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Privacy policy

Last updated: 16 October 2026 · This is the EN-GB edition, published on fablebook.co.uk.

This policy is written to be read, not survived. Where the law needs a precise phrase we use it, and then say the same thing again in ordinary words. Because the service turns on photographs of children, we have written it to a stricter standard than the legal minimum.

Who we are: Fablebook (Keurenplein 41 Box A8357, 1069CD Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is the data controller for the processing described here. You can reach us at support@fablebook.co.uk.

Our Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number is 96345357 and our VAT number is NL005203142B97.

This policy is written for the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR. The Dutch edition on fablebook.nl says the same thing in Dutch.

On this page

  1. What Fablebook does with personal data: the short version
  2. What we collect
  3. Children’s data: our specific commitments
  4. Purposes and legal bases
  5. Who receives data
  6. What we never do
  7. Automated checks, and why they are not decisions about you
  8. Customer service: your messages to us
  9. Retention: the automatic deletion schedule
  10. International transfers
  11. Your rights
  12. Inviting a friend, and reviews
  13. Security
  14. Cookies
  15. Changes to this policy

What Fablebook does with personal data: the short version

You upload photos of the children the book is about and their family, and answer questions about them. We use this to create one personalised picture book, using artificial-intelligence image tools operated under our instructions. You see the first pages free and, after you order, the whole book; only what you approve gets printed. We keep the photos only as long as needed to make and deliver your book, then delete them automatically. We never use these photos to train AI models, never sell them, and never show them to other customers.

What we collect

You provide: account and contact details (name, e-mail, delivery address, phone optional); order details; the questionnaire answers (names, ages, relationships, story preferences, dedication text); and the photos you upload, which typically show the children the book is about, their family, their pets and their home.

Generated by us: the illustrated book pages created from your photos; a short written description of how each person looks (hair, eyes, skin colour, the shape of the face), read from the photos so that everyone is drawn the same on every page; internal quality-control notes.

Automatically: order and payment metadata (payment itself is processed by Stripe: we never see card numbers); basic technical data (IP-derived country for showing you the right site, device and browser type, essential cookies). Only if you say yes in the cookie banner, and only for what you tick, we also keep which of our links or advertisements brought you here, and Meta and TikTok measure our advertisements (see Cookies). Nothing about the children in a book, their photographs or the book itself goes to them.

If you enter a giveaway on Instagram or TikTok: the public username you enter with, your comment on our post (your answer, and the one friend you tag) and the time you wrote it and, if you tell us you shared our post to your story, that. We ask for nothing else to enter: no photograph, no address and no e-mail address. The friend you tag is only a username inside your comment: we do not write to them. If you win, we ask for an e-mail address to send the free book code to; the book is then made and delivered like any other order. See the giveaway terms.

You do not have to give us any of this. But without the photographs and answers we cannot draw the book, and without your name, e-mail and delivery address we cannot send it.

Children’s data: our specific commitments

  • Your photos, in short: we use them only to draw your book. To draw it, they go to Google (the Gemini API), in the United States, on our instructions and under a processing agreement: Google does not use them to improve its products, and keeps what we send for at most 55 days, only to detect misuse (who receives data, international transfers). How each person looks is kept as a short written description (see below), deleted with the book. We delete the photos automatically, 60 days after your book is delivered (the deletion schedule). You can withdraw your consent at any time: we then delete the photos, and if you have already paid and the book is not printed yet, we cancel the order and refund you in full (terms, section 8).
  • The Fablebook service is offered to and used by adults (parents and guardians, and family and friends who give a book as a present). Children do not create accounts or interact with our service.
  • We only process a child’s photos on the basis of consent given by that child’s parent or guardian. Before you upload anything you tick that you are the parent or guardian of each pictured child (or have their parent or guardian’s permission) and that you explicitly consent to the photos being used for the book, and that every pictured adult has agreed. We log this consent, with the exact words you saw.
  • We apply data minimisation: upload only the photos we ask for. We do not extract, store or analyse biometric identifiers or face templates: photos are used solely to draw the illustrations for your book. How each person looks is kept only as a short written description (hair, eyes, skin colour, the shape of the face), so we can draw everyone the same on every page. It is never a face print, a measurement or an embedding, it is never used to recognise anyone, and it is deleted with the book.
  • We apply strict retention (the deletion schedule) and delete rather than archive.
  • We do not use children’s data for marketing, profiling or automated decision-making, and we never train AI models on it.

