Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

The Yearbook App (“The Yearbook App,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is school yearbook software operated by The Yearbook App, LLC. This Privacy Policy covers the website, the app, and all related services (the “Service”).

In plain language: This policy covers everything you do in The Yearbook App.

2. Definitions

• “School” means the school, district, or educational organization that uses the Service.
• “Advisor” means a school staff member who creates an account to build the School’s yearbook.
• “Account” means an Advisor’s registered account in the Service.
• “Yearbook Records” means the content an Advisor adds, including student and staff names, grade levels, events, Moments, Stories, tags, and photos.
• “Metadata” means the descriptive details attached to Yearbook Records, such as names, tags, grade levels, event links, locations, and dates.
• “Community Submission” means a photo and its details shared through a School’s upload link by a family member, staff member, or other community member.
• “Submitter” means the person who sends a Community Submission.
• “Student Data” means any information about a student that is added to the Service.
• “Processor” means a third-party company that handles data for us so the Service can work.

In plain language: These are the words we use in this policy and what they mean.

3. Information We Collect

3.1 Advisor account details. Your email address, plus the school name, school year, and advisor name you enter.

3.2 Yearbook Records. Student and staff names, grade levels, events, Moments, Stories, tags, and photos you add.

3.3 Community Submissions. The photo, the Who/What/Where/When details, the Submitter’s name, email, and connection to the School, and the Submitter’s permission confirmation.

3.4 Help and feedback. Questions you choose to forward to a person, and feedback you choose to send. Everyday Ask a question chats stay in your own browser and are not saved to your Account.

3.5 Billing information. Your plan, billing status, and payment history. Payment card details are collected and stored by our payment processor, Stripe. The Yearbook App never stores them.

3.6 Technical information. Basic information needed to keep the Service secure and working, such as sign-in records, web requests, and error reports. Lovable provides app hosting and deployment on Cloudflare infrastructure and technical logging. Error reports can include an error message, stack trace, page path, and technical context. Supabase also keeps database and sign-in logs. Microsoft Clarity and Google Ads measure public-page visits as described in Website Analytics below; no separate Sentry, Bugsnag, Datadog, or PostHog service is configured in the app.

In plain language: We keep only what you add, what families share, and what we need to run and protect the app.

4. How We Use Information

4.1 We use information only to provide the Service to the School. That means storing records, showing coverage, reviewing submissions, sending account and billing emails, and answering your questions.

4.2 We never sell student information. We never use it for advertising. We never use student photos to train AI models.

4.3 Ask a question sends only the question you type, and the page you are on, to an AI service so it can write a reply. No student records, rosters, or photos are sent. Replies are written by an OpenAI model reached through Lovable’s AI gateway, with data storage turned off. Do not type sensitive student details into it.

4.4 We may use information that has been made fully anonymous, with no link to any School, student, or person, to understand how the Service is used and to improve it. We never try to re-identify anonymous information, and we never share it with third parties.

In plain language: Your school’s information is used to run your yearbook and for nothing else.

5. Metadata and Photo Storage

5.1 Photos are kept in private storage inside the Service. They are never available through public links. Photos are shown only through short-lived secure links, to the workspace owner and active invited co-advisors.

5.2 An Advisor may save a link to the School’s own storage, such as a school drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox, Box, or a district portal. For now, saving this link does not move photos. Photos stay in the Service’s private storage until direct connection to school-owned storage is available. Any future change will be described in an update to this policy.

5.3 Metadata is kept in the Service’s database. Access is limited to the workspace owner and active invited co-advisors.

In plain language: Photos and their details stay private to your school’s workspace and its active invited co-advisors. Your school storage link is saved, and photos stay in our private storage for now.

6. School Ownership of Data

6.1 The School owns its Yearbook Records, Community Submissions, and Student Data. We do not own them.

6.2 We store, process, and display that data only on the School’s behalf and only so the Service works.

6.3 The School may export or delete its data at any time, as described in Section 9.

In plain language: Your school’s work belongs to your school.

7. FERPA, COPPA, and Our Role as a School Official

7.1 The Service is used by school staff on behalf of their School. The School is responsible for its yearbook and for following its own photo-release and student-records policies, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) where they apply.

7.2 For FERPA purposes, we act as a “school official” with a legitimate educational interest. We work under the School’s direct control over how education records are used and maintained. We use those records only for the purposes the School has authorized.

