. Camfold does not automatically send us your media, thumbnails, photo locations, folder paths, file hashes or review history. You do not need a Camfold user account to organise your media.

Exports can keep the dates, camera details and GPS information from the original files. Moving a file does not remove that information. Cloud-sync and backup software you use may separately copy files or app data. Those copies are not uploads by Camfold.

Photo analysis

Optional photo-quality analysis runs on your computer. It can detect faces, assess their quality and suggest visually similar photos. It does not identify or name people. The results stay on your computer and are not sent to us or to a remote AI service.

Photo location lookup also uses place data bundled with the app. Online city search is a separate feature, described below.

Data stored by the app

Camfold stores thumbnails, file information, analysis results, settings and saved reviews on your computer. It also keeps records needed for Move, Undo and recovery. Your chosen Home location and appearance settings are stored locally.

Camfold does not encrypt its ordinary local database or caches. Their protection depends on your operating system, user account and disk security. Device credentials and protected licence records use the operating system’s protected storage where supported.

The app has no built-in analytics or automatic crash-report upload service.

Network activity

Camfold connects to online services for purchases, licence activation and checks, Apple purchase restoration, direct-download updates, and city searches in the Home picker. Opening website links also connects your browser to the relevant site.

These connections expose your IP address and normal request information to the receiving service. They do not upload your photo library or local review history.

Purchases through Creem

Creem provides checkout for the direct-download Mac and Windows editions and the Windows edition obtained through Microsoft Store. It acts as merchant of record for those purchases. It collects the buyer, billing and payment information needed for the purchase under its privacy notice.

We can receive or access order and customer identifiers, your name, email address, country, purchase status and refund information through Creem. Payment-card details are handled by the commerce providers, rather than stored in Camfold’s licensing database.

App Store purchases

Apple handles Mac App Store purchases and purchase restoration under its App Store privacy notice.

Exporting an Apple purchase to a direct-download or Windows licence is not offered at launch.

Microsoft Store downloads

Microsoft processes information when you browse Microsoft Store or obtain Camfold through it, under the Microsoft Privacy Statement. This can include account, device, download and installation information, and information about updates delivered by Microsoft Store.

Downloading Camfold from Microsoft Store does not make Microsoft the payment provider for Camfold’s paid unlock. That edition uses Creem checkout and our licensing service, as described in the purchase and licence sections of this policy. Microsoft Store’s own data processing is separate from Camfold’s local media processing.

Licence activation and checks

Our licensing service uses purchase and licence identifiers, a random installation or device identifier, device credentials, app version and activation status. These records help us confirm purchases, apply device limits, restore access and recognise refunds or revoked licences.

The device identifier is not a hardware serial number. It can still be personal data because it can be linked to other licensing records. Our service also uses coded identifiers derived from IP addresses and request counters to limit abuse. These identifiers are pseudonymous, not necessarily anonymous.

We keep records of retention reviews, including coded record references, observation and review dates, and the reason a record is still needed.

Automated licence decisions

Automatic checks verify purchase status, apply device limits and recognise known refunds or revocations. A failed check can prevent activation or paid operations.

If you think a check is wrong, email support@camfold.app. We can review the issue.

App updates

Direct-download builds check camfold.app for update information when the app launches. Our host receives your IP address and request information. This request does not include cookies, a device identifier or an app-version field.

If you choose to install an update, the app makes further requests to download it. Mac App Store builds use Apple’s update process instead. For the Microsoft Store edition, the Store listing and Microsoft’s update settings describe the applicable installation and update arrangements. Information processed by Microsoft for those services is covered by its privacy statement linked above.

Online city search

When you type a city in the Home picker, Camfold supplements its local results with results from komoot’s Photon service at photon.komoot.io. That service receives the text you type and your connection’s IP address.

Camfold does not send photos, photo GPS, saved Home coordinates, folder paths or cookies with the search. Search results are temporarily kept in app memory. The Home location you select is saved locally.

You can enter coordinates manually without an online search. Local city results remain available if Photon cannot be reached. Do not enter personal or sensitive information in the search box. See the Photon documentation for information about the public service.

Website visits and cookies

Cloudflare hosts and delivers our website, downloads and licensing services. To provide and protect these services, it processes information such as IP addresses, requested URLs, request times, response status and browser or client details.

Our website saves your light or dark theme choice in your browser’s local storage. You can remove it through your browser’s site-data settings. This resets your theme preference.