Purposes and legal bases

PurposeLegal basis
Creating your personalised book from uploaded photos (including AI-assisted illustration and human quality control)Consent (Art. 6(1)(a); for children’s images, the explicit consent of their parent or guardian, ticked before you upload anything). You may withdraw consent any time before printing: we then stop, cancel the order and refund everything (terms, section 8).
Order handling, proof approval, printing, delivery, service e-mailsPerformance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Payment, invoicing, tax recordsLegal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)): financial records kept for as long as tax law requires (seven years in the Netherlands, six in the United Kingdom)
Optional: keeping the drawn characters (never the photographs) for a next bookSeparate opt-in consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): off by default, withdrawable in your account
Seeing which of our links or advertisements brought you here: the campaign label of the link (for example "instagram, paid, october"), kept with your book and order. It holds no click identifier, no IP address and no cookieLegitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): to see which of our marketing works. Anything we store on your device for it needs your consent (Art. 6(1)(a); Telecommunicatiewet art. 11.7a, PECR reg. 6): the "Statistics" choice in the cookie banner.
Measuring and improving our advertising with the Meta and TikTok pixels and the events our server sends them (which pages you view, that you start a preview or go to checkout, what an order was worth)Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), and for the cookies and similar technologies Telecommunicatiewet art. 11.7a and PECR reg. 6: only if you tick "Marketing" in the cookie banner. Withdraw at any time under "Cookie settings" in the footer.
Running a giveaway on Instagram and TikTok: checking that an entry is valid, drawing the winner so that the draw can be repeated and checked, reaching the winner and giving the prize (one book)Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): taking part is an agreement on the giveaway terms, and the prize is delivered under them. Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): keeping the list of entries and the record of the draw, so that the draw can be shown to be fair, and catching duplicate and fake entries. We use it for nothing else and send no advertising because you took part.
Service improvement using aggregated, non-identifiable data; fraud prevention; defence of legal claimsLegitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): never using identifiable children’s data
E-mails about a book you started but did not order, and ideas for another bookA few reminders about a free preview you did not order, on both sites, because you asked us to draw it (legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f)); on fablebook.co.uk none if you ticked "don’t e-mail me". Everything else on fablebook.co.uk: only if you did not tick "don’t e-mail me" when you gave us your e-mail address (PECR reg 22(3)). On fablebook.nl: about a book you started without a preview, only with your consent; about new books once you have bought one, only if you did not tick that you do not want them (Telecommunicatiewet art. 11.7). Every one has an unsubscribe link, and after you unsubscribe we send none. E-mails about a book you have paid for are part of the order and are always sent.
Remembering that you asked us not to write to you, or to delete your data (a list of e-mail addresses we never mail)Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): to respect your objection. Without the list, a mailing already queued, or a new account made with the same address, would reach you again.

Who receives data

These are all the parties that receive personal data from us, and each receives only what it needs. Most are processors: they act only on our instructions, under a data-processing agreement. Google Maps, Google or Facebook when you sign in with them, Stripe for fraud screening and its own legal duties, and PayPal or Klarna when you pay with them, decide for themselves what they do with the data they receive, under their own privacy policies.