7.3 For COPPA purposes, the Service is not directed to children under 13, and children do not create Accounts. Where the School provides student information, it does so as the agent of parents, as COPPA allows for school purposes.

7.4 Community Submissions must come from an adult (18 or older), or from a student who has a parent’s or guardian’s permission. Advisors review every community photo before it is saved to the school’s collection. The Service does not create or publish a finished yearbook.

7.5 Data privacy agreements

Many schools and districts ask their vendors to sign a student data privacy agreement (DPA). The Yearbook App, LLC is happy to review and sign your school's or district's DPA. Please email the agreement to support@theyearbookapp.com.

In plain language: We work for the school, under the school’s rules. Students don’t make accounts, and an advisor reviews every shared photo. Need a data privacy agreement? We're happy to review and sign your district's DPA. Just email support@theyearbookapp.com. This policy explains how student data is handled, and you can email us with questions.

8. Who Can See Information

8.1 School records are private to the workspace owner and active invited co-advisors. Co-advisors use their own sign-ins to access the same students, photos, submissions and coverage. The owner can remove a co-advisor’s access in Settings.

8.2 Submitters cannot see the review queue, other people’s submissions, or the identity of other Submitters.

8.3 The founder can read the feedback and forwarded questions you send, and nothing else.

8.4 The founder and The Yearbook App, LLC staff do not view or review your photos, student records, or Community Submissions, except to fix a problem you report to us, and never approve or moderate them. Review and approval of every photo is done only by the School’s own Advisors.

8.5 We disclose information only to the Processors listed in Section 10, when the law requires it, or to protect the safety of students or others.

In plain language: Only the workspace owner and active invited co-advisors see your school’s collection. Families see only what they share. The founder doesn’t view your photos or records, except to fix a problem your school reports. Your school’s advisors approve everything.

9. Data Retention and Deletion

9.1 We keep data while the Account is active, or until the School deletes it.

9.2 In Settings, an Advisor can download a copy of everything in the yearbook, or permanently delete the Account, records, and photos. Deleting the Account also cancels any active license.

9.3 Single entries, events, and staff photos you delete rest in a private Recently deleted archive for 14 days, and you can restore them from Settings during that time. After 14 days they are permanently purged. Account deletion and trial-data deletion are different: they remove everything immediately, including anything in the archive, and require typing the saved school name to confirm (or DELETE if no name is saved).

9.4 Expired trials. If a free trial ends without a subscription, the School’s data is kept for 12 months, then permanently deleted. We email the Advisor 30 days and again 7 days before deletion, so there is always warning and a chance to keep the work.

9.5 Backups. Photos are copied nightly to a second private storage location in the United States (Cloudflare R2). When a photo is permanently purged, its backup copy is removed within 14 days; when a School account is deleted, its backup copies are removed immediately. The database is backed up daily by our database provider, and those backups age out within about 7 days. Backups are used only to recover from system failures. A deleted photo can therefore exist anywhere for at most 28 days.

9.6 Billing records may be kept for as long as tax and accounting laws require.

In plain language: Deleted photos and entries can be restored from Recently deleted for 14 days. Deleting your whole account is immediate and permanent — you confirm it by typing your school name (or DELETE if none is saved). If a trial ends without a subscription, we keep the data for 12 months and warn you 30 and 7 days before it is deleted. Photos have a nightly second copy in US storage, and every deleted photo is gone from everywhere within 28 days.

10. Third-Party Processors

We rely on a small number of trusted Processors. Each one may use data only to provide its service to us.

• Supabase (on Amazon Web Services, US West — Oregon): stores the database, sign-in accounts, and photos. All Student Data is stored only in the United States.
• Cloudflare: hosts and delivers the website — web requests pass through Cloudflare’s global network, and Student Data is not stored there — and holds the nightly backup copy of photos in a private US storage bucket (R2).
• Resend: delivers account, sign-in, and billing emails from mail.theyearbookapp.com (US region). Receives Advisor email addresses and message content only, never rosters.
• Lovable: provides app hosting and deployment on Cloudflare infrastructure, technical logging and error reporting, and the AI gateway used by Ask a question. Hosting processes web requests; error reporting can receive error messages, stack traces, page paths, and technical context. The AI gateway receives the question you type and the page you are on.
• OpenAI: writes replies to Ask a question messages, through Lovable’s AI gateway, using only the text you type and the page you are on. Data storage is turned off.
• Stripe: payment processing and storage of card details.
• Google: optional Continue with Google sign-in. When chosen, Google verifies the account and provides account identity details needed for sign-in; school photos and rosters are not sent to Google as part of this sign-in. A Google Ads measurement tag also runs on our public pages only.
• Microsoft: Clarity website analytics on our public pages only, as described in the Website Analytics section.

