Privacy
Your children’s photos, handled with care
You are trusting us with pictures of your children. This page explains, in plain words, what Old Highway Design Co. collects, what happens to it, who else sees it, and when it is deleted.
Last updated October 12, 2026
The short version. We use your photos only to paint your family’s letters. They are stored privately, seen by a person in our studio and by the services that paint and check the illustrations, and deleted 90 days after your letters are delivered. We never sell them, never publish them, and never use them to train anything.
What we collect
- Your email address, from checkout, so we can send your order link and your finished letters.
- Your children’s first names, ages and whether each is a boy or a girl, plus any appearance notes you add. The names appear in the letters; the rest helps the paintings look like them.
- Your elf’s name and whether it is a boy or a girl, and one optional photo of your elf.
- One to three photos of your children. These are the most sensitive thing you send us, and most of this page is about them.
- An optional note to the studio. We read it; it is never sent to the painting service.
- Payment is handled by Stripe. We see that you paid and the email you used. We never see or store your card number.
We do not use advertising trackers on this site.
What happens to the photos when you upload them
- Your browser shrinks each photo to at most 2048 pixels on the long side before it leaves your device.
- Our server opens each photo and saves a fresh copy. Saving a fresh copy removes the hidden information cameras attach to pictures, including GPS location, the time it was taken and the phone model. The original file is not kept.
- The cleaned copies are stored in private storage under your order. There is no public link to them, and they are never shown on the website.
Who sees the photos, and why
Only the people and services needed to make your letters:
| Our studio | A person reviews every finished collection against your photos before it is sent, to check that each child looks like themselves. |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | Paints the illustrations, using your photos as a reference for each child’s likeness. |
| Anthropic | Writes a short description of each child’s hair and coloring for the painting brief, and checks each finished painting for likeness and mistakes before a person reviews it. |
| Vercel | Hosts this website and the private storage where your photos and letters are kept. |
These services act on our instructions. Under their business terms they do not use the photos we send to train their models. They may hold a copy for a limited time, typically up to 30 days, for abuse monitoring, then delete it.
Stripe (payments) and Resend (email delivery) see your email address and order details. They never receive your photos.
How long we keep things
- Photos, finished letters and the PDF are deleted 90 days after your letters are delivered. That leaves time to download again or ask for a revision.
- Your order record (email, order number, names, dates) is kept for our accounts and tax records, without any photos.
- If you never send photos, there is nothing to delete beyond the order record.
Deleting your photos sooner
You can ask us to delete your photos and letters at any time, before or after delivery. Write to oldhighwaydesignco@gmail.com from the email you ordered with and include your order number. We delete everything for that order within 7 days and reply to confirm. If we have not started painting yet, you can also cancel for a full refund.
What we never do
- We never sell, rent or share your photos or your children’s names.
- We never use your photos or letters in our marketing, samples or social media. The sample family on this site gave written permission.
- We never use your photos to train an image model, and we do not allow the services above to do so.
Children
This site is for parents and guardians. We only accept photos from a parent or guardian who has the right to share them, and we do not collect information directly from children.
Your choices
You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to oldhighwaydesignco@gmail.com. We answer every request, and we will never charge for it.
If we change this page in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top.