  • Google (Gemini API): illustration. Receives the uploaded photographs and our drawing instructions, which name the people in the book: the name of each child the book is about (and their age, and whether a boy or a girl, if you told us), the names of the brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents and pets in it and what the children call them, the age of a brother or sister if you gave it, and a short written description of how each person looks (hair, eyes, skin colour, the shape of the face). It also receives the finished pages, with the story’s words on them, to check them (and, for a colouring book, to trace them into line drawings), and any request you make to change a page, in your own words. It never receives your address, e-mail address, phone number or dedication, unless you type them into such a request yourself. Under the paid API terms Google does not use these inputs to improve its products. Google keeps what we send and what it returns for up to 55 days, only to detect and prevent abuse, and it may hold data briefly in any country where it operates. For the pages drawn after payment, the drawing instructions and the images they need go to Google’s batch service as files, which Google deletes by itself 48 hours after they are uploaded. We delete them as soon as we no longer need them: the instructions when the pages of that round are back, the images when the book (or the colouring book) is finished or will not be drawn any further. We delete the pages Google draws there as soon as we have collected them; Google’s own limit for those is six weeks. Google LLC, United States; see International transfers.
  • Prodigi Group Ltd. (printing and delivery), United Kingdom: receives the approved print file, your name, delivery address and e-mail address, and your phone number if you gave one. Hardcovers for the UK are printed in the UK, hardcovers for the Netherlands in the Netherlands and every other book in Germany, each by Prodigi’s partner there. For some orders Peecho B.V., Amsterdam prints instead, receiving the same data, in the Netherlands.
  • Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd., Dublin: payment and fraud screening. Receives your name, e-mail address, delivery address and payment details. We never see your card number. Ireland, with onward transfer to the United States.
  • PayPal and Klarna, only if you choose to pay with them: Stripe passes them what the payment needs, such as your name, e-mail address, address and the amount. Each decides for itself what it does with that, under its own privacy policy; Klarna may assess whether it can offer you its payment options.
  • Supabase: the database and the encrypted storage holding your photographs. Stored in the European Union (Frankfurt). A United States company.
  • Vercel: hosting. Runs the website itself, so it processes the technical data in every request; its logs, which can include your e-mail address, are kept for at most 30 days. Our server functions run in Frankfurt. A United States company.
  • Resend: transactional e-mail: the proof link, your order confirmation, the shipping notice. Receives your e-mail address and the contents of those messages, never a photograph or an illustration. Sent from its European region (Ireland). A United States company.
  • Google Workspace (Gmail): our customer-service mailbox. Receives the e-mails you send to our support address, and our replies to them. Our customer-service system reads the mailbox through Google’s Gmail interface. Google LLC, United States; see International transfers.
  • Anthropic (the assistant that suggests replies): when a message reaches our customer service, an AI assistant run by Anthropic, PBC (United States) may read it and suggest a draft reply. It receives the words of the conversation and the facts a reply needs (where an order is, its dates and parcel, and what this policy and our terms say), and never a photograph, a dedication, a child’s name from a book, a full address or a payment detail. A member of our team reads and approves every reply to an e-mail or a form message before it is sent; in the chat on our website the assistant answers directly. See Customer service.
  • Zernio: our social media tool. It publishes our own posts to our Instagram and TikTok accounts (our brand’s content, never a customer’s photograph or book), and brings the comments on those posts and the direct messages sent to those accounts to us, so that we can answer them. For those it receives the public username or display name of the person who wrote, the platform’s ID for them, what they wrote and when, and our reply. Zernio Software SL, Spain; it keeps its main database in London and uses some providers in the United States, see International transfers. See also Customer service.
  • Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok, only if you tick "Marketing" in the cookie banner: their advertising pixels run in your browser, and our server sends them the same few events. They receive which pages you view (the story pages, not your account or your book), that you start a preview, that you go to checkout, and for an order its order number and its value without VAT, together with your IP address, your browser type and their own cookie and click identifiers. We send no name, e-mail address, phone number, photograph, child’s name or anything you typed into the book. Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (Ireland) and TikTok Technology Limited (Ireland); they use the events to measure and improve our advertisements and, under their own privacy policies, for their own purposes. See International transfers and Cookies.
  • Google Maps Platform: the address search on the checkout. Its script loads only when you click into the address search; Google then receives your IP address and browser details, and what you type. The address we ship to is always the one in the form, not the one Google suggested. United States.
  • Kadaster (PDOK): the Dutch land registry’s open address service. For a Dutch postcode and house number we ask it for the street and town, from our own server, so it never sees who is asking. Netherlands.
  • postcodes.io: an open UK postcode service. For a UK delivery postcode we ask it which region the postcode lies in, from our own server, so it never sees who is asking; it receives the postcode and nothing else. United Kingdom.
  • Google and Meta: only if you choose to sign in with a Google or Facebook account. They confirm your identity to us; we ask them for nothing beyond your name and e-mail address. If you do not use those buttons, neither receives anything. United States companies.

