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PicTake — Privacy Policy

Effective Date: October 11, 2026

1. Introduction

PicTake is a messaging app. This Privacy Policy explains what the App collects, why, who else receives it, and how long we keep it. Our Terms of Service govern use of the App.

In short: PicTake contains no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs and no trackers. We record a short list of product events on our own servers, listed below. We do not sell personal data and we do not train AI models on your content. Everything listed below is what the App needs in order to work.

2. Information We Collect

Your account

• Phone number, for registration and SMS verification
• Password, stored only as a hash and never in readable form
• Email address, optional, if you choose to add one
• Nickname and profile photo

What you create in the App

• Text prompts for AI image generation, and the captions you attach to pictures
• Photos you take, upload, or generate, including your personal image library
• Voice notes you record
• Guesses and temperature hints from the guessing game
• Stickers you send (only the pack and sticker identifier travels; the artwork ships inside the App)
• Feed posts: photos, caption, topics, likes and comments, and a place with its coordinates only if you choose to attach one

People and discovery

• Friend relationships and invitations
• Your personal invite code and invite link, and the record of which invite brought a new account
• Search queries you type when looking for people by nickname or phone number
• Names and phone numbers read from your address book, with your permission — see section 5
• A fingerprint (hash) of your own phone number, so that friends can find you

Presence

• Whether you appear online, and when you were last active — see section 6

Calls

• We do not record calls. Audio and video are not stored.
• Call log: who you spoke with, direction, time, duration, and whether a call was missed

Device and connection

• Device identifier, platform, operating system and app version
• IP address, kept with your session for account security — see section 12
• Push notification tokens, including the VoIP token that lets an incoming call ring on your lock screen
• Product usage events — app opens, onboarding steps, invite and share taps — sent to our own servers with your device id, or with your user id while you are signed in

Payments

• Purchases are processed by the app store you downloaded PicTake from — the Apple App Store or Google Play. We never see your card details; we receive the transaction and your subscription status.

We do not collect behavioural profiles, advertising identifiers, data about your activity in other apps or websites, or your location in the background. Beyond the product events listed above, no analytics leave the App.

3. How We Use Your Information

• Deliver your messages, pictures, voice notes, stickers, calls and Feed posts to the people you send them to
• Verify your phone number by SMS
• Show which of your contacts already use PicTake, and let you invite the others
• Let you find people by nickname or phone number
• Generate images from the prompts you write
• Count AI generations against your free monthly allowance, subscription, or purchased credits
• Credit invitation rewards — bonus generations for both accounts when a friend joins through your invite link or code
• Measure how the App's own features are used — app opens, onboarding steps, invitations and shares — so we can improve PicTake
• Prevent fraud and abuse, including multiple accounts created to reset the free allowance
• Deliver the push notifications you enable
• Keep your account secure, through sign-in notices and session limits
• Comply with law and enforce our Terms

4. Camera, Microphone, Photos, and Location

The App asks for these system permissions. Each one is optional, each is requested at the moment it is first needed, and you can withdraw any of them in your device settings:

• Camera — taking photos to send, and video calls
• Microphone — voice notes, voice and video calls
• Photo library — choosing images to send, and saving images you receive
• Contacts — see section 5
• Location — used only at the moment you attach a place to a Feed post. PicTake never reads your location in the background and does not track your movements.

5. Contacts, Invites, and People Search

Your address book is never uploaded to our servers. Matching happens on your device: the App computes SHA-256 fingerprints of the phone numbers in your contacts, downloads a list of fingerprints of PicTake users, and intersects the two lists locally. Only the result, the people who are already here, is shown to you.

So that your friends can find you the same way, our server stores a fingerprint of your own phone number. It is a one-way hash, kept for this purpose only.

Invitations are sent only when you choose to send them. The App opens your device messaging app with a pre-filled message; you decide whether to send it. We never message your contacts automatically.

You may also search for people by nickname or phone number. Those searches are sent to our servers to find matching accounts. For people who are not your friends, results do not include their phone number or email.

You can revoke contacts access at any time in your device settings, and the App will stop reading your address book. We do not sell your contacts and never use them for advertising.

6. Online Status and Last Seen

We store whether you appear online and when you were last active, so the App can show "online" and "last seen" labels in chats and contact screens, and so features such as sorting contacts by activity can work. People you chat with can see this information. Please do not expect presence data to remain private from people you interact with on PicTake.

7. Messages, Pictures, and Encryption

• In transit: everything travels over TLS.
• At rest: message text, captions and guesses are encrypted with an AES-256-GCM key created for each friendship when the invitation is accepted. Images and voice notes are stored as encrypted files.
• This is not end-to-end encryption. The keys are held by our server, which is what lets your history survive a reinstall and follow you to a new phone. Please do not treat PicTake as a secure channel for sensitive material.
• Messages with the PicTake assistant are stored unencrypted, because the assistant has to read them to answer you.

8. Voice and Video Calls

Calls are one-to-one and are not recorded by PicTake. When you place or accept a call the App requests microphone access, and camera access for a video call.

Our servers relay the signalling needed to set up a call. To find a path between the two phones your device uses public STUN servers, and when a direct path is impossible the media is relayed through a TURN server. Those services see connection metadata, including IP addresses, and in the relay case the encrypted stream passing through them. They are listed in section 11.

On our side we store only the call log described in section 2.

9. The Feed

The Feed is private. A post is visible only to your friends in PicTake; it is not public and is not indexed by search engines. Photos, caption, topics and any place you attach are stored on our servers until you delete the post or your account.

If you attach a place, searching for it and turning coordinates into a place name are handled by the third-party geocoding services listed in section 11. They receive the search text or the coordinates, and your device's IP address at that moment.

10. Photos, Gallery, and Saving Media

Photos you upload or generate are stored on our servers so that messages and your gallery work across devices. You can save a chat image into your PicTake gallery or, with device permission, into your phone's photo library; that copy is then on your device and under your control. Recipients of your messages can likewise save or screenshot what you send. PicTake cannot prevent all forms of copying outside the App.

11. Third-Party Services

• Apple — App Store payments on iOS; push notifications and VoIP calls through APNs; Apple Maps when you open a Feed post's place on iOS
• Google Play — billing for purchases made on Android
• Firebase Authentication (Google) — phone number verification by SMS, including checks that the request comes from the genuine PicTake app. Firebase is not our database for messages and not our real-time messaging transport
• Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise — integrity checks confirming that sign-in and registration requests come from the genuine PicTake app
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) — delivery of push notifications when enabled
• Vonage — an alternative provider for delivering the SMS verification code
• GeoJS — receives your device's IP address when you open the sign-in or registration screen, to pre-select your country's dialling code. Nothing else is sent
• Replicate — receives your text prompt and the chosen style to generate an image
• RevenueCat — reconciles subscription status with the app stores
• Photon (Komoot), Nominatim (OpenStreetMap), BigDataCloud — place search and turning coordinates into a place name, only when you use a location in the Feed
• Google public STUN and freeturn.net TURN — establishing and, where necessary, relaying calls
• Google Maps — only if you open a Feed post's place and Apple Maps is unavailable
• Hosting and infrastructure providers that store application data on our behalf under contractual protections

Each of these receives only what its job requires. None of them receives your address book, your message history, or your account password. Their own policies may also apply.

12. Account Security

PicTake allows one active session at a time: signing in on a new device ends the previous session. Sign-ins, registrations, password resets and unusual connection changes on an active session produce a security notice from the PicTake assistant inside the App, so an access attempt that is not yours does not pass unnoticed. Your IP address is kept with the session for exactly this purpose.

We implement industry-standard security measures, including transport encryption (TLS) and server-side encryption of stored chat content. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure. Calls carry the network risks inherent to peer-to-peer media, including possible exposure of IP addresses to the other party and to STUN or TURN providers.

13. Data Retention and Account Deletion

• While your account is active, your data is kept so the App can work.
• A voice note's copy on the server is released once the recipient has played it; a note that is never played is deleted after 30 days.
• You can delete your account in the App: Profile → Delete Account. The account is deactivated immediately and you can no longer sign in. Stored account data is permanently purged after a retention period of up to 12 months, except where we must keep limited information longer for fraud prevention, security, accounting, or legal obligations.
• Your phone number and related fraud-prevention signals are kept for those same 12 months, to prevent accounts being deleted and recreated to reset the free generation allowance. They are stored securely and are never used for marketing.
• Push tokens and session records are kept while needed for delivery and security, then removed or rotated in the ordinary course of operations.

To request assistance with access or deletion, contact pictake.app@gmail.com

14. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

PicTake is intended for users aged 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. Parents who believe their child has provided data should contact pictake.app@gmail.com

15. User Rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal data by contacting us at pictake.app@gmail.com, subject to applicable law and the account deletion process in the App.

16. California Privacy Rights (CCPA)

California residents may request to know what personal data we collect, request deletion, and opt out of sales of personal data. We do not sell personal data. Contact: pictake.app@gmail.com

17. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as we introduce new features or change our data practices. The Effective Date above will be revised when we do. Continued use after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy where permitted by law.

18. Contact

Email: pictake.app@gmail.com

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States