Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 6, 2026

Your photos are used to create your comic — nothing else. We don’t sell your data, we don’t run advertising trackers, and neither we nor our AI providers train models on your content.

1. Who is responsible for your data

Based on Us (basedonus.com) is operated by Clearpoint Systems. For anything privacy-related, contact support@basedonus.com.

2. What we collect

Things you provide:

• photos of the people in your comic (up to a few per person);
• the names, roles and short descriptions you write for them;
• your story: occasion, style, memories, inside jokes, preferences;
• an optional gift note (the recipient’s name, your name, a message);
• your email address, if you share it or sign in;
• your sign-in profile (email, display name, avatar) from the provider you choose, such as Google.

Things collected automatically:

• a random session identifier stored in your browser, linked to product usage events (for example “sample viewed”) in our own database. This is our own analytics — we do not record your IP address or browser fingerprint in it;
• unless you have turned it off, our analytics providers measure how the site is used: pages viewed, roughly where in the world you are, your device and browser, and which site or search sent you. Google receives your IP address in order to work out that approximate location, and does not store it in the reports we see. PostHog also records session replays of the in-app experience so we can understand usability. If you allow it, those replays may include normal in-app text, inputs and media, including character details and story text, uploaded photos, generated comic images, edit comparisons, and the sign-in or payment handoff UI shown on our site. Google’s and Creem’s hosted pages are outside our app and are not recorded by our browser recorder, so credentials and card details entered there do not appear in our replays. Replays are retained for 30 days and access is limited to people who need it for product support or improvement. Where we ask permission first, or where you have opted out, these providers stay off — section 12 explains which applies to you. There are no advertising pixels on the site either way;
• OpenAnalytics, our own self-hosted collector, also measures how the site is used — pages viewed, roughly where in the world you are, and your device and browser. It is cookieless and cannot recognize you across visits. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, it honors that signal directly and records nothing about your visit; section 12 has the detail;
• payment details are entered directly with Creem, our merchant of record — we never see your card number.

3. How we use it

• to generate your comic — including the free sample created before you buy;
• to run your account, deliver your order and provide support;
• to email you about your order — your finished comic, or a gift comic someone sent you;
• to screen content for safety and prevent abuse of the service;
• to understand how the product is used — via our own analytics and, if enabled, PostHog and Google Analytics.

Where the GDPR or similar laws apply, we rely on: performance of our contract with you (creating and delivering your comic), your consent (content you choose to provide, such as photos, and the Google Analytics cookies you accept in the banner), and our legitimate interests (safety, abuse prevention, and improving the product).

4. Who processes your data

We use a small number of service providers. Each receives only what its job requires:

• Google (Gemini API) — receives your story text, character names and descriptions, and your photos, to write and illustrate the comic. We use Google’s paid API, whose terms do not permit using your content to train Google’s models.
• OpenAI (image API) — when its image model is used for artwork, it receives your photos as reference images together with the panel descriptions. OpenAI’s API terms likewise exclude customer content from model training by default.
• PostHog — receives analytics events and session replay data so we can understand how people use the site. When analytics is enabled, replays may show normal in-app text, inputs and media, including the names and story details entered, uploaded photos, generated artwork, edit comparisons, and our sign-in or payment handoff UI. The hosted Google and Creem pages are outside our app and are not recorded by our browser recorder; credentials and card details entered there do not appear in our replays. We use PostHog Cloud; its project is hosted in the United States unless configured for its EU region. Replays are retained for 30 days and access is limited to team members who need it for support or product improvement.
• Google (Analytics) — with your agreement, receives the page views, approximate location, device and referral details described in section 2, so we can see which parts of the site help and which get in the way. Google’s advertising and personalization signals are switched off permanently: your visit is not used for ad targeting or remarketing, and is never joined to an advertising profile. This is separate from the Gemini API above — Analytics never receives your photos, story text or gift note.
• OpenAnalytics — our own, self-hosted analytics collector, running on infrastructure we control rather than a third party’s. It receives the page you are on, roughly where in the world you are, and your device and browser, so we can see how the site is used without relying on Google for it. It is cookieless: it sets no cookies and cannot recognize you across visits. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, it honors that signal directly and records nothing about your visit. Section 12 explains what it stores in your browser and why. Like the analytics above, it never receives your photos, story text or gift note.
• Supabase — hosts our database, sign-in, and the private storage where your photos and comics live (United States).
• Creem — our merchant of record; handles checkout and receives your email, order reference and payment details.
• Vercel and Railway — host the website and our servers (United States).
• Sentry — when something breaks, technical details (the error message, the page or request involved, performance timing, and browser or operating-system info) are sent to Sentry, an error-monitoring service, so we can find and fix bugs. This never includes your photos, story text, or payment details.

We do not sell or rent personal data to anyone.