We never sell personal data, never share your photographs with other customers or advertisers, and never allow any of the above to use your photographs to train an AI model.

What we never do

Most of a privacy policy describes what a company does. For a service built on photographs of children, what it refuses to do matters at least as much, so here it is in one place.

  • We never use your photographs to train AI models: not ours, and not anybody else’s. Our illustration provider’s paid terms forbid it on their side too.
  • We never sell personal data, and we never share it for anyone else’s marketing.
  • We never show your photographs or your book to another customer. Nothing you upload appears in an example, a gallery or an advertisement unless you have separately and explicitly agreed to it.
  • We never build biometric templates. The photographs are used to draw from and nothing else; we do not extract or store face measurements that could identify a child elsewhere.
  • We never market to children. Our customer is an adult, every message goes to that adult, and nothing in the service is designed to be used by a child.
  • We never profile you ourselves. The advertising platforms you accepted under "Marketing" may use the events they receive for their own advertising systems, under their own privacy policies; nothing about the children in a book or the book itself is in them. And no decision with a legal or similarly significant effect is taken about you by software alone: see the next section.

Automated checks, and why they are not decisions about you

Software checks every page we draw: whether the style matches, whether the text is readable, whether a sentence has landed over somebody’s face. Those are judgements about an illustration, not about a person, and a page that fails is redrawn or sent to one of us to look at. To keep the story’s words off the faces, the same drawing service tells us where the faces are on the finished illustration (never on your photograph): a few numbers per page, kept only until the book is finished and then deleted.

There is no automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects concerning you within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR. A person reviews every book before it is printed, and a person approves every reply that customer service sends by e-mail or through the contact form. The chat on our website is the exception: its assistant answers without that approval, but it cannot refund, change, cancel or delete anything and it decides nothing about you (see Customer service).

Customer service: your messages to us

When you write to us, through the contact form or by e-mail, we keep the conversation: your name and e-mail address, the order number if you gave one, your message and our reply. We use it to answer you, and to find your order so that the answer is right. The legal basis is the contract, when you have ordered (Art. 6(1)(b)), and our legitimate interest in answering the people who write to us (Art. 6(1)(f)).

To answer faster, an AI assistant may suggest a draft reply. It reads your message and the facts of your order that a reply needs, and the text of this policy and our terms. A member of our team reads and approves every reply to an e-mail or a form message before it is sent, and no decision about you is taken by software alone. The assistant never sees a photograph, a dedication, a child’s name from a book, a full address or a payment detail; it sees only what you write to us yourself. The assistant is run by Anthropic (see Who receives data).

The chat on our website. When you use the chat window on our website (it is not always switched on), you talk to an AI assistant run by Anthropic (see Who receives data). In the chat no member of our team reads an answer before you do, so the assistant is limited by design: it tells you about an order only after you have shown that it is yours (the order number together with the e-mail address of the order, or by signing in); it then sees only that order’s status, dates, delivery estimate, carrier and tracking link, and never an address, a photograph, a dedication, a child’s name from a book, a price or another customer’s order; it can explain how delivery works and what this policy says; and it cannot refund, change, cancel or delete anything, so it passes those to a colleague, who answers by e-mail. Its answers are written by software and can be wrong, and you can ask for a person at any time. The chat sets one cookie, fb_chat, only when you start to talk (see Cookies). Please do not put photographs of children or payment details in the chat.

Our social media accounts. If you comment on one of our posts on Instagram or TikTok, or send a direct message to one of our accounts, it reaches our customer-service inbox through Zernio (see Who receives data). We keep what you wrote, the public username or display name you use there, the platform’s ID for you and the time, to answer you; the basis is our legitimate interest in answering the people who write to us (Art. 6(1)(f)). We link it to no order or account, and we never keep a picture sent with a message, only that there was one. A direct message is answered by a member of our team, who may use a suggestion from the assistant described above and approves every reply before it is sent. A comment under one of our posts is answered by that assistant directly, without a person approving it first, and only when it asks a real question about the photographs, how it works, the price or the delivery; a question about an order is pointed to a direct message, and anything else is left alone. We keep a comment for 90 days and a direct message as a customer-service conversation (see Retention), and a reply to a comment is public, so please keep personal details and photographs of children out of comments: write to us by e-mail instead. The platform itself (Instagram, TikTok) is responsible for what it holds, under its own privacy policy.

