Privacy

Last updated: 4 November 2026. Plain English, and short, because we hold very little.

Your video never reaches us

The sketch is drawn on your own computer. Your camera picture is not uploaded, stored or seen by us, and it is not sent to any other company. Face tracking also runs on your computer: the files that do it are downloaded once and then used offline.

In a web call, video and sound travel directly between the two people in encrypted form. Our server only passes the small messages that let two browsers find each other. On difficult networks the video may be relayed through Cloudflare's TURN service, still encrypted end to end, where we cannot see its contents.

What a sketch does and does not hide

A sketch throws away your skin, your expression in detail, and most of what is in the room. It does not throw away shape. Someone who already knows you may recognise you from the outline alone, and software that guesses a photograph from a drawing can produce a face that resembles yours. Large writing on a whiteboard behind you can also stay readable.

The Change my proportions control exists for that: it shifts the spacing of your eyes, nose and chin by a small amount that is fixed for your installation, so the drawn face is not the shape of your own, while the lines stay as sharp as before. We describe this as harder to recognise rather than anonymous, because anonymity is not something a camera filter can promise.

The weekly check

The desktop app contacts our server about once a week to confirm what your copy is entitled to. That request carries a random identifier for the computer — a hash, not its name — and nothing else about you. It happens on the free version as well as paid ones, and is separate from the usage counts below, which are optional.

Usage counts, only if you say yes

The desktop app asks you once, when you first open it, whether it may send a daily count of which privacy modes you use — everything sketched, just the room, just you, or a box you drew. It tells us which part of Papercam is worth building on. If you have not answered, nothing is sent. You can change the answer at any time in Settings.

If you say yes, what is sent is: seconds spent in each mode that day, which look you used, whether you are on Free, trial or Pro, and the app and Windows version. What is never sent: anything from your camera, your name, your email, your licence key, your IP address, or anything about your files or other programs. There is no identifier that follows you: the app attaches a random number that it throws away and replaces every month, so the counts can be grouped into "how many computers that month" and nothing further.

Website visit counts

Our pages count their own visits, on our own server, with no cookie and nothing saved in your browser. For each page view we add one to a daily total of: which of our pages it was, the name of the site you came from (for example "google" or "reddit", never the full address), your country, and whether you are on a phone or a computer. Your IP address is not stored and nothing identifies you or links one visit to another. Totals are deleted after about a year.

What we do store

• Waitlist: your email address, the plan you picked and anything you typed in the box.
• Licence: your email address, your licence key, your plan and payment status, and for each computer a random identifier, the computer's name and the date it last checked in.
• Browser sign-in (paying customers only): your email address, a scrambled form of your password (your browser scrambles it before sending, and we scramble it again, so the password itself is never stored or seen), and for each signed-in browser a random session number, when it was last used and the browser's name. The free version needs no account.
• Payments: Stripe sells Papercam on our behalf as the seller of record and handles the payment, tax, and any refund or dispute. We receive your email address, what you bought and whether it is paid up. We never see or store your card details.
• Emails: licence and password emails are sent through Resend, which receives your address and the content of that email in order to deliver it.

The services that handle data for us: Cloudflare (hosts the website and our database), Stripe (payments) and Resend (emails). We do not sell or share your data with anyone else.

We do not use tracking scripts, advertising or third-party analytics, and we do not store IP addresses with your records. Our website loads no third-party fonts or scripts.

Why we store it

To send you the emails you asked for (your licence key, a password link), to give you the software you paid for, to sign you in, and to make sure a licence is used on the agreed number of computers.

How long

Waitlist entries until you ask us to remove them or we stop the waitlist. Licence records while the licence exists and for as long as tax rules require us to keep the sale record. Browser sign-ins end after 90 days without use, and are deleted then.

Your choices

Write to hello@papercam.app and we will send you a copy of what we hold, correct it, or delete it. Deleting a licence record ends the licence.

Changes

If this page changes, the date above changes with it.

Note for the owner: this is a straightforward starting point, not legal advice. Have it reviewed before you take money, and fill in your business name, address and contact email.