My Photos: Privacy Policy
Last updated: 28 September 2026
My Photos is an iPhone app that copies your photos and videos to a computer that you (or someone who
invited you) own. This page says, in plain words, what happens to your data.
The short version
- Your photos go to one place: the PC you paired the app with. Nowhere else.
- There is no account, no cloud service and no server run by the app’s developer.
- The app never sends anything to a server run by the developer; there is none. The developer can see
your photos only if the PC you paired with is his own (he invited you), as that PC’s owner.
- No advertising, no analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs that phone home.
What the app reads on your iPhone
- Photos and videos, including their date, filename and the location saved inside each file
(GPS coordinates, if your camera recorded them). The app asks for Photos permission before it reads
anything, and only after you have paired it with a PC.
- A random identifier the app makes up the first time it runs (for example
iphone-1234...). The
PC uses it to remember which phone sent which photo. It is not your Apple ID, phone number or
advertising identifier.
Where that data goes
- To the paired PC only, over a private VPN (Tailscale) that you or the PC’s owner set up.
Transfers use HTTPS where the PC has a certificate (Tailscale HTTPS); inside the private
VPN a plain connection to the PC’s own VPN address is also possible, and it never leaves that VPN.
- The PC stores the original files and works out things about them on its own hardware: thumbnails,
duplicate detection, event albums, the words in documents (OCR), what is in a picture, and place
names from the GPS coordinates. None of this leaves the PC. No outside AI or image-recognition
service is used.
- The app then shows those results back to you.
Faces (only if you turn on face grouping)
- Face grouping is off until you turn it on in the app, on a screen that explains it. Until then no face
data is made at all.
- When it is on, the PC finds faces in the photos you backed up and, for each face, stores a list of numbers
describing its shape, next to your photos, so that the same person’s photos can be grouped and named. Some
laws (for example in Illinois and Texas) treat these numbers as biometric data.
- This happens only on the paired PC. Face data is never sent to the developer or to anyone else, is never sold,
and is never used to identify anyone outside your own library or to sign in.
- The PC keeps a record that you agreed (the time, which version of the explanation you saw, and the app
version); it stays on the PC.
- You can delete one person and their face data, or turn face grouping off and delete all face data, at any
time; deleted face data is erased from the PC’s database. It is also deleted with the photo it came from.
- The people in your photos have not agreed to this; turn it on only for your own library.
Who can see your photos
- You, in the app and on the PC.
- The owner of the PC, if it is not your own computer. When a friend or family member invites you
to back up to their PC, they can see what you back up, exactly as if you had handed them the files.
Only pair with a PC whose owner you trust with your photos.
- Nobody else. Not the developer of this app, not Apple (beyond what iOS itself does), not any
third party.
What the developer collects
The developer runs no server. The app has no analytics, no crash reporting service and no logging to any
server of ours. If you email us for support, we see your email.
The App Store privacy label for this app lists three kinds of data. All three go to the paired PC only:
| Data |
What it is |
Linked to you |
Used for |
| Photos or Videos |
the photos and videos you back up |
Yes |
App Functionality, never for tracking |
| Precise Location |
the GPS place saved inside a photo file |
Yes |
App Functionality, never for tracking |
| Device ID |
the random identifier the app makes up |
Yes |
App Functionality, never for tracking |
They are listed as collected because the paired PC can belong to someone else. If the developer invited
you to back up to his PC, he holds your photos as the owner of that PC. On your own PC, only you hold them.
Nothing else is collected.
Your choices
- Revoke a phone: the PC owner can revoke any paired phone at any time; the app then stops
uploading. Note that deleting the app does NOT by itself remove the pairing key: iOS keeps Keychain
items after a delete, and the key would come back if you install the app again on the same iPhone.
Ask the PC owner to revoke the phone (
python -m photocloud revoke <n> on the PC), which makes the
key useless whatever is still on the phone.
- Delete your photos from the PC: ask the PC owner (or do it yourself on your own PC). The app
never deletes a photo on your iPhone without asking you first.
- Photos permission: you can change it any time in iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Photos.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13 and collects no data from anyone for the developer.
Credits
Place names come from GeoNames (https://www.geonames.org), licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes and the new version is published at the same URL.
Yuvraj Shiv, yuvrajshiv007@gmail.com