Privacy Policy
How we collect, use and protect your information — including the photographs and details you give us so that we can make a book for your child.
Last updated: 1 October 2026
Interpretation and definitions
Words with an initial capital letter have the meanings given below. The same meaning applies whether they appear in the singular or the plural.
- Company ("We", "Us", "Our") means 4 Future LLC, trading as You in a Story, a Delaware company (DE 19901), United States.
- Service means the You in a Story website and the personalised books ordered through it.
- Website means You in a Story, accessible from https://youinastory.com.
- You means the individual accessing or using the Service, being an adult ordering on their own behalf.
- Account means the account created for You to access the Service.
- Personal Data means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual.
- Child Information means the first name, age band, interests and photographs You provide about a child so that a book can be made for them.
- Usage Data means data collected automatically by the Service or its infrastructure.
- Service Provider means a third party that processes data on Our behalf.
- Cookies are small files placed on Your device by a website.
Collecting and using Your Personal Data
We may ask You to provide the following Personal Data:
- Email address.
- First name and last name.
- Delivery address.
- Usage Data.
Payment card details are collected and processed directly by Our payment processor. We do not receive or store them.
Child Information. To make a personalised book We collect the child's first name, an age band, a few interests, and the photographs You upload. We do not ask for a child's surname, date of birth, address or school. By uploading, You confirm that You are the child's parent or legal guardian, or that You have that person's permission, and that the photographs are Yours to use.
Usage Data is collected automatically and may include Your device's IP address, browser type and version, the pages of the Service You visit, the time and date of Your visit, the time spent on those pages, and diagnostic data.
Use of Your Personal Data
The Company may use Personal Data for the following purposes:
- To provide and maintain the Service, including monitoring its usage.
- To create the personalised book You ordered, including generating its illustrations.
- To manage Your Account and Your orders.
- For the performance of the purchase contract for the products You have bought.
- To contact You about Your order by email.
- To manage Your requests to Us.
- To detect, prevent and address technical issues, fraud and misuse.
- To comply with legal obligations.
We do not sell Personal Data. We do not use any customer's child in Our own marketing.
Advertising
We may advertise through online platforms and use limited information to measure advertisements, attribute results, reach or exclude audiences, and improve how We spend Our advertising budget. When an advertising platform is active, We may tell it about actions such as completing a free preview or placing an order.
Depending on the platform and the action being measured, that information may include:
- A contact identifier such as Your email address in hashed form, which the platform may match to information it holds. Hashing does not make this anonymous.
- Commerce activity such as viewing a product, completing a preview, adding a book to the basket, starting checkout or placing an order.
- Transaction details such as an order value and currency.
- An advertising click or campaign identifier, if You arrived after interacting with an advertisement.
- Event identifiers and technical details needed to attribute and deduplicate the measured action, including Your IP address, browser user agent and the platform's own Cookie identifiers.
- The pages You view and the page and product details on them, when the platform's technology runs in Your browser, but only on pages that show nothing about Your child. On other pages, only the page address without its query string.
We never send Your child's name, age, photographs, interests, story or book, or anything else about a Character. Information may be disclosed to an advertising platform through a server connection or an advertising technology described on Our Advertising Partners page only when the activity is eligible, Your privacy choice permits it, and any consent required for that technology has been obtained.
We work with social media platforms, search engines and other advertising networks, and the platforms We use change over time. We may add or remove a platform without changing this Policy or the Advertising Partners page when the categories of information, purposes and choices remain as described there.
See how We work with advertising platforms.
Some laws describe this disclosure as "sharing" Personal Data for targeted or cross-context behavioural advertising. You can switch it off at any time on Our Your Privacy Choices page. If Your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, We treat it as switching sharing off. We do not sell Personal Data.
AI processing
Illustrations are generated with the assistance of AI models and then checked by You before printing; Our staff see a page only when it cannot be drawn or printed. To produce them, Child Information — including the photographs — is sent to Our model providers, who act as Service Providers for that purpose.
No model is trained on Your photographs. We carry out no fine-tuning on customer images, and Our providers' API terms exclude data submitted through their APIs from training their models.
You should know that Our image provider retains API inputs, including photographs, for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring before deleting them. Uploaded images are scanned for child sexual abuse material, and anything flagged is retained and reported rather than deleted. We have not been granted zero-data-retention for the image model We use. Each request carries a hashed reference rather than Your name or email address.
Retention of Your Personal Data
Original photos are deleted 30 days after your order ships.
- Photographs uploaded but not ordered from are deleted 30 days after upload.
- An unpurchased book, with its pages and previews, is deleted after 90 days.
- The print file is deleted 30 days after delivery.
- A saved character is retained only while You keep it, and We will ask You to confirm it again after twelve months.
- Order records are retained as long as tax and accounting law requires. They contain no photographs.
- Where You delete something, it is removed from backups within 30 days.
Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period, except where it is used to strengthen security or improve the Service.
Transfer of Your Personal Data
The Company is established in the United States, its servers and file storage are in Europe, and its Service Providers operate internationally. Your information, including Child Information, may therefore be transferred to and maintained on computers located outside Your state, province or country, where data protection laws may differ from those in Your jurisdiction.
Where a transfer mechanism is required, We rely on Our providers' standard contractual clauses. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure Your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Delete Your Personal Data
You have the right to delete, or to ask Us to delete, the Personal Data We hold about You. The Service gives You the ability to delete a saved character and everything created from it, which includes the photographs, the artwork and the print file. Deleting a character deletes every book it appears in.
Where a book has already been sent to the printer We will ask the printer to delete their copy. A book already in the post cannot be recalled.
You may also ask Us for a copy of the data We hold, ask Us to correct it, or object to Our use of it. Write to hello@youinastory.com. We may need to retain certain information where We have a legal obligation or lawful basis to do so. If You are in the UK or the EU You may complain to Your data protection authority; if You are in California You have the right to know, delete, and opt out of sale and sharing. We do not sell, and You can opt out of sharing on Our Your Privacy Choices page.
Disclosure of Your Personal Data
Business transactions. If the Company is involved in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, Your Personal Data may be transferred. We will give notice before it is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
Law enforcement. In certain circumstances the Company may be required to disclose Your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities.
Other legal requirements. We may disclose Personal Data in the good faith belief that it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, protect the rights or property of the Company, prevent or investigate wrongdoing, protect the personal safety of users or the public, or protect against legal liability. Material flagged as child sexual abuse material is preserved and reported rather than deleted.
Security of Your Personal Data
- Photographs and artwork are encrypted at rest and are reachable only through short-lived signed links.
- Sign-in is by one-time link sent to Your email address. There is no password.
- An Account can reach only its own books and orders.
- Uploads are limited by size and format, and scanned as described above.
- Staff reviewing a book see one order at a time, and those sessions are logged.
The security of Your Personal Data is important to Us, but no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While We strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect it, We cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Children's privacy
The Service is intended for adults. It does not address anyone under the age of 13, and We do not knowingly collect Personal Data directly from anyone under 13. The only information We hold about a child is the Child Information a parent or legal guardian has chosen to give Us in order to have a book made.
If You are a parent or guardian and You are aware that a child has provided Us with Personal Data directly, please contact Us at hello@youinastory.com and We will delete it.
Links to other websites
The Service may contain links to websites We do not operate, such as a courier's tracking page. We strongly advise You to review the privacy policy of every site You visit. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the content or privacy practices of any third-party site.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify You of changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the date at the top. Where a change affects Child Information We already hold, We will also tell You by email. You are advised to review this page periodically.
Contact Us
If You have any questions about this Privacy Policy, contact Us by email at hello@youinastory.com.