light stalkers

Privacy

Last updated: June 2026

The short version

light stalkers stores the minimum needed to operate your account and show your photos. We don't sell your data, we don't run third-party trackers on public pages, and we strip the embedded metadata (including any GPS location) from every photo before we store or serve it. If you want to leave, you can delete your account and everything you've uploaded from your account settings.

What we store

  • Account: email address, public handle, and a password hash (we never see your password in plain text). Your account record is held in our identity service, Sam, which other 8by3 services share.
  • Your photos: the images you upload (resized and re-encoded), their captions, and the albums and collections you organise them into.
  • Capture time: on upload we read the photo's capture time from its EXIF data so you can sort by date taken — then we strip all embedded metadata (including camera info and GPS coordinates) from the versions we store and serve.
  • Share links: when you create a secret link, we store a random token against the album or collection. Rotating or disabling the link discards it.
  • Activity logs: access logs (path, status, timestamp, coarse device type) for operational debugging. They do not contain your IP address. Aggregate counts are retained for analytics.
  • Login security: sign-in is handled by Sam, which keeps recent login activity for security monitoring.

What we don't store

  • No third-party analytics. No Google Analytics, no Mixpanel, no Plausible, no anything.
  • No advertising pixels or fingerprinting.
  • No embedded photo metadata — camera serial numbers and GPS location are stripped on upload.
  • No cookies on public pages — only on authenticated pages, and only for the session.

Where it lives

The primary database and image storage are held on hardware we own, located in Cape Town, South Africa. We don't use third-party cloud providers for production storage.

Encrypted backups are sent to Backblaze B2 in their EU region. The encryption happens before the backup leaves our hardware — Backblaze stores the encrypted bytes and doesn't hold the keys, so they cannot read backup contents.

If you're an EU or UK user, your data is being transferred outside those jurisdictions when you use light stalkers. Signing up implies you accept that transfer.

Lawful basis (GDPR / POPIA)

We rely on contract as the lawful basis for processing your account data and photos — we need it to provide you the service. Server logs are processed on legitimate interest (operational security and debugging).

Your rights

  • Export: email legal@8by3.net and we'll provide your photos and account data.
  • Delete: account settings → Delete Account. Permanent. Your light stalkers-side data — albums, collections, photos, and the files on disk — is hard-deleted, and your public handle is freed. In Sam (the shared identity service): if you use no other 8by3 service your account is hard-deleted entirely; otherwise only your light stalkers footprint is removed and your account remains for those other services.
  • Correct: edit your albums, captions, and account details from the editor and account settings at any time.
  • Object: email legal@8by3.net and we'll respond within 30 days.

Sharing

We don't share data with third parties. Two operational exceptions:

  • Account email (sign-in links, confirmations) is delivered through MailPace, a small transactional mail provider based in the UK. They process recipient email addresses to deliver the message and discard them after delivery.
  • If we receive a lawful order from a South African court, we'll comply. We'll tell you it happened unless the order forbids us.

Children

light stalkers is not directed at children. By signing up you confirm you're 16 or older. If we become aware of an account belonging to someone younger we'll delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy in any material way, we'll tell existing users by email and via a notice on the site for at least 30 days. The "last updated" date above always reflects the current version.

Contact

Privacy or data questions: legal@8by3.net. General support: help@8by3.net.