Please do not send photographs of children to customer service. The contact form takes no attachments. If an e-mail arrives with one, our system records that there was an attachment and of what type, never the attachment itself, and our reply says so. The original e-mail stays in our mailbox at Google until we delete it; we delete an e-mail with a photograph of a child as soon as we have dealt with it.

We keep the conversation for 24 months after the last message, because a question about the same book can come back within the two years the law gives you on goods. If you have your data deleted (your rights), we delete the conversation too, and the e-mails in our mailbox.

Retention: the automatic deletion schedule

  • Photographs, drawings, pages and print files of a delivered book: deleted 60 days after delivery (kept briefly for the reprint and defect guarantee). If the printer never confirms delivery, we treat the book as delivered 30 days after we sent it to print. Your delivery address and gift note go at the same time; the country is kept.
  • A preview you did not order, or a book you started and left: photographs, drawings and pages deleted 30 days after the book was last changed.
  • A paid order that is cancelled and refunded (terms, section 8): deleted 30 days after the refund. A paid book that is not approved within 60 days of being ready is cancelled and refunded, so it follows the same rule.
  • The address from a checkout that was not paid: deleted after 30 days.
  • Keeping the drawn characters (opt-in): kept until you withdraw it in your account, then deleted within 30 days, and in any case no longer than 24 months after you last used them. Using them means making a book from them, adding to them with a new book, or switching keeping on again, which is one button in your account (“Keep for another 24 months”). We e-mail you once, 30 days before the 24 months end, so you can make a book or confirm that we keep them. If you have unsubscribed from our e-mails we do not write, and they are deleted when the 24 months end. There is no subscription.
  • Names, ages, the answers, the dedication and the written descriptions of how people look: deleted with the photographs (see above). If you chose to keep the drawn characters, we keep what they need until you withdraw that.
  • A friend’s e-mail address you gave us for an invitation: removed 60 days after the code was used, or when it expired.
  • A list of addresses we never mail. If you ask us to delete your data, we delete it, apart from the order, invoice and consent records below and one thing more: your e-mail address stays on a list of addresses we never write to (the list your unsubscribe also puts you on), with the date and the reason. Without it, a mailing already queued, or a new account made with the same address, would reach you again, the opposite of what you asked. Nothing else is on the list: no name, no book, no order. We keep it for as long as we could otherwise write to you: it has no end date and we do not clear it ourselves. You can ask us to remove it too (your rights); you may then get e-mails again if you start a new book.
  • Order, invoice, approval and consent records: kept for as long as tax law requires (seven years in the Netherlands, six in the United Kingdom), counted from the end of the financial year of the order, without the photos. We do not delete them earlier, and where it is unclear which country’s rule applies we use the longer term. After that they are deleted automatically, together with the family record and the sign-in that belonged to them when nothing else is left under them. The list of addresses we never mail (above) is the one exception: it has no end date.
  • Customer-service conversations (the contact form, the chat on our website, e-mails to our support address and comments and messages on our social media accounts, with our replies): deleted 24 months after the last message, or at once when you have your data deleted; a comment under one of our own posts, with the assistant’s reply to it: 90 days. We never keep an attachment in the system, only that there was one and its type. The e-mails in our mailbox are deleted with them when you ask for your data to be deleted.
  • The giveaway's list of entries (public usernames, comments and times) and the log of the draw: deleted 60 days after the draw, and kept longer only while a complaint about it is open. Your comment itself stays on Instagram or TikTok until you delete it, and, like every comment on our posts, it also reaches our customer-service inbox, where the 24 months above apply (or until you have your data deleted). The winner’s e-mail address is kept with the free-book code and the order, like any order’s (see the order records above); a code that expires unused loses the address the night after, and a used one 60 days after it was used.
  • Your cookie choice (the fb_consent cookie): six months, then we ask again. What the advertising platforms hold is theirs, under their policies. If you ticked "Marketing", we keep your IP address, browser type and the platforms’ cookie identifiers with the book for 30 days at most, only to send the events described above; they go sooner if you withdraw "Marketing" or the book is deleted. The campaign label of a link is kept with the book and with the order record.
  • At Google: see Who receives data — up to 55 days for abuse monitoring, and the batch files as described there. Vercel’s logs: at most 30 days.
  • Backups. Photographs and drawings are never in our database backups. Deleted names, answers and order details can remain in a database backup for up to 7 days and then disappear by themselves. We never restore deleted personal data from a backup except where a restore is lawful and unavoidable.
  • You can ask for earlier deletion at any time (your rights).