We do not let any Processor sell student data or use it for advertising or AI training.

In plain language: A few trusted companies help run the app. Your school’s data is stored in the United States, and none of these companies can sell or misuse it.

Website Analytics

Lovable hosting also injects measurement scripts. Their public-page requests can include page and referring addresses, browser and language information, approximate country, random session identifiers, performance measurements and technical error details. The app blocks their analytics and replay requests on workspace pages, sign-in pages and family upload links, and after sign-in for the rest of the visit. Automatic click-label capture and page-content replay are blocked throughout the app. These scripts may still be loaded by the host, but tracking requests on those protected pages are blocked. This does not disable hosting web-request logs or the separate technical error reporting in Section 3.6.

We use Microsoft Clarity on our public pages to understand how visitors use the site, such as clicks, scrolling, and page views. Clarity does not run inside signed-in workspaces, on family photo upload links, or on any page that shows real school or student information. Once someone signs in, it stays off for the rest of that visit.

We also use a Google Ads measurement tag to measure public-page visits and outreach. It never runs in signed-in workspaces, on family upload links, or on pages showing real school or student information. Like Clarity, it stays off for the rest of the visit once someone signs in.

Microsoft explains how it handles this information in its privacy statement.

11. Security Practices

11.1 Photos are kept in private storage, never on public links.

11.2 Data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2 or newer) and at rest (AES-256).

11.3 Access is limited to the workspace owner and active invited co-advisors and enforced in the database itself, with row-level security on every table that holds school data.

11.4 Upload links can be revoked by the Advisor at any time.

11.5 Payment card details are handled by Stripe and never stored by The Yearbook App.

11.6 The Service uses no facial recognition, face detection, or biometric technology. Tagging people in photos is done by hand, by the School’s own Advisors.

11.7 If we confirm a security breach involving a School’s data, we will notify that School within 72 hours of confirming it, and we will cooperate with the School’s response.

11.8 If law enforcement or another legal process requests a School’s data, we will notify the School before disclosing it, unless the law forbids us from doing so, and we will disclose only what the law requires.

In plain language: We protect your school’s information carefully, we never use facial recognition, and we will tell you within 72 hours if we confirm a breach involving your data.

12. Where Data Is Stored

The Service is run from the United States. All Student Data — the database, sign-in accounts, and photos — is stored only in the United States, in the US West (Oregon) region of our database provider. Cloudflare delivers web traffic through its global network, but Student Data is not stored there.

In plain language: Your school’s data lives in the United States, in Oregon.

13. Rights of Schools and Families

13.1 Schools may access, correct, export, or delete their data at any time.

13.2 Families may ask the School’s Advisor to review, correct, or remove a photo or a student’s information at any time. Because the School controls its yearbook, we pass requests we receive directly on to the School and help the School respond.

13.3 Depending on where you live, you may have more privacy rights under state law. Contact us and we will help.

In plain language: Schools stay in control, and families can always ask for a photo to be removed.

14. Liability Boundaries

14.1 The School is responsible for deciding which photos and information to add, for getting any required permissions, and for following its own policies.

14.2 We are responsible for protecting data in the Service as this policy describes. Our liability is limited as set out in the Terms of Use.

In plain language: The school decides what goes into its yearbook, and we keep it safe.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy. If we make a meaningful change, we will let Advisors know by email or in the app before it takes effect. The “Updated” date at the top shows the latest version.

In plain language: We will tell you before anything important changes.

16. Contact Information

Questions about privacy: support@theyearbookapp.com

You can also use Ask a question and choose to reach a person. The team will reply by email.

For school technology and privacy staff, our Privacy & Security for Schools page answers common district questions in plain language.

17. Effective Date

This Privacy Policy takes effect on the date shown in “Updated November 1, 2026” above.