Privacy Notice

About this notice

PetBesideUs is operated by Kyson Chen. We turn photos of people and their pets into AI-made portraits. This notice explains the information used for portraits, paid delivery and Gift, the providers involved and the approved retention policy.

Current availability. Portrait creation is available on petbesideus.com without an account, including photo checks and background generation. Cloudflare hosts the public service and provides its database and private file storage. Existing Supabase and email arrangements have not been retired.

The sections below describe our approved processing and retention policy. Expiry clean-up and failure recovery still need verification in the public service. The retention period for paid image files has been approved as described below. Separate retention periods for transaction, delivery and Gift records, and some hosting, logging and backup details, remain unresolved. The access periods below have been approved; they are not deletion dates.

There are no accounts on PetBesideUs. You do not sign up or sign in.

Some versions of this site are simulated previews and say so on the page. In a simulated preview, photos stay in your browser and nothing is sent to the providers described below.

Your photos

Only add photos you have the right to use, and that the people in them have agreed to you using.

Storage. When you add a photo, we check that it is a real image (JPEG, PNG or WebP, up to 10 MB) and store the original in private file storage. It is linked to your browser's visitor cookie (see below). Access to your original uploads on the website requires that browser's visitor cookie. Replacing a photo does not immediately delete the earlier version; the retention rules below apply. Gift sharing of finished portraits is a separate access route, explained below.

Photo check (DeepSeek). Before a portrait is made, each photo is checked once to see whether it shows a usable person, cat or dog. For this, a smaller copy (up to 1300 pixels on the long side, with photo metadata such as location removed) is sent to DeepSeek, an AI provider run by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., a company in China. We ask the model not to identify anyone and not to guess age, gender, race or other sensitive traits. We keep its short answer (for example, "one dog, face clearly visible"), a fingerprint (hash) of the original photo and the amount of processing used — not a copy of the image.

DeepSeek's terms for developers say that its own privacy policy does not cover the people who use apps built on its service. We have not obtained API-specific assurances about where DeepSeek processes or stores these checks, how long it keeps them, or whether it uses them for training. We have no zero-retention arrangement with it. See the DeepSeek Open Platform terms.

Making portraits (fal and OpenAI). To make each portrait, a resized copy of the photo (up to 1536 pixels on the long side) is sent with a style reference image to fal. fal offers the model we use as GPT Image 2.5 from OpenAI, listed as a partner model. We have not confirmed how fal passes requests to OpenAI or what OpenAI keeps. The public portrait service uses the settings below and does not send separate active deletion requests:

• We ask fal not to store the request and its response in its request history (fal otherwise keeps these for 90 days).
• The photo is sent inside the request; it is not uploaded to fal's file storage.
• The finished image is placed on fal's file storage. We request a 24-hour expiry for these files. We do not separately request deletion after completion or failure. While a file remains available, anyone holding its long, hard-to-guess link could open it. The expiry request does not establish that all provider copies or logs have been erased.

What this does not mean: turning off request history is not zero retention. fal says it is one part of a zero-retention setup and does not cover every place content can be stored. fal and OpenAI still process your photo to make the portrait, under their own terms. fal's terms give it a licence to process what we send in order to provide its service, and separately let it use anonymised or aggregated data derived from use of its service to improve its services and models. That is not the same as using your photos themselves as training data. We have not obtained zero-retention commitments from fal or OpenAI, and we cannot promise that your photo is never kept by them.

See fal’s API retention controls, the model API page and fal’s terms.

The names you type for each person or pet are stored with your creation. They are not sent to DeepSeek or fal.

Your portraits

The finished portrait and a watermarked preview are stored in the same private file storage, linked to your visitor cookie. While you are viewing previews, only the watermarked version is shown.

Records of checks and portraits

To run the service and handle problems, we keep records of each photo check and each portrait attempt: internal IDs, the settings used, fingerprints (hashes) of the original photos and of the resized copies sent in generation requests, the provider's request ID, status, error codes and messages, costs and times. The approved 90-day policy below covers only the necessary, sanitised records; it is not permission to keep photos, email addresses or raw input/output and error payloads for 90 days.