International transfers

Your photographs, your book and your order data are stored in the European Union (Frankfurt). To make and deliver the book, some of it leaves the EU:

  • Google (United States) receives the photographs, the drawing instructions with the names and ages in them, the finished pages and your change requests (as listed above). Its batch service keeps the pages it draws until we collect them, at most six weeks. Google LLC is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, with the UK Extension.
  • Prodigi (United Kingdom) receives the print file and your delivery details. The European Commission’s adequacy decision for the UK applies. Under Prodigi’s own data processing terms it may also have the data processed outside the UK and the EEA, for example in the United States or Australia, under the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses and the UK addendum.
  • Stripe (Ireland) passes payment data on to the United States; Google Maps, and Google and Meta sign-in if you use it, receive data in the United States. PayPal and Klarna, if you pay with them, may transfer data outside the EEA under their own privacy policies.
  • Supabase, Vercel and Resend keep and process your data in the EU, but are United States companies.

Our social media tool. Zernio, which carries the comments and messages on our social media accounts (see Who receives data), is a Spanish company. It keeps its main database in London, where the European Commission’s adequacy decision for the UK applies, and uses some providers in the United States, so data from our social media inbox may reach the United States. For those providers Zernio relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it and otherwise on the Standard Contractual Clauses.

Advertising platforms (only if you ticked "Marketing"). Meta Platforms Ireland and TikTok Technology Limited are Irish companies, but their groups work outside the EU: data they receive from our pages may be processed in the United States and, for TikTok, may be accessed from other countries including China. They say which safeguards they use in their own privacy policies and data terms. If you do not want this, leave "Marketing" unticked: nothing then goes to either.

Every transfer to the United States relies on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in its data-processing terms. For UK orders the UK Extension or the UK Addendum applies alongside. Copies of the safeguards are available on request.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object, and to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time (without affecting processing that was lawful before you withdrew it). Deleting your data is also a one-click control in your account. We respond within one month. Contact: support@fablebook.co.uk.

Complaints: you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk) in the UK or the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl) in the Netherlands: though we would appreciate the chance to resolve it first.

If you live in the UK, you can complain to us first, at support@fablebook.co.uk. We will confirm that we have your complaint within 30 days and answer it without undue delay. If you are not satisfied with how we handled it, you can then complain to the ICO. This follows the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, in force since 19 June 2026.

Inviting a friend, and reviews

Inviting a friend. After a purchase you can share a personal link that gives a friend a discount on their first book and you a discount on your next. We send nothing to your friend: you share the link yourself. When somebody pays with your link we record the e-mail address that paid, the order it was used on and the time, so that each person can use one first-book discount and so that every reward we hand out has a record behind it. You never see who used your link, and they never see more than your first name. This is processing under the contract (delivering the discount and the reward) and our legitimate interest in preventing abuse; the record is kept for as long as the programme runs and the reward can still be claimed.

Reviews. In the days after delivery, in a short mail that asks whether the book has arrived and again about five days later, we may ask how the book landed, with a link to a review site of our choosing. Leaving a review is voluntary and happens on that site under its own terms. If you send us a photo of the printed book, we show it only on our own website, only with your explicit permission, and never one in which a child is recognisable outside our website. You can withdraw that permission at any time by e-mail and we take the photo down.