5. How long we keep things

• Uploaded photos are stored privately and deleted automatically within about 30 days of your order being created.
• Your finished comic (and the stylized character artwork derived from your photos) is kept so your share link and downloads keep working — until you ask us to delete it.
• Your account profile is kept until you delete it — either from your account page or by asking us.
• Records of paid orders are kept even after you delete your account, because we are required to retain transaction records for tax and accounting. What remains is the receipt only — the amount, the date and the payment reference — with your name, email, photos, story and comic removed.
• Usage events are retained for product purposes, with any link to you removed when your account is deleted.
• Session replays are retained for 30 days, then automatically deleted. Access is limited to team members who need it for support or product improvement.

6. Sharing and public pages

Every finished comic gets a private share link with a long, unguessable address. The page is not listed or indexed, but anyone who has the link can view the comic and your gift note, and messaging apps may show a preview that includes the comic cover and the recipient’s first name. Share the link only with people you want to see it. Uploaded photos are never shown on share pages.

7. Your rights and choices

If you have an account, you can delete it yourself at any time from your account page. That immediately removes your photos, your comics and your profile, and cannot be undone. Two things to know before you do it: gift links you have already shared will stop working, because the comic itself is deleted; and receipts for paid orders are kept as described in section 5.

You can also ask us to access, correct, export or delete your personal data at any time by emailing support@basedonus.com from the address linked to your order. We honor requests under Israel’s Privacy Protection Law, the GDPR, and comparable laws, and may need to verify your identity first. Deleting an order removes its photos and comic from storage.

If you live in California or another US state with a privacy law, you have the right to know, correct and delete your personal information, and to opt out of its sale or sharing — which we do not do in any case. If you believe we haven’t resolved a privacy request, you may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

8. Children

Based on Us is for adults (18+). You may feature a child in a comic only if you are, or have the consent of, the child’s parent or legal guardian.

9. About faces and biometrics

Your photos are used solely as reference input to draw stylized artwork. We do not store facial embeddings, build face-recognition systems, or maintain any biometric database.

10. Security

Photos and comics are stored in private buckets accessible only through short-lived signed links; all traffic is encrypted in transit. Our team can access order content only for support and safety purposes. No system is perfectly secure, but access to your content is limited to what running the service requires.

If a data breach affects your personal data, we will notify affected users and any authority we are legally required to inform, without undue delay.

11. International transfers

Our infrastructure and AI providers process data in the United States, and the service is operated from Israel. Our providers protect the data they process under their own contractual safeguards.

12. Cookies and local storage

We use no advertising cookies, and we never will. Your browser stores what the product needs to function: your sign-in session, the random session identifier described above, and small flags such as an in-progress gift reveal, or a pointer to a comic you started making so you can pick it up again. We do not ask permission for these, because without them the site cannot do the thing you came to do.

To decide which of the two applies to you, we store one small cookie holding a single word about your country’s privacy regime — whether we must ask you first, or need not. Every visitor receives it, before any question and whatever you go on to answer. It records a jurisdiction rather than a person, holds nothing that could identify you, and — of everything tied to the Google Analytics question below — is the only thing we store before you have had your say. OpenAnalytics, a few paragraphs down, is a separate case: it is not part of that question at all.

Analytics itself is different, and what we do depends on where you are. In the UK, the EEA and Switzerland we ask before storing anything for it: until you answer the banner, analytics and session replay stay off. Accept, and the in-app experience may be recorded, including normal text, inputs and media such as the content described in section 2. Hosted Google and Creem pages are outside our app and are not recorded by our browser recorder. Decline, and they stay off.

Elsewhere — including the United States, whose privacy laws work on an opt-out basis rather than an opt-in one — Analytics starts switched on and we show no banner. You can switch it off at any time with the control below, and we treat that as final.

If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, we honor it everywhere and in preference to the above: analytics and session replay stay off, and we do not show the banner at all. Google’s advertising and personalization signals stay switched off in every case, in every country.

OpenAnalytics, our own self-hosted analytics collector (section 4), works differently again and is not part of the choice above. It is cookieless and keeps no identifier that could follow you between sessions or between sites, so it runs immediately, for every visitor, without asking. It does still write a few small things to your browser’s local storage while it runs: a short-lived marker for the current visit, a cached copy of its own configuration, and — so a brief outage on our end does not lose your visit entirely — a queue of unsent events, held for at most 24 hours and then discarded. None of it is a cookie, and none of it identifies you. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, OpenAnalytics honors that signal directly and records nothing about your visit — no page views, no location, no device details. Because it needs no permission to run, the Cookie choices control below does not affect it — it only ever affects PostHog and Google Analytics.

You can change your mind whenever you like: the Cookie choices control switches Analytics off and lets you choose again. It sits in our site footer, and on this page just below. Switching off takes effect immediately, though any cookies Analytics already set will sit inert in your browser until they expire — clearing this site’s data removes them at once.

Cookie choices

Sentry, our error-monitoring service (section 4), sets no tracking cookies and is not used for analytics or advertising.

13. Changes

We may update this policy as the product evolves; the date above always reflects the current version, and material changes will be communicated on the site.

14. Contact

Privacy questions or requests: support@basedonus.com.