Your email address

When your previews are ready, we ask for an email address before showing them. Our approved policy is to retain the address and your marketing choice separately from the photos and creation records, for contact-list management. This separation and expiry handling still need verification in the final service. We have not set a separate fixed expiry for this list; this does not mean that we promise or require permanent retention.

• Entering an email unlocks the current watermarked preview. There is no free-preview email: entering it does not create or send one. Order delivery emails and Gift emails you choose to send are separate.
• Your email is not a password or proof of identity. Knowing someone's email does not let you see or change their portraits. Your creation uses your browser's visitor cookie; a Gift link grants only the access described below.
• "Email me new looks and offers" is a separate, optional choice on the results page and is off unless you explicitly tick it there. We record your choice and retain addresses even when it is not ticked. Only an affirmative choice allows future marketing; we will not send marketing to people who did not agree. We do not send marketing email at the moment. A working withdrawal process must be in place before marketing starts.
• Signing up for the Story waiting list (below) is a separate choice again, with its own consent, and does not sign you up for marketing.

Service email is sent through Resend, our email provider, from orders@petbesideus.com. Open and click tracking is turned off for our sending domain.

Paid orders, delivery and Gift

The following access rules apply to paid orders, delivery and Gift:

• Paid downloads: available for 30 days from the time payment is successfully confirmed by our payment service. Opening, checking or recovering access does not restart that period.
• Gift: available for 30 days from the sender’s first Send. Repeated sending, checking, opening or recovery does not restart that period. A new Gift must be created and first sent within the parent order’s download window. Once sent, a valid Gift remains available until its own expiry even if that order’s download window ends first; the exact gifted portrait versions must be kept until the Gift expires.

These access periods do not change when files are deleted. The approved policy is to keep the associated source photos, watermarked previews and original portrait files for 90 days from successful payment (paidAt), then remove them through expiry clean-up. Files still required by a valid Gift are protected until that Gift expires, and a source photo needed by another protected creation remains protected. Keeping files for 90 days does not extend or restore the 30-day download or Gift access period.

• For an order, we keep the selected portrait versions, order reference, contact email, price, currency, payment status and delivery entitlement so we can verify payment and deliver the purchased work. Payment is handled by Waffo Pancake through its separate hosted checkout. We send order and price information and a buyer contact email to create an anonymous checkout.
• Delivery and a Gift email requested by the sender use Resend. Recipient details, the chosen portraits and the message supplied for a Gift are used to deliver that Gift. Recipient details do not by themselves give marketing consent. The final live data fields, separate retention periods for delivery and Gift records, and the operation of the access and file-retention rules above still need verification.
• A Gift link is an access credential: anyone who receives or is forwarded that link can open the gifted content without signing in or having the sender’s visitor cookie. It does not grant access to the sender’s original uploads or other creations. Share it only with people you intend to see the Gift.

Cookies and browser storage

• pet-creation-visitor: a random code that connects your browser to your photos and creations. We store only a scrambled (hashed) form of it. It is a session cookie: if your browser deletes it, we cannot reconnect you to earlier creations, because there is no account to recover.
• The site also uses your browser's own storage to remember your progress on this device.
• Joining the Story waiting list also sets a story-management cookie (see below).

Analytics

We do not use advertising cookies. Cloudflare’s optional client-side Real User Measurements (RUM) has been switched off for this site’s zone. We are still verifying this change. This does not disable the hosting and security logs described below.

Logs

Our application writes error logs when something goes wrong. They contain internal IDs and error details, and some error details come from our providers' responses. We have not yet finished checking that these logs can never contain personal information.

The services that host the site and store its data keep their own technical logs, which can include IP addresses and the addresses of pages requested. The public service uses Cloudflare hosting with a database and private file storage. The integration database and file-storage resources have the location label ENAM (eastern North America). This label does not establish every processing, replication or backup location, and it does not describe DeepSeek, fal, OpenAI or the email provider. ENAM is evidence about the integration resources only; production data locations have not yet been independently verified. Final log contents and retention, backup coverage and recovery arrangements have not yet been verified.

