Privacy Policy

01Who is responsible

VidSpirit runs ChoosinTexasEmo and decides how your personal information is used. Contact us about privacy at support@choosintexasemo.com.

02What we collect

• Account details: if you sign in with Google, your name, email address and profile picture from Google; if you sign up with email, your email address and a password. We store the password only as a one-way hash, never the password itself.
• Password reset codes we email you. We store them only as a hash, and only until they are used or expire.
• The photos you upload, the videos made from them, and records of each generation: the video and quality chosen, status, credits used and the results of our automated safety checks.
• Credit and order history: what you bought, when, the amount and the order status.
• Payment details from Waffo Pancake, our payment provider. We receive the order and payment status and limited card details such as the last four digits and the issuing country. We never receive or store your full card number.
• Technical data: your IP address, browser and device type, and the times you sign in, upload, generate and download. Before you sign in we use a cookie to link your uploads to your browser.
• How you found us: on your first visit we note the site or link you came from (for example a ChatGPT answer or a Google search), any campaign tags or ad click identifiers in that link, and the first page you saw. When you create an account we save this with it.
• Usage statistics from Google Analytics, if it is on for you (see Analytics): pages viewed, steps such as opening the sign-up form or starting a checkout, and your approximate location and device type.
• If you report content: your email address, the name you sign with, what you tell us about the video, and a shortened form of your IP address.
• Messages you send us by email.

03How we use it

• To run the service: sign you in, make and show your videos, keep your credit balance and process purchases and refunds.
• To send the emails the service needs: password reset codes, and one email when a video is ready or could not be made (saying the credits went back). These are not marketing emails.
• To keep it safe: check photos against our acceptable use rules, limit automated sign-ups and repeated requests with bot checks and rate limits, and prevent fraud and chargeback abuse.
• To answer your emails and reports.
• To fix problems and improve the service, using records of how it is used.
• To understand which websites, AI assistants and search engines bring people who sign up and buy, so we know where to spend our effort. We only look at this per source, never to profile you.

We do not sell your personal information, do not use your photos or videos to train AI models, and do not show your photos or videos to other users.

04Fraud prevention

To prevent fraud and payment abuse we keep the IP address, country and browser information you sign in and buy from, and use the limited payment details Waffo Pancake shares with us (such as the last four card digits and the issuing country). We keep a record of each sign-in (the time, IP address, country and browser) for 180 days; our staff can look at it to investigate fraud, abuse or a problem with your account. Accounts banned for fraud or abuse, including chargebacks, cannot sign in or buy again. If you open a chargeback, we send Waffo Pancake the records of that order and your account (the order, sign-ins, the videos you made and your credit history, without the photos or videos themselves) to answer it.

05Cookies

We use these cookies:

• Ones the site needs to work: one keeps you signed in, one links photos you upload before signing in to your browser (it lasts 30 days), and one remembers your language.
• A first-visit cookie that notes how you found us (described under What we collect). It is set once on your first visit, is never changed, is only read by us, and expires after 30 days.
• Google Analytics cookies (named _ga and _ga_…), only when analytics is on for you, as described below; and one that remembers your analytics choice for 180 days.
• TikTok cookies, only if you press play on an embedded TikTok video. Until then the page loads nothing from TikTok; after that TikTok's own privacy policy applies.

We do not use advertising cookies and do not share data with advertising networks.

06Analytics

We use Google Analytics, a service of Google, to see how many people visit, which pages and steps they use and where they came from. Google receives your IP address (which it does not store), the pages you view, your browser and device type and the events listed under What we collect, and sets the cookies above. We have turned off advertising features: the data is not used for ads or personalisation.

If you visit from the European Union, the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Google Analytics stays off until you click Accept on the banner; nothing is sent to Google before that. Elsewhere it is on unless you turn it off.

You can change your choice at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page, or block it with Google's opt-out browser add-on or your browser's cookie settings. The site works the same either way. Google keeps Analytics data for the period set in our account, no longer than 14 months; see how Google uses this data.

07Who we share it with

We share information only with the services that help us run ChoosinTexasEmo, and only what each needs:

• Cloudflare: hosting, our database, file storage, bot checks and email forwarding.
• Our email delivery service: it receives your email address and the message to deliver account and video emails.
• Google: sign-in, and Google Analytics (see Analytics).
• Waffo Pancake: payments, tax and receipts, as merchant of record.
• AI video generation providers: they receive your photo and the effect settings to make the video. The model is named on the home page and the About page.
• Content safety services: they receive your photo to check it against our rules.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect people from harm, or to report child sexual abuse material to the authorities.

08Security

Photos and videos are stored privately and are only reachable through short-lived links given to you and to the services above. Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes. Connections to ChoosinTexasEmo are encrypted. No system is perfectly secure, so please tell us at support@choosintexasemo.com if you notice a problem.

09How long we keep it

• Photos you upload but never use: deleted after 24 hours.
• Photos used to make a video: deleted 7 days after use. When the video provider needs its own copy of the photo to make the video (APIMart keeps one in its asset library), that copy is handled by the provider under its own privacy policy.
• Generated videos: deleted after 30 days. You can delete a video sooner from My videos.
• Sign-in records (time, IP address and browser): 180 days.
• How you found us: in the first-visit cookie for 30 days; once you create an account, as long as the account record.
• Account, credit and order records: while your account is open, and afterwards for as long as tax, accounting or dispute rules require.
• Content reports and what we did about them, and a fingerprint (hash) of each photo taken down so it cannot be uploaded again: as long as needed to handle appeals, disputes and legal requests.

10Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see the personal information we hold about you, correct it, get a copy, object to how we use it, or have it deleted. Email support@choosintexasemo.com from the address on your account and we will reply within 30 days. If you are unhappy with our answer you can complain to your local data protection authority.

We only send emails about your account, your videos and your purchases. We do not send marketing emails.

11International transfers

The services above run in several countries, so your information may be processed outside the country where you live. We only use providers that protect it under their own privacy commitments and the safeguards the law requires.

12Children

ChoosinTexasEmo is for people aged 18 or older, and photos may only show people aged 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you think a child has an account or appears in a video, tell us or use the report form and we will delete it.

13Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when what we collect or who we share it with changes. The date at the top shows the latest version.

14Contact

Privacy questions and requests: support@choosintexasemo.com.