Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal data AvatarShot processes, why, and the rights you have. Contact for all privacy matters: hello@avatarshot.com or the support page (topic “Privacy & my data”).

Data we collect

• Account data: email address, username, display name, password (stored only as a secure hash) and date of birth.
• Social sign-in: if you choose to continue with Google or Discord, we receive your account ID, name and email address (and whether that provider has verified it). We do not receive your password or post anything on your behalf.
• Profile and content: avatar and cover images, bio, website, social links you choose to show, preferred world, browsing mode and Watch notification preference, the shots you upload and their privacy/rating settings, captions, tags and locations, comments, likes, follows, Sparks, collections and reports.
• Online status: the time of your last visit (updated at most once a minute while you use AvatarShot), used to show a green “online” dot and “Active … ago” on your profile. You can turn this off in Settings > Privacy; the time is still recorded for security but no longer shown.
• Relationship status: if you choose to add one, the status, the partner you name and the date it started. The partner you name is notified and asked to confirm.
• Community square: your public conversation posts, replies, optional linked photos and world, discussion notification preferences, and reports you submit.
• Direct messages: the messages you send and receive, shared shots, reactions, read status, a temporary typing indicator that expires after a few seconds, and your message settings (who can write to you, muted chats, blocked members).
• Support requests: your name, email address, the topic and the messages exchanged with the team.
• Ambassador program: who invited you (if anyone), when your invite became active, and for members who share links, a count of unique visitors. Visitors are counted with a one-way hash of IP address, browser and date, salted with a secret key, which cannot be turned back into an IP address; no IP address is stored for this purpose. Link-preview bots are not counted.
• Former AvatarShot 1.0 members (Welcome back program): from the previous version of the service we keep only a list of the Second Life avatar names and keys, display names and, where given, email addresses of former accounts. We use it to send each former member one in-world message about the program and to recognise them if they come back, so they receive the free Pro and badge.
• Second Life contacts of the AvatarShot team: a member of the team may load their own Second Life contacts list (avatar names and keys) to send each contact one in-world invitation on their behalf. We keep the list only to send those invitations and to avoid inviting anyone twice.
• Managed Second Life bots: if you subscribe to a bot, the bot account’s name and password (stored encrypted and used only to log the bot in), the land and group it works for, the texts and settings you give it, its payments from your wallet and its status log. If you use land security, the bot records the avatar names and keys of visitors to your land and when they came, visible only to you and the AvatarShot team; with AI answers, the visitor’s IM and the information you wrote are sent to OpenAI, our AI provider, to write the reply.
• Colosseum: your arena identity (persona), your teams, entries, votes and the powers you cast (powers are shown publicly).
• Mobile app: if you install the app and allow notifications, a push token for your device.
• Android beta: if you volunteer to test the Android app, the email of your Google Play account, which we add to the app’s tester list in Google Play Console and use only to send you the test invitation. It is deleted when you leave the beta or delete your account.
• Payments: if you subscribe to Pro when paid plans are available, payment is handled by Stripe; we receive the subscription status and a customer reference, never your full card number.
• Launch waitlist: if you asked to be notified before launch, your email address, language and optional favourite world, used only for the launch announcement.
• Technical data: IP address, browser user agent and session data needed to keep you signed in and protect the service. To stop abuse such as fake or duplicate accounts (for example to cheat invites, votes or rewards), our administrators can compare the IP addresses and browser data of currently active sessions between accounts. This uses only the session data we already keep for sign-in, is seen only by administrators, is not kept as a separate history, and disappears when the session ends (at the latest after 30 days).
• Security log: to protect the website from attacks, scrapers that copy content and break-in attempts, each request to the website is logged with the IP address, browser user agent, the page address (without search terms or other parameters), the result code, the time and, if you are signed in, your account number. Failed sign-ins are logged with a shortened version of the email address used. Only administrators see this log, it is used only for security (for example to block an attacking address or network) and it is deleted after 14 days.
• Analytics: if you accept analytics cookies, Google Analytics 4 collects usage statistics with IP anonymisation. Without consent it runs in a cookieless, consent-denied mode.

Uploaded images are re-encoded and their embedded metadata (such as EXIF) is removed. Before that, we only check whether the metadata says the image was generated with AI; nothing else from it is kept.

Who can see what

When you choose “Translate” on a Community square post or reply, its text is sent to OpenAI, our existing translation provider, to translate it into your interface language. This does not happen automatically. Translations are cached for up to 30 days; the original text is not changed.

• Your profile, public shots, public collections, comments, badges, Spark totals and the social links you add are public. Private collections are visible only to you. Shots marked “Only me” are visible only to you and moderators. 18+ and “Only me” shots are omitted from public share images and link previews; Mature shots may have public share cards. Private and 18+ images are served only after the app checks access.
• If you make your profile private, your shots and follower lists are visible only to the followers you approve and to moderators; your name, picture, bio and counts stay public.
• Community square posts and replies are public, including when your profile is private. Linked photos retain their own access rules. Participating subscribes you to reply notifications; you can mute a discussion, including mentions in it. Reports and their authors are visible only to the moderation team. Removed messages are hidden from the public and retained for moderation until the account is deleted.
• Your online dot and “Active … ago” are shown to everyone while “Show when I’m online” is on in Settings > Privacy. Turn it off to hide them.
• Your relationship status is shown to everyone, only to your followers or only to you, as you choose in Settings. A partner’s name is shown only after they confirm, and either of you can end the link at any time; blocking a member also ends it.
• Direct messages are visible only to the people in the conversation. The team does not read them, except when a member reports a message: then the reported message and up to five messages before it are attached to the report.
• If you appear on the monthly Ambassador leaderboard, your name and number of invites that month are shown publicly. The people you invited are never listed publicly.
• If you are a Featured Creator, your name, profile photo and Featured mark are shown on the public Featured Creators page and on your profile, and your profile may be suggested to other members.
• Sparks are public: each profile shows how many Sparks it received and who sent them, and the Sparks leaderboards list names and totals. You can take back a Spark you sent at any time.
• Your email address is visible only to you and to administrators.

Why we use it (legal bases)

• To provide your account, publish your content, deliver messages and answer support requests — performance of our contract with you.
• Date of birth — to enforce the minimum age, restrict 18+ content and apply the messaging safety rule between adults and minors, as required to operate the service safely.
• Security, abuse prevention, moderation — including the automatic safety check of uploaded images and reading an image’s own metadata to see whether it declares it was made with AI, before that metadata is removed — and counting invites fairly in the Ambassador program: our legitimate interest in keeping AvatarShot safe, honest and its rewards fair.
• The list of former AvatarShot 1.0 members and the single in-world message about the Welcome back program — our legitimate interest in telling former members that their account was not carried over and offering them a way back. You can ask us at any time to remove you from the list.
• Invitations to the Second Life contacts of team members — our legitimate interest in letting people the team already knows in Second Life hear about AvatarShot, with a single message and no follow-ups.
• Reposting your shots on AvatarShot’s official social accounts, including the 18+ Discord channel — your consent (a separate one for each kind), given in Settings or on the upload form, which you can withdraw at any time.
• Analytics cookies — your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by clearing the cookie_consent cookie.

Processors and recipients

We use Amazon Web Services (image storage, EU region), Cloudflare (security and bot protection, and Workers AI to suggest tags: when you choose an image on the upload form, a reduced copy is sent to it and the suggested tags are shown only to you, never added without your click), Google Analytics (statistics, only with consent), Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (push notifications in the mobile app, when enabled), Stripe (payments, when available), and, only if you use them to sign in, Google and Discord. We use OpenAI for three things: machine translation (interface text contains no personal data; direct messages and Community square posts or replies are sent for translation only when you request it using their translation controls), the automatic safety check of uploaded images (a reduced copy of each image is sent to OpenAI’s moderation service, which returns safety scores) and, only when a shot is reported as an AI image not labelled as AI and a moderator asks for it, an opinion on whether the image looks AI-generated (a reduced copy of that image is sent; the answer is advice for the moderator and never changes the shot by itself). OpenAI processes this data only to return those results. We do not sell your personal data.

Shots shared from a YouTube or TikTok link show the video’s cover picture on AvatarShot. The video itself plays in YouTube’s or TikTok’s own player, which is loaded only when you press play; from that moment that company receives your IP address and may set its own cookies under its privacy policy. YouTube’s player is used in its privacy-enhanced (“nocookie”) mode.

If you allow it, your public shots, name and username are published on AvatarShot’s official accounts (Discord, Bluesky, Mastodon, VK, Facebook, Plurk), and — only with your separate opt-in — on DeviantArt. If you are an adult and separately opt in, your 18+ shots are posted only in the age-restricted 18+ channel of AvatarShot’s Discord server. Those platforms process that content under their own privacy policies. On request we remove posts already published there.

Retention

• Account data, content and messages are kept while your account exists.
• Only the latest visit time is kept: each new visit overwrites the previous one.
• The security log is deleted after 14 days.
• Sign-in sessions (with their IP address and browser data) are deleted when you sign out or when they expire, at the latest 30 days after your last activity in that session.
• Sparks and Watch preferences are kept while your account exists; you can remove a Spark or change your notification setting at any time.
• When you delete your account from Settings, it is hidden at once and, 30 days later, your profile, shots, images and comments are deleted, and the direct messages you sent (with their photos and files) are erased from the conversations. Signing in again within those 30 days cancels the deletion. Limited copies may remain in backups for a short period. How to delete your account.
• A deactivated account is hidden but kept, with no time limit, until you sign in again or ask us to delete it.
• Unique-visitor records of the Ambassador program are deleted after 12 months.
• A team member’s Second Life contacts list is deleted when they remove it, and at the latest after 6 months.
• The list of former AvatarShot 1.0 members is deleted when the Welcome back offer ends (31 December 2026).
• Closed support requests are deleted 24 months after they are closed, including those of deleted accounts, so we can handle follow-ups and disputes.
• If you tell us why you are deleting your account, that answer (reason, optional comment, language, account age and number of shots) is kept together with your name and email only during the 30-day period in which your account can still be restored, so that we can reply to you or offer help; after that period your name and email are removed automatically and the answer stays anonymous. It is used only to improve AvatarShot. Please don’t include personal details in the comment.
• Cached translations of messages expire after 30 days.
• A managed bot’s password is erased when you cancel it, or 30 days after it is paused; visits recorded by its land security are deleted after 90 days.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can access, correct, export or delete your data, object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent. Write to hello@avatarshot.com or use the support page. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority (in Italy, the Garante per la protezione dei dati personali).

Cookies

Essential cookies keep you signed in and protect forms (session, CSRF); the session also remembers, for that visit only, which member invited you. A preference cookie (feed_layout) remembers the feed layout you choose. Analytics cookies are set only if you choose “Accept all” in the cookie banner.