Privacy Policy

1. Data controller

The data controller for Skerp is:

2. What data we collect

Account data. When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and password (stored as a bcrypt hash). Studio accounts may also include a studio name and logo.

Uploaded content. Images you upload to the Service, along with metadata such as filenames, dimensions, and file sizes. We process images to generate thumbnails, previews, and responsive variants.

Client gallery data. When your clients interact with galleries, we collect their selections, star ratings, annotations, comments, and (if required) their name and email address. Clients who access galleries without identifying themselves are tracked via an anonymous guest identifier.

Usage and log data. We collect server logs including IP addresses, browser type, pages visited, and timestamps. We also record activity logs within the application (e.g., gallery views, selection changes, approvals) for your account dashboard.

Payment data. Payment information (credit card numbers, billing addresses) is collected and processed directly by Stripe. We do not store your full card details on our servers.

Analytics data. We collect anonymized usage statistics including pages visited, referrer URLs, browser type, device type, screen size, and approximate location (country, region and city derived from your IP address). Your IP address is used for geolocation only and is not stored. Analytics are processed on our own servers — no data is shared with third-party analytics providers. No cookies are used for site analytics.

Gallery visit statistics. When you open a gallery, album, download page or upload link, we record the visit so the photographer who shared it can see how their work is being received. This covers the approximate location of the visit (country, region and city — never a street address), the device type, which site the link was opened from, how long the page was open, how far it was scrolled, which photos were opened, and what was downloaded or uploaded. These statistics are visible only to the photographer who owns that gallery, and to nobody else. Visits are grouped using the anonymous skerp_guest identifier described under Cookies, not your IP address. If you identify yourself to a gallery (by entering your email or following a personal invitation), your visits are additionally shown to that photographer under your name — which is the point of a proofing gallery.

3. Legal basis for processing

We process your personal data under the following legal bases as defined in GDPR Article 6:

• Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — processing necessary to provide the Service you signed up for, including hosting your images, delivering galleries, and processing payments.
• Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) — processing for security, fraud prevention, service improvement, and internal analytics, where our interests do not override your fundamental rights.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — where we request your explicit consent, such as for optional transactional email notifications. You may withdraw consent at any time.

4. How we use your data

• Service delivery — hosting images, generating conversions, serving galleries, processing selections and approvals.
• Transactional emails — sending gallery invitations, approval notifications, delivery notifications, and account-related emails.
• Security — rate limiting, abuse prevention, and audit logging.
• Service improvement — aggregated, anonymized analytics to understand usage patterns and improve the platform.

We do not use your data for advertising, profiling, or automated decision-making.

5. Data sharing

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal data. We share data only with the following service providers, strictly for the purposes described:

• Stripe (payment processing) — processes your payment information. Stripe's privacy policy applies to data they handle.
• Sentry (error monitoring) — receives technical error data (stack traces, browser metadata) to help us diagnose and fix issues. Sentry does not receive your personal content or images.
• Cloudflare (media storage, content delivery, bot management, and CAPTCHA) — uploaded images are stored in Cloudflare R2, restricted to the European Union jurisdiction. Images are delivered globally via Cloudflare's content delivery network. Cloudflare's web application firewall (WAF) inspects inbound requests for abuse patterns, and Cloudflare Turnstile (an invisible CAPTCHA) protects certain forms against automated abuse. Cloudflare may set a bot-management cookie (see Section 9). Cloudflare does not use your content for their own purposes.

Our application servers are hosted in the European Union (Germany). All persistent data — including your account, images, and client gallery data — is stored exclusively within the EU. The hosting provider supplies infrastructure only and does not access your data.

Third-party integrations you authorise. You may choose to authorise the Skerper plugin (our Lightroom Classic plugin) against your account. Skerper receives a scoped API token that grants it access to your own galleries only, and you can revoke it at any time from Settings → Skerper. We do not share your data with Skerper beyond what the plugin reads and writes on your behalf.

We do not use third-party analytics services, advertising networks, or tracking pixels.