Story waiting list

The Story waiting list is open. Joining saves the information described below; it is not a simulated submission. A version explicitly labelled as a simulated preview does not save a registration or send email. We are still verifying withdrawal handling and expiry clean-up.

• If you join, we store your email, where you joined from, the exact consent wording you agreed to ("Email me once when Story opens. This does not subscribe me to marketing.") and when. It is used only to email you once when Story opens, not for marketing.
• Joining sets a story-management cookie in your browser for one year. It is a management credential used by the service, not a user account or a promise of a public management screen. Its lifetime does not extend the retention periods below.
• The list ends 180 days after the service’s first public opening time, recorded once in UTC. Remaining records are due for removal within 30 days after the list ends. No earlier closing time is currently set.
• To withdraw or request deletion, contact support@petbesideus.com. The public page does not provide self-service withdrawal or deletion controls.
• Under the approved withdrawal policy, processing an authorised withdrawal immediately removes the plaintext email and stops the launch notification; its consent records are removed within 30 days. An authorised deletion operation removes the email and consent records together. Sending a support message does not itself perform either operation.
• After withdrawal or deletion, a keyed email fingerprint and the management credential are retained until 30 days after the list ends, only to prevent re-registration without your request. This is limited suppression, not complete anonymisation.
• Expiry of withdrawal consent records and remaining records after the list ends requires manual clean-up; no daily automatic clean-up is enabled. Support verification, handling and expiry execution still need final acceptance. We do not promise that an email address alone establishes ownership, or a particular support response time.

Keepsakes interest form

The Keepsakes page is a preview. Its form does not save your email or choices and sends nothing.

How long we keep information, and deleting it

Approved policy; public operation still to be verified:

• Unfinished drafts and their uploads: 7 days from the last meaningful edit or upload you make. Polling, provider callbacks and clean-up retries do not restart that period.
• Free completed portraits, their previews and associated original photos: 30 days from generation completion. A photo still needed by another unexpired creation is protected until that valid use ends. Replacing a photo does not create a promise of immediate deletion.
• Necessary check, generation and fault metadata: 90 days for sanitised identifiers, status, costs and similar operational facts. Photos, email addresses and raw sensitive errors or input/output payloads are excluded from this retained metadata.
• Contact email and optional marketing consent: kept independently of the photo and creation expiry periods, as explained above; no separate fixed automatic expiry has been approved.
• Paid image files: associated source photos, watermarked previews and original portrait files are due for physical removal 90 days after successful payment (paidAt). A valid Gift protects its required files until its own expiry; after that, files whose retention period has ended are eligible for clean-up. Shared source photos remain protected while another protected creation needs them. This file-retention period does not extend the 30-day download or Gift access periods.
• Order, payment, refund and dispute records: separate retention periods have not yet been confirmed. Image expiry does not automatically delete these transaction records. Separate periods for delivery and Gift records also remain unresolved; the 90-day image policy is not a blanket record-retention period.

The service has no user login, historical-work recovery or self-service creation deletion. Matching an email address does not let someone claim a creation or order. You can contact us about your data, but an email address alone does not establish ownership, and we do not promise a particular deletion or response time. These periods set when data is due for expiry; removal and failure recovery still need verification in the public service. Files with unknown or unreconciled payment status, including possible late payment, are held until reconciled; an expired checkout alone does not establish that no payment was made. Unresolved jobs and files still needed by a protected shared reference are also held. Files from uploads that finish late still need reconciliation. Expiry clean-up requires manual execution; no daily automatic clean-up is enabled. We do not promise that all copies disappear permanently at the exact cutoff. Approval of these periods does not mean existing data has already been removed.

Copies held by fal are handled as described above. The Story waiting list has its own periods, described above.

We have not yet confirmed how database or storage backups are kept, so a deleted item may remain in a backup until it expires.

Changes to this notice

We will update this page when what we do changes, and change the date at the top.

Contact

Operator: Kyson Chen, operating as PetBesideUs.

Questions or requests: support@petbesideus.com