We do not use advertising trackers or audience-analytics scripts on the website. Cloudflare security features can use necessary cookies when security checks are applied. This depends on the features enabled. See Cloudflare’s cookie information.

If you open “Reveal phone number”, we use Cloudflare Turnstile to check for automated access. The verification widget loads only after you request it. Cloudflare receives connection and browser information, including your IP address, and returns a verification token. Our server checks that token before returning the business number. We also use request counters and hourly rotating coded IP references to limit repeated requests. We do not store the revealed number or verification token in your browser’s local storage or use this check for marketing. Cloudflare also processes verification signals to improve Turnstile under its own privacy terms. You can contact us by email if you cannot complete verification. See Cloudflare’s Turnstile Privacy Addendum.

Creem checkout, Mac App Store and Microsoft Store pages have their own storage and privacy practices. Their notices explain those services.

Support messages and screenshots

Support is provided through support@camfold.app, using Hostinger Email. We use your email address, message contents and dates, and any app or operating-system details you provide to understand and answer your request.

At launch, access within Aurowl Studio is limited to the person handling Camfold support. Hostinger processes messages to provide the email service.

You may send a screenshot if it helps explain the problem. Please remove unrelated people, personal details, filenames, locations and licence credentials where possible. We do not request original photos, videos or exported diagnostic logs for launch support. Check copied error messages too, as they can contain file or folder names.

We may remove unnecessary personal data from a request. Aurowl Studio does not submit support material to AI assistants or use it to train AI models.

Why we use personal data

GDPR requires a legal basis for using personal data. We use the following bases for the data Aurowl Studio handles:

Providing your licence and contractual support

We use the information needed to deliver and manage your licence, check purchases and provide support under our contract with you. This also covers steps you ask us to take before a contract.

Running and protecting the service

We rely on legitimate interests to provide requested website pages, downloads, updates and online city searches. These interests are providing the features you request and maintaining a supported product.

We also rely on legitimate interests to protect our services, limit abuse, maintain valid licensing and investigate technical problems. We consider whether the processing is needed and how it affects the people concerned.

Answering enquiries

Our legitimate interests in answering enquiries and managing business relationships cover general questions and requests from people acting for a business.

Legal duties and claims

We keep records required by accounting, tax and other applicable laws to meet our legal duties. We may also use relevant records to establish, exercise or defend a specific legal claim, based on our legitimate interests in protecting legal rights and any applicable legal duty.

If an activity needs consent, we will ask separately and explain how to withdraw it. Using Camfold does not give consent to unrelated processing.

Information you can choose to provide

Some information is needed to complete a purchase, activate a licence or answer a request. If you do not provide it, we may be unable to complete that transaction or service.

Sending a screenshot and using online city search are optional. Processing media locally does not give Aurowl Studio access to your library or app workspace.

Advertising and marketing

We do not sell personal data or share it for advertising that tracks people across different businesses or websites (cross-context behavioural advertising).

At launch, we do not use purchase or support contacts for promotional email campaigns. If we introduce a campaign later, we will first provide the required notices, establish a lawful basis and include an unsubscribe option. This policy is not advance consent to marketing.

Who receives personal data

The recipients depend on which features you use:

• Cloudflare provides website, download and licensing infrastructure.
• Hostinger Email stores and sends support correspondence.
• Creem and its payment providers handle purchases for the direct-download editions and the Microsoft Store Windows edition, and related transactions.
• Apple handles Mac App Store purchases, restoration and relevant purchase checks.
• Microsoft operates Microsoft Store and its download, installation and any Store-delivered update services.
• komoot’s Photon service receives online city searches.

Cloudflare and Hostinger process service data on our behalf under applicable data-processing terms. Creem, Apple and Microsoft also have their own responsibilities for the services they provide. Aurowl Studio remains responsible for its own use of information it receives from them.

Where needed for a specific legal, accounting or dispute-related purpose, we may share relevant records with professional advisers, accountants, courts or competent authorities. We limit what we share to what that purpose needs.

International transfers

Aurowl Studio is based in Slovakia. Our providers can process data in other countries, including the United States and other places outside the European Economic Area (EEA). We do not promise EU-only hosting.

For transfers we are responsible for, we must use an applicable legal transfer mechanism. This can be an adequacy decision recognising a country’s data protection standards, or approved standard contractual clauses with any necessary extra safeguards.

Contact us for details of the safeguards that apply to your data and how to obtain a copy. We may need to protect confidential information when providing that copy.

How long we keep data

Data on your computer

Camfold does not automatically delete workspace data after a set time. Saved reviews, caches and recovery records remain until you remove them through the relevant app controls or manage the app’s local data.

Hiding a recent folder and resetting settings do not erase all its history. Deleting saved history removes the related review and Undo information. Unfinished recovery can prevent this cleanup. Trial and protected licence records can remain separately.

Settings → About → Show App Data Folder opens the active workspace. Deleting records is not a guarantee of secure overwriting. Local backups may still hold copies.

Support

We delete screenshots from active support systems within 30 days after the issue is resolved. We delete ordinary support correspondence within 12 months after resolution. If there is no issue to resolve, the period starts from our final substantive reply.

A specific legal duty or dispute may require us to keep relevant material longer. We limit what we keep and reassess the need when that duty or dispute ends.

Licensing and purchase records

We keep the minimum records needed to provide and validate licences, restore access, recognise refunds or revocations, prevent replay or misuse, and meet legal duties. A permanent licence can need long-term validation records. A record’s age alone does not tell us whether it is still needed.

We review the need to keep records at least annually. Records no longer needed must be deleted or anonymised. Recording a review does not itself delete data.

Accounting records

Where Slovak accounting law requires Aurowl Studio to keep a record, the general period is 10 years following the year it relates to. This does not automatically apply to every licence, device or security record.

Technical and security records

Retention depends on the operational or security purpose, any specific incident or claim, and the provider’s retention settings. IP-derived rate-limit records are not guaranteed to disappear as soon as a counter stops being useful. They must be included in retention reviews and cleanup.

Provider records and backups

Creem, Apple and Microsoft keep the records they are responsible for under their own privacy notices and legal duties. Their retention periods are separate from ours.

Removing data from active systems does not always remove provider backup copies immediately. Those copies remain until the applicable backup cycle expires.

Your privacy rights

Depending on the conditions and exceptions in applicable law, you can ask us to:

• Give you access to your personal data and a copy of it.
• Correct inaccurate information.
• Erase information we no longer have a lawful reason to keep.
• Restrict how we use your information.
• Provide data in a portable format where the right to data portability applies.

You can object to processing based on legitimate interests. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it without affecting processing that was lawful before withdrawal. Local law may give you other rights, including challenging an automated decision or appealing how we handled a request.

Making a privacy request

Email info@camfold.app. We may ask for information reasonably needed to confirm your identity and find your records. Do not send your full photo library, password, payment-card details or identity documents we have not requested.

We respond within the time required by applicable law. Under GDPR, this is normally one month. If a permitted extension is needed, we explain it within that first month. Requests are normally free, subject to the exceptions allowed by law.

If we cannot fulfil a request, we explain why and tell you about available complaint or appeal options. We assess each request separately. We do not treat all licensing records as exempt from deletion, although some licence-validation or statutory records may qualify for an exception.

We cannot inspect or remotely erase media or app data stored only on your computer. We can explain the local controls. A request to Aurowl Studio does not automatically erase records Apple, Microsoft or Creem must keep for their own purposes. We can explain where to send those requests and help where required.

Complaints

You can complain to the Office for Personal Data Protection of the Slovak Republic (Úrad na ochranu osobných údajov Slovenskej republiky): dataprotection.gov.sk.

Under GDPR, you can also complain to a competent supervisory authority in the country where you usually live or work, or where the alleged infringement took place. Other local complaint rights remain available where applicable.

Children’s privacy

Camfold is a general-purpose photo-organising tool. It is not directed at children, and we do not market it specifically to children. We do not collect dates of birth just to operate the local app.

If you believe a child has provided personal data to us in circumstances requiring parental authorisation, contact us so we can assess and address the situation.

Security

We use access restrictions, protected credentials and encrypted network connections for Camfold services that handle personal data. These measures cannot remove every security risk.

Ordinary local app data is not encrypted by Camfold itself. Its protection also depends on your computer, account and disk settings.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when our practices or requirements change. The date above shows when it was last revised. Where a change requires further notice or consent, we provide it before the new processing starts.

Contact

For questions about this policy or to exercise your privacy rights, email info@camfold.app. You can also write to our registered address in the “Who we are” section.