Privacy Policy

The controller of your personal data is:

For anything about your data, write to info@dipmark.com. We answer within 30 days.

This policy covers the website, the app (your account) and the public lab. We apply the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), whichever applies to you.

• What: when you ask for access, the name, e-mail address and company you give us, what you tell us you need it for, and the time. Your IP address is used only to stop the form being flooded and is stored as a keyed hash.
• Why: to decide on your request and to write back to you (steps at your request, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• How long: until we decide, and 12 months after that. If you open an account, section 3 applies from then on.

• What: your e-mail address, your name, your password and the invite code you registered with. The password is never stored as such, only as a one-way scrypt hash.
• Your settings: whether people who scan your photos may see your owner signature, and whether web watch and the Bitcoin anchor are switched on.
• Why: to run your account (contract, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• How long: as long as the account exists.

When you log in we set a single cookie that keeps you signed in. It holds a random token, cannot be read by scripts, and expires after 30 days or when you log out. It is strictly necessary for the app, so no consent banner is needed.

We use no analytics, no advertising and no tracking cookies, and we do not load third-party trackers.

• What: the photos you upload, the marked versions, previews, the names of the recipients you issue copies to, and technical reference data that lets us recognise the photo again.
• Why: this is the service you asked for (contract).
• Who sees them: only you. Your photos are not shown to other accounts and are not used to train any AI model.
• Deleting a photo: the original, the marked versions, the copies and the reference data are deleted at once. We keep a short record (the photo’s number, your account, the file name and the recipient names) and a compact content fingerprint, which is not an image. This is what lets a mark that turns up later still be attributed to you, and stops a photo number from ever being given to someone else.

• What: the file you scan, a preview of it, its file name, the link you add, the result and the time.
• Why: to give you the result and a record you can turn into a report (contract). We also use scanned files internally to test and improve recognition (legitimate interest, Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). They are never published or shared.
• How long: as long as your account exists.

If you scan an image that carries another account’s mark, or try to register it, you are told that it belongs to another account, and you see that owner’s signature only if the owner has chosen to show it. The owner receives the file you scanned, a preview and the result in their log, so they can act on their own copy. Your name, e-mail and account are not passed on, and are not recorded with it, and any location data (GPS) embedded in the file is removed before the owner receives it. Other embedded metadata (such as the device model and capture time) stays, and may appear in the owner’s report as context.

If someone scans one of your photos, the same happens the other way round: you receive their file and the result, but not who they are. Whether they see your signature is up to you, in Settings → Privacy.

We do this because the owner has a legitimate interest in knowing where their image is circulating (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

• Sample copies: when you mark a sample, we issue a copy with the name you type. The copy and that name are deleted after 48 hours.
• Each scan in the lab is recorded to find where the mark is weakest: the result (which sample, whether the mark was read, a similarity score), how the image was made (the edits you applied in the lab, such as crop, rotation or contrast, or that you brought your own version), technical details of the scan, and the time. None of this identifies you.
• Images you edit inside the lab are made from our own sample photos and may be kept to test and improve detection. Files you bring from elsewhere are read and not stored, unless you tick the box to let us keep them for the same purpose. Any location data (GPS) embedded in a kept file is removed first. Kept files are deleted after 12 months (legitimate interest, or your consent for files you bring).
• Your IP address is used to apply fair-use limits and keep the lab available for everyone. We store only a keyed hash of it, never the address itself, and remove the hash after 30 days (legitimate interest).

Web watch (off unless you switch it on). To find pages where your photo appears, we send a reduced copy of the photo to Google Cloud Vision (Google LLC, USA). Our server then downloads the publicly available images on the pages found, compares them with your photo and keeps the matches (page address, image address, page title, result). When you paste a link to check, our server visits that page and its images in the same way. Google processes the image to answer the request on our behalf and does not use it to train its models.

Bitcoin anchor (off unless you switch it on). See section 10.

Every registration is sealed with an independent timestamp. We compute a fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of the registration record, combine the fingerprints of many registrations into one value, and send only that value to the timestamp authority FreeTSA (Germany). It contains no image, no name, no e-mail and nothing that can be turned back into them.

If you switch on the Bitcoin anchor, the same kind of combined value for your account is sent to public OpenTimestamps calendar servers and ends up in the Bitcoin blockchain. The blockchain is public and permanent: that value cannot be deleted later. On its own it reveals nothing about you or your photos; it only proves something when combined with the proof file we keep for you.

Like any web server, ours records each request: IP address, time, the address requested and the response. We use this only to keep the service secure and running (legitimate interest) and delete it after 30 days.

• Hosting: [Hosting provider, country]. Stores the account, photos and scans.
• Vercel Inc. (USA): delivers the website pages. Sees your IP address and the pages you request, not your photos.
• Google LLC (USA): Cloud Vision, only for web watch, only if you switch it on.
• FreeTSA (Germany) and OpenTimestamps calendars: receive only the fingerprints described in section 10.

Where data goes to the USA, it is protected by the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework (and its Swiss extension) or by the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. We do not sell personal data and do not share it for advertising.

You can ask us at any time for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it or your whole account, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive it in a portable format. Write to info@dipmark.com from the e-mail address of your account. Deleting your account deletes your photos, copies and scans; section 5 explains the short record we keep, and section 10 the fingerprint that cannot leave the blockchain.

You may also complain to a data protection authority: in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), in the EU the authority of the country where you live or work.

Connections are encrypted (HTTPS), passwords are stored only as hashes, and access to stored files is limited to what is needed to run the service. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authority as the law requires.

The service is not intended for anyone under 16.

When this policy changes, we update the date at the top and, for significant changes, tell account holders by e-mail before they apply. See also our Terms.