Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information SnapAppraise ("SnapAppraise," "we," "us," or "our") collects when you use snapappraise.com, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have. It covers visitors to our public pages, account holders, people who contact us, and recipients of our emails.

SnapAppraise provides AI-generated jewelry valuations. You upload photos of an item; software analyzes the photos and returns an estimated value. The valuation is informational only, not a certified appraisal or insurance valuation. See our Terms of Service for the full description of what the Service does and does not do.

SnapAppraise is based in Ontario, Canada. For purposes of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ("PIPEDA"), Quebec's Law 25, the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulations ("GDPR" and "UK GDPR"), and similar laws, SnapAppraise is the controller of the personal information described here.

For any privacy question or request, contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@snapappraise.com. For general inquiries, write to support@snapappraise.com. We respond within the time periods required by applicable law (generally 30 to 45 days).

From you directly. When you create an account, our identity provider collects your name and email address. SnapAppraise uses passwordless sign-in by default and does not store passwords. When you use the Service, you upload photos of jewelry and may add a description, claimed weight or carat, brand information, or your reason for the valuation. When you contact us or sign up for marketing emails, we collect what you provide and your communication preferences.

About your photos. Photos upload directly from your device to our image storage provider via a one-time presigned URL and are stored at multiple resolutions for analysis and display. We strip EXIF metadata — including precise location, device model, camera settings, and timestamps — from new uploads before they reach our storage and from every photo we serve. Older photos in our storage may retain their original EXIF, but we never serve photos with that metadata. We do not run facial or biometric recognition on photos.

Automatically. When you use the Service, we collect technical information through server logs and product analytics, including IP address, approximate location from IP, browser and device type, pages visited, and timestamps. We use this to operate the product, fix bugs, defend against abuse, and understand feature usage.

From service providers. Our identity provider reports authentication events. Our analytics provider reports usage events. Our content delivery provider reports delivery and security telemetry. We do not buy personal information from data brokers and do not enrich your account with third-party marketing data.

Your valuations are produced by AI models. When you submit a request, we send your photos and the details you provided to one or more third-party AI providers (currently models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, accessed through a routing gateway). The providers analyze the inputs and return a structured response that we use to generate your valuation.

We do not train SnapAppraise's own AI models on your photos or valuations without your explicit consent. We do not permit our AI providers to train their general-purpose models on data submitted to their paid APIs. The major providers we use have published policies confirming this for paid API usage; we rely on those representations.

The valuation involves automated processing but is informational only. It does not produce legal effects on you or similarly significantly affect you. It is not used to deny services, assess credit, determine insurance eligibility, or make any other consequential decision about you.

We use personal information to:

• Provide the Service: authenticate your account, accept and store photos, generate valuations, and show you your appraisal history. Legal basis: performance of a contract with you.
• Communicate with you: send transactional emails (account, valuation, support, security) and, where you opt in, marketing emails. Legal basis: contract performance for transactional; consent for marketing.
• Improve the Service: analyze aggregated usage, debug errors, evaluate model performance against held-out test fixtures (third-party data, not user content), and prioritize features. Legal basis: legitimate interest.
• Protect the Service: detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access; enforce our Terms; and comply with our legal obligations. Legal basis: legitimate interest; legal obligation.
• Comply with law: respond to subpoenas, court orders, and lawful requests; cooperate with regulators. Legal basis: legal obligation.

We share personal information only as described here. We do not sell personal information for money and do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CCPA/CPRA"), or under similar laws in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas, or other US states.

We share with:

• Service providers that help us operate the Service, listed by category in the Sub-processors section below. Each is contractually limited to processing personal information on our instructions and only for the purposes we specify.
• AI inference providers that analyze photos and produce valuation output, as described in AI Processing of Your Photos.
• Professional advisors when needed for their work and bound by confidentiality.
• Authorities and other parties when required by law or legal process, or where we believe in good faith disclosure is necessary to protect rights, property, or safety, or to investigate fraud or security incidents.
• Acquirers or successors if we transfer the Service to another operator. The recipient will be bound by this policy or you will be notified of any material change.
• Anyone with your consent or at your direction.

We do not share your photos or valuations with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing partners.

We work with service providers ("sub-processors") that help us run the Service. Each operates under a written data processing agreement that meets the requirements of PIPEDA, the GDPR, the UK GDPR, and other applicable laws. All are located in the United States.

By category:

• Identity and authentication — manages account sign-in and session security.
• Cloud infrastructure — application hosting, photo storage and delivery, and our primary database.
• AI inference — analyzes your photos to produce the valuation. Photos and prompts pass to AI providers (currently models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, accessed through a routing gateway).
• Email delivery — sends transactional and (where you opt in) marketing email.
• Product analytics — captures pseudonymous usage data to help us improve the Service.

For questions about our service providers, email support@snapappraise.com.

We use cookies and similar technologies to operate the Service, remember your preferences, understand usage, and protect against abuse.

Strictly necessary cookies (always on). These are required to run the Service and cannot be turned off. They include session cookies from our identity provider, security cookies, and two cookies we set to remember your consent choices: sa_consent stores the categories you allowed, and sa_consent_id is an opaque identifier we use to attach your decision to our internal audit log. Both expire after twelve months and are reset if you change your decision. Disabling necessary cookies will prevent you from signing in.

Optional categories. When you visit the site, our consent banner asks you to choose which of the following you allow. You can change these any time from the "Your Privacy Choices" link in our footer.

• Analytics. Anonymized event data about which features you use and how often. We use this in aggregate to decide what to build and improve. Off by default.
• Session replay. Anonymized recordings of how the site is used, with form inputs and other sensitive content automatically masked. We use this to spot and fix bugs and confusing flows. Off by default.

We do not use third-party advertising cookies, retargeting pixels, or social media tracking pixels.

Audit log. When you make a consent decision, we record the decision, the time, your approximate country (from your IP address), and the sa_consent_id cookie value in an internal log. The log lets us prove to regulators that you made an active choice and lets you exercise your rights. We retain consent log entries for twenty-four months from the date of the decision, the floor required by US state consumer privacy laws.

Withdrawing consent. You can change or withdraw consent at any time from the "Your Privacy Choices" link in our footer, which opens the same controls as the initial banner. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you changed your mind.

Global Privacy Control. Where required by law, we treat a recognized Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as a request to opt out of any sale or sharing of personal information, even though we do not currently sell or share for advertising. When we detect this signal on your first visit, we automatically reject all optional categories on your behalf and do not show you the consent banner.

We retain personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described here or required by law.

• Account information is retained while your account is active. When you delete your account or ask us to delete it, we delete or de-identify your account information, photos, and valuations within 30 days, except for limited information we may retain to comply with law, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, or enforce our agreements.
• Photos and valuations stay associated with your account while your account is active. You can request deletion of specific photos or valuations at any time by emailing support@snapappraise.com; we process deletion within 30 days.
• Usage logs are retained for up to 12 months, except where a longer period is required for security investigation or by law.
• Marketing email records, including consent and unsubscribe state, are retained as long as you are subscribed and for a reasonable period after to demonstrate compliance.

Where we anonymize personal information so it cannot reasonably be associated with you, we may retain and use that anonymized information indefinitely.

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect personal information, including TLS encryption in transit, encryption at rest in our database and photo storage, role-based access controls, logging of authentication and security events, and separation of production and non-production environments.

No system is perfectly secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security. Use strong, unique authentication on the email account you use to sign in.

If we become aware of a personal data breach that affects you, we will notify you and the relevant authorities to the extent and within the timeframes required by applicable law.

SnapAppraise is based in Ontario, Canada, and our sub-processors are primarily located in the United States. Your personal information will be transferred to and processed in the United States by these sub-processors, regardless of where you access the Service from.

Where we transfer personal information from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or Agreement, and the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner's recognized clauses, as applicable.

For Canadian users, transfers to our US sub-processors are governed by contractual safeguards meeting PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25 cross-border requirements.

For more information about the specific safeguards we use, email support@snapappraise.com.

You have rights with respect to the personal information we hold about you. Regardless of where you live, you can ask us to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• delete your account and the personal information associated with it;
• receive a copy of your personal information in a portable format;
• withdraw consent that you previously gave (where we rely on consent);
• unsubscribe from marketing emails using the link in any marketing email or by emailing support@snapappraise.com.

To exercise any right, email support@snapappraise.com. To protect your privacy, we will verify your identity by confirming control of the email address associated with your account before fulfilling certain requests. We will respond within the time periods required by applicable law.

If you live in a region with additional privacy rights — including the EEA, UK, Switzerland, California, Canada, Australia, or other U.S. states with comprehensive privacy laws — see Regional Supplements at the end of this policy.

The Service is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or under the age of digital consent in your jurisdiction).

If you are under the relevant age, do not use the Service or provide personal information to us. If you are a parent or guardian and you believe your child has provided personal information to us without your consent, email support@snapappraise.com and we will delete the information.

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CCPA/CPRA"), gives you the rights described in Your Privacy Rights above and the additional disclosures below.

Categories of personal information collected in the preceding 12 months: identifiers (name, email, IP address, account ID), customer records information, internet or other electronic network activity (usage and analytics), approximate geolocation from IP, and visual information (photos you upload).

Sources: directly from you, automatically through your use of the Service, and from our service providers (described by category in Sub-processors).

Purposes: as described in How We Use Your Information.

Sale or sharing: we have not sold or shared personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising in the preceding 12 months.

Retention: as described in How Long We Keep Your Information.

Sensitive personal information. We do not use sensitive personal information for purposes that would trigger the right to limit its use.

Non-discrimination. We will not deny you service, charge a different price, or provide a different level or quality of service because you exercised a privacy right.

To submit a verifiable consumer request, email support@snapappraise.com. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf; we will require proof of authorization and may verify your identity directly.

In addition to the rights described in Your Privacy Rights, the following regional rights apply if you live in the relevant jurisdiction.

EEA, UK, and Switzerland (GDPR / UK GDPR / FADP). You have the right to restrict processing, object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority (UK: Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk).

Canada (PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25). You have rights to access, correct, and (in Quebec) request deletion or de-indexing of your personal information, plus the Quebec data portability right. We respond within the timelines required by each law. Complaints can be filed with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca, or for Quebec residents, the Commission d'accès à l'information at cai.gouv.qc.ca.

Australia. Under the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, you can access and correct personal information we hold and complain about how we handle personal information. Complaints can be filed with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Other U.S. states. If you live in a U.S. state with a comprehensive privacy law (currently including Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, and several others), you have rights similar to those described in Your Privacy Rights, including the right to access, correct, delete, port, and opt out of the sale of personal information, targeted advertising, and certain profiling. We do not sell personal information, do not engage in targeted advertising, and do not use information for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. If your state grants a right to appeal an adverse decision on a privacy request, you can appeal by replying to our response with the subject "Privacy Request Appeal."

We may update this policy from time to time. The "Effective" date at the top tells you when the current version took effect. If we make material changes, we will provide additional notice, such as by email or by displaying a prominent notice in the Service before the change takes effect. Where required by law, we will obtain your consent for material changes that expand the ways we use or disclose your personal information.

Contact:

SnapAppraise Privacy Officer privacy@snapappraise.com

We take privacy seriously and will work in good faith to resolve any concern. If we cannot resolve a concern to your satisfaction, you may have the right to escalate to a regulator in your jurisdiction.