6. Data retention

• Active accounts — your data is retained for as long as your account is active.
• Account deletion — you can delete your account at any time from Settings. After requesting deletion, your account enters a 14-day grace period during which you can cancel by logging in. After 14 days, all personal data, uploaded images, galleries, selections, and client data are permanently and irreversibly purged. We recommend downloading any data you wish to keep before requesting deletion.
• Billing records — in accordance with EU tax and accounting obligations (GDPR Art. 17(3)(b)), we retain a minimal anonymized record of your subscription history (no name, no email, no personal identifiers) for up to 10 years after account deletion. Your Stripe payment data is deleted from Stripe at the time of account purge.
• Server logs — retained for up to 90 days, then automatically deleted.
• Gallery visit statistics — retained for up to 400 days so photographers can compare a season against the previous year, then automatically deleted.
• Backups — encrypted backups may retain data for up to 30 days after deletion before being cycled out.

7. Your rights (GDPR)

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:

• Right of access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Right to rectification — request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Right to erasure — request deletion of your personal data ("right to be forgotten"). You can self-service this from your account settings, or email us.
• Right to data portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format. Email us at [email protected] and we will provide, within 30 days, a ZIP archive of your uploaded images alongside JSON files containing your gallery metadata, client selections, ratings, comments, and annotations.
• Right to restriction — request that we limit the processing of your data in certain circumstances.
• Right to object — object to processing based on legitimate interest.
• Right to withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days.

If you believe your data protection rights have been violated, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) at autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl.

8. International transfers

All persistent data is stored exclusively within the European Union. Our application servers are located in Germany. Uploaded images are stored in Cloudflare R2's EU-restricted region. No personal data or content is stored outside the EU.

Stripe and Sentry are US-based companies that participate in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and use Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) to ensure adequate protection for international data transfers. Stripe processes payment data only. Sentry receives technical error data only — no personal content or images.

Cloudflare is a US-based company that participates in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. All image data in Cloudflare R2 is restricted to the European Union jurisdiction. Cloudflare's content delivery network may cache images at edge locations outside the EU for performance — these cached copies are transient, encrypted in transit, and automatically purged.

9. Cookies

Skerp uses the following cookies:

• Session cookie — maintains your authenticated session. Expires when you close your browser or after the session timeout.
• Guest identifier (skerp_guest) — anonymous identifier for gallery and upload-link visitors, used to associate selections and annotations with your session across visits, and to count one returning person as one visitor in the statistics shown to the photographer. It is a random value tied to no personal information. Expires after 90 days.
• Remembered email (remembered_email) — pre-fills the email field on the sign-in page for convenience. Expires after 90 days.
• Theme preference — stores your light/dark mode preference in your browser's local storage (not a cookie). Persistent, first-party only.
• Bot management (__cf_bm) — set by Cloudflare to distinguish humans from automated traffic. Expires after 30 minutes of inactivity. This is a strictly necessary cookie that does not track you across sites.

We do not use tracking cookies, third-party cookies, or advertising cookies.

10. Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your data:

• All connections are encrypted with TLS (HTTPS).
• Images are served via HMAC-signed URLs that expire after approximately one hour. The URLs are designed for Skerp galleries, not for external embedding; embedded image URLs will cease to load once the signature expires.
• Public endpoints are rate-limited to prevent abuse. Sign-in, email-check, and other enumeration-prone endpoints are further protected by per-email and per-IP throttles.
• Cloudflare's web application firewall (WAF) filters malicious traffic before it reaches our servers.
• Cloudflare Turnstile (an invisible CAPTCHA) protects sign-in, sign-up, contact, and promo-validation endpoints against automated abuse.
• Content Security Policy (CSP) headers are applied to all responses.
• Passwords are hashed using bcrypt.
• Automated encrypted backups are maintained.

Uptime target. We target 99.9% monthly uptime, excluding announced maintenance windows. Current and historical uptime is published at /status.

While we take security seriously, no system is completely immune to risk. If you discover a security vulnerability, please report it to [email protected].

11. Children

The Service is not directed at individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child under 16 has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will promptly delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The "Effective date" at the top of this page indicates when the policy was last revised.

For material changes, we will notify you via email at least 30 days before the changes take effect. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Contact

For privacy-related inquiries or to exercise your GDPR rights, contact us:

You may also contact the Dutch Data Protection Authority:
Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens
autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl