// Privacy

Family Photo Hero Privacy Policy

Effective

Family Photo Hero, a Windows app from GLA Technologies Inc., puts the photos on your drives in order by adding folders (People, Years, Places and others) next to them, and it does all of this on your computer. This policy says what it looks at, what it keeps, where, for how long, and how you remove it.

The short version

  • Family Photo Hero has no internet connection of its own. It sends nothing to us or to anyone else: not your photos, not the faces in them, not the names you give, not how you use it. There is no account.
  • It asks for your OK before it looks for faces, and keeps what it learns on your computer, locked to your Windows account, until you delete the project or uninstall the app.
  • It never changes your photos. It only adds folders, after showing you exactly what it will add.

What it looks at, and why

To sort your photos into folders, it reads the photos and videos in the drives and folders you choose:

  • What is saved in each file: the date it was taken, the place (the location your camera or phone saved in it), the camera or phone it came from, its size, and its file and folder names. Places are turned into town names with a list that comes with the app, on your computer.
  • The faces in your photos. Before it looks for any face, it asks for your OK. If you say no, it doesn’t start: making a folder for each person is what it is for. With your OK, it finds the faces, measures each one so it can tell who looks like whom, and keeps small pictures of the faces so it can ask you “Who is this?”. It keeps the names you give and your answers (“same person”, “not them”).
  • What a picture shows. It checks, on your computer, whether a picture is a screenshot, a receipt or a document rather than a photo, and whether a photo without faces shows food (for a Food folder). It uses models that come with the app.
  • Copies. It compares files to find exact copies of the same photo.

It uses all of this only to make your folders and to show you, in the app, what it found.

What it keeps, and where

Everything it learns is kept on your computer, in its own folder: %LOCALAPPDATA%\DcimHero when you got it from us, or the app’s own folder when you installed it from the Microsoft Store. The face measurements, the small face pictures and the names are encrypted with a key that only your Windows account on this computer can unlock (Windows’ own data protection). Nothing is kept anywhere else, and nothing is sent anywhere.

The folders it adds to your drive are ordinary folders. A person’s folder can show that person’s face as its icon (only a face you named, and only after you have seen it in the preview). Anyone who can open the drive can see these folders, as with any folder.

Your photos stay put

  • Organizing never moves, renames, edits or deletes your photos. It opens them only to read them, and adds new folders on the drive you choose only after you confirm what it will add.
  • Clean up deletes an original only when you ask it to. It first shows you exactly what goes and what stays, and deletes a file only when the same photo is in Family Photo Hero at that moment. Deleted files don’t go to the Recycle Bin: they wait in a folder called “Deleted by Clean up” at the top of their drive, exactly as they were. After 30 days the app asks whether to empty it, and it is emptied only when you say so. Put back returns them to where they were.

Who receives your information

No one. Family Photo Hero sends no photos, faces, names, usage statistics or crash reports to GLA Technologies Inc. or to anyone else, and it shows no ads. If you write to us for help, we receive only what you choose to send, and use it only to answer you. The app opens this policy in your browser, Microsoft’s HEVC extension in the Microsoft Store, or your email program only when you click for it; it doesn’t connect to anything itself.

What you can see and change

  • In the app, every person, year, place and folder can be opened. Tap the photos that aren’t someone, or are in the wrong year or place, and they are taken out of that folder the next time you organize.
  • “Delete…” next to a project forgets the names, faces and everything else learned for it.
  • Uninstalling the app removes everything it keeps on your computer.
  • The folders Family Photo Hero added to your drives stay until you delete them in File Explorer. Your photos are not in them twice (they are the same photos, filed in more than one place) unless the app had to copy them from another drive. Once Clean up has deleted originals, those folders hold the only copy of those photos: don’t delete them unless you have another copy.

Children

Family Photo Hero is not directed at children. GLA Technologies Inc. collects no information from anyone, children included: what the app learns from your family’s photos stays on your computer.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version is posted here with a new date. If what the app does with faces changes, the app asks for your OK again before it reads anything.

Contact us

Questions or requests about Family Photo Hero and privacy? Write to us: mindthegap [at] glatech.ca

GLA Technologies Inc. · Ontario, Canada