Security

Security here is a set of limits built into the software, not a list of good intentions, so it is worth naming them precisely:

  • Encrypted in transit and at rest, on infrastructure in the EU (Frankfurt).
  • Stripped of what the phone wrote into it. A photograph carries the place it was taken, often to the metre, the moment, the phone’s make and model, sometimes its owner’s name and a hidden thumbnail of the original frame. None of that is stored: the picture is re-encoded on the way in with nothing attached but its colour profile, so what sits in our store — and everything that is read from it afterwards — is the picture and only the picture.
  • A private store your photos cannot leave by accident. We keep two private buckets: one for the photographs and drawings, one for the print files that go to the printer. The code that writes a file is not given the bucket as an instruction, because each operation has its own built in. Writing a customer photo to the print bucket is not an error our software can make.
  • The printer gets a link that expires, not a public address. The print file of your book is kept private too. The printer fetches it through a link we create at the moment we send the order, and that link stops working after seven days. The file has no public web address.
  • Access by expiring link. You see your own photos and pages through a signed link valid for 15 minutes at most. A member of staff who checks your book before it is printed gets links that last at most an hour, so a page does not go dark halfway through the check. The code will not issue one lasting longer than an hour, whatever it is asked for. Each time a member of staff opens your book we record who it was, when, and what kind of picture (a page, a photo), with your book’s number but never the picture or its address; we keep that record for 24 months and delete it when you erase your data.
  • Photos are absent from our logs entirely — not the image, not its address in storage, not the identifier of the family it belongs to. Nor is a storage address ever written to a log beside a name, an e-mail address or an order number, since the pair would rebuild exactly the link the private store exists to prevent. Even the audit record of a deletion run can hold only an operation name and a count: there is no field on it capable of carrying an identifier.
  • Restricted to the people doing the work. Only trained staff performing quality control can open customer photos, through those expiring links; the tools they use are closed to search engines and are not cached.
  • Ordinary web hardening: strict transport security, a deny-by-default framing policy, no content-type sniffing and a restrictive referrer policy across the site.

None of this makes a breach impossible, and we will not claim it does. In the unlikely event of one involving your data we will notify the supervisory authority and, where required, you, within the statutory deadlines.

Cookies

When you first arrive a small banner asks what we may use, in the words you see there. Necessary cookies need no consent and are always on; Statistics and Marketing are off until you choose them, and you can change your choice any time under "Cookie settings" in the footer. Necessary cookies (functional, needed for what you ask the site to do):

  • the sign-in session cookie, once you have signed in, so your book stays yours across pages and devices;
  • fb_market, remembering whether you chose the Dutch or the British site (one year);
  • fb_suggested, remembering that we suggested the other site to you once (30 days);
  • fb_offer, holding a discount code you arrived with so you do not have to type it again at checkout (60 days);
  • fb_chat, only if you use the chat window on our website: it holds the conversation you started with our assistant, set when you send your first message or ask for a person, readable only by our server, and gone after 24 hours;
  • fb_consent, remembering your cookie choice, with the wording you saw and the time (six months).

In your browser’s own storage we keep: the book you were building, so you can carry on (fb_book_id); whether you closed the offer bar or saw the discount card; and whether we already asked about keeping the drawn characters.

Statistics (only if you tick it): fb_measure, remembering that you said yes (six months), and fb_attr, remembering which of our links or advertisements brought you here, kept only by us (60 days). Nothing goes to anyone else.

Marketing (only if you tick it): the pixels of Meta and TikTok set their own cookies on our site: _fbp and _fbc (Meta, up to 90 days), and _ttp, _tt_enable_cookie and ttclid (TikTok, up to 13 months). They recognise your browser so that the platform can tell whether an advertisement worked. If you withdraw, we delete these cookies and stop the pixels; a later page does not load them again.

Without your "Marketing" choice there are no advertising pixels and no third-party trackers on this site: neither Meta nor TikTok is contacted, and nothing here follows you to another website.

Changes to this policy

We will post changes here with a new date. Material changes affecting how we handle photos will be e-mailed to active customers.

Questions about this page

If you would rather talk to a person than read a legal text, e-mail us and we will reply in plain language.

Privacy and your data: support@fablebook.co.uk · Orders and complaints: support@fablebook.co.uk

Post: Name: Fablebook. Registered address: Keurenplein 41 Box A8357, 1069CD Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Chamber of Commerce (KvK) number: 96345357. VAT number: NL005203142B97.

Cookies

We use the cookies the site needs to work. With your permission we also measure where you came from, and let Meta and TikTok measure whether our adverts work. Without your permission, that doesn’t happen.

Privacy policy