Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to August & Always ("we," "our," or "us"). We operate the website augustnalways.com and provide handcrafted, custom cellophane-wrapped photo magnets. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting the personal information you share with us.

If you have any questions or concerns about our policy or practices regarding your personal information, please contact us at [email protected].

2. Information We Collect

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you design custom magnets, place an order, sign up for our newsletter, or submit an event inquiry:

• Order and Contact Information: Name, shipping address, billing address, email address, optional phone number, and purchase transaction history.
• Custom Upload Media: When you use our interactive customizer, we process your uploaded photographs locally via your browser, downscale/crop them to a print-ready 1:1 format, and securely store the cropped image as a compressed Base64 string in our database to print and fulfill your magnet keepsakes.
• Inquiry Information: When you submit our School Events or Bulk Orders inquiry forms, we store the organization or school name, contact name, email address, optional phone number, target event date, expected attendance range, and the details of your message.
• Payment Data: All transactions are processed securely through our payment provider (Stripe). We do not collect, view, or store full credit card numbers or sensitive billing credentials on our servers.
• Technical & Diagnostics Data: IP address, browser user-agent string, and submission timestamps are automatically captured during form posts solely to detect, log, and prevent spam, bot attacks, and transactional abuse.

3. How We Use Your Information

We process your information based on legitimate business interests, the fulfillment of our contract with you, compliance with our legal obligations, and/or your consent:

• To Fulfill and Manage Orders: We use your contact info, shipping details, and custom photo files to manufacture, pack, ship, and trace your custom keepsakes.
• To Process Communications: We use your inquiry data to reply to your questions, coordinate events, and provide quotes.
• To Protect Our Platform: We use diagnostic markers (IPs, user-agents) to detect fraudulent transactions and keep our booking/contact forms free from automated spam.
• To Comply with Law: We retain business records and invoice transactions for the duration required to meet tax audit and corporate accounting regulations.

We strictly **do not** rent, trade, lease, or sell your personal information or custom photographs to third parties for marketing or advertising purposes under any circumstances.

4. Information Sharing and Third Parties

We only share data with essential third-party service providers who help us operate our platform, process transactions, and ship physical packages:

• Hosting & Cloud Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Pages serverless hosting, D1 SQL edge database, and global routing). Your personal data may transit secure nodes across Cloudflare's globally distributed network.
• Email Services: Resend (transactional email routing) to deliver receipt invoices, order confirmations, and inquiry receipts safely.
• Payment Processing: Stripe Checkout, to handle encrypted credit card transactions. Stripe's own privacy policy governs their collection and processing of your credit card details.
• Fulfillment & Logistics: Shipping carriers (such as USPS, UPS, or FedEx) to print shipping labels and deliver orders to your shipping destination.

5. Data Retention

We retain your personal data and uploaded photos only for as long as is necessary to complete the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy:

• Order Details and Print Photos: Stored securely in our edge database until the order is successfully manufactured, shipped, and past our refund window, or to meet standard tax and audit records requirements.
• Lead Signups and Inquiries: Stored to manage active inquiries and customer relationships, and will be deleted or archived upon request.

6. Your Privacy Rights

Depending on your location (such as the EU under GDPR, or California under CCPA), you may have specific statutory rights regarding your personal information, including the right to:

• Request access and obtain a copy of your personal data.
• Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete details.
• Request deletion or erasure of your personal details and custom photographs ("Right to be Forgotten").
• Request portability or transfer of your data to another service.

To exercise any of these rights, please email us at [email protected]. We verify and respond to all requests within 30 days.

7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We do **not** use marketing cookies, tracking beacons, or cross-site tracking technologies. To monitor site health, we utilize **Cloudflare Web Analytics**, which is a privacy-first, cookie-free analytics service. It collects only anonymous aggregate traffic data and does not collect or correlate personal information across websites.

8. Children's Privacy

While we manufacture family-friendly keepsake products (including children's art magnets), our website is intended only for adult guardians. We do not knowingly collect personal details directly from children under 13. Parents and guardians retain sole authority over all photos uploaded to the Customizer.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as our services and regulatory guidelines evolve. Any updates will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date at the top of the document.