Your photos stay yours.

Effective: August 22, 2026

Every analysis GoldenPhotos performs runs on your device. Duplicate, similarity, burst, blur, quality, storage, face, scene, and place analysis all happen locally. No photo or video content, thumbnail, face descriptor, location, or album is uploaded to A4TEAMS, and A4TEAMS operates no server that receives them.

This Privacy Policy explains how GoldenPhotos, an A4TEAMS product ("GoldenPhotos," "A4TEAMS," "we," "us," or "our"), handles information through our iOS, iPadOS, and Android applications, our website at goldenphotos.a4teams.com, and related support services.

1. Information GoldenPhotos May Handle

Depending on your device, permissions, and features used, GoldenPhotos may access photo/video asset identifiers, thumbnails, dimensions, dates, file size when available, duration, burst information, media types, RAW/Live Photo indicators, the location coordinates recorded in a photo's own metadata, and image/video content needed for local analysis.

GoldenPhotos may also create, on your device only, local hashes, perceptual fingerprints, similarity groups, blur/sharpness scores, quality signals, storage estimates, scene labels, face descriptors, place and event groupings, album titles, names you type for a group of faces, and scan-index records that avoid rescanning unchanged files. These records live in the app's own storage on your device and are removed when you delete the app.

Limited device information such as operating system version, app version, device class, and permission state may be processed to operate the app. Purchase status and subscription entitlement information is supplied by Apple or Google.

2. Photo Library Access

GoldenPhotos only accesses media your operating system permits it to access. On supported platforms you may grant full-library access, selected-photo access, or no access. Limited permission may reduce scan completeness and available cleanup features. GoldenPhotos asks for full-library access because finding duplicates and near-duplicates requires comparing photos against the rest of the library; the Photo Picker cannot perform that comparison.

3. What GoldenPhotos Analyzes

exact duplicate photos or videos;
visually similar or near-duplicate photos;
burst and rapid-shot groups;
blurry, out-of-focus, dark, overexposed, or potentially low-quality images;
best-shot candidates;
screenshots, screen recordings, RAW images, Live Photos, and large files;
estimated reclaimable storage;
time and location groupings used to build Smart Albums;
scene labels (for example beach, hike, food) used to tag a day or trip;
where you turn the feature on, faces, grouped into unnamed people.

4. On-Device Processing

All photo analysis runs locally on your device. A4TEAMS does not receive your photo or video library, your thumbnails, your face descriptors, your locations, or your albums, in any resolution, at any time.

We do not sell your photo/video content and do not use your photo library to train any AI model, ours or anyone else's.

5. Faces and People (Optional)

GoldenPhotos can group photos by the people in them, so an album can be about who was there and not only when it happened.

It is off until you turn it on. A fresh install performs no face detection at all, and the detector is never called while the setting is off.
It runs entirely on your device, using the operating system's own vision framework on iOS and a bundled offline model on Android. No image, crop, or descriptor is transmitted anywhere.
It does not identify anyone. The stored descriptors support the statement "these faces look alike," not "this is a particular person." GoldenPhotos never attaches an identity to a face; any name attached to a group is a name you typed yourself, and it stays on your device.
Turning it off erases the data. Every face descriptor, every group, and every name you typed is deleted from the device when you switch the feature off, and albums are rebuilt without them.

Depending on where you live, face descriptors of this kind may be treated as biometric information under local law. GoldenPhotos processes them only on your device, only with your affirmative opt-in, only for grouping your own library, and never shares or sells them.

6. Location

GoldenPhotos does not request device location and does not track where you are. It reads the location tag that your camera already wrote into a photo, if there is one, so a trip can be titled by where it happened.

That lookup is offline: the app ships with a place table derived from the GeoNames open dataset and matches coordinates against it on the device. No coordinate is sent to a geocoding service or to us. A coordinate the table does not cover stays unnamed rather than being guessed at. GeoNames data is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.

7. Third-Party Software in the App

GoldenPhotos contains no advertising SDK, no attribution or tracking SDK, and no analytics product operated by A4TEAMS. We do not collect usage analytics from the app.

Two third-party components do process limited information of their own:

Apple and Google in-app purchases. Subscription and entitlement records are handled by the store you bought from, under Apple's and Google's own privacy terms. We receive no payment details.
Google ML Kit (Android only). Face and scene detection on Android use ML Kit models bundled inside the app, which run offline. The ML Kit SDK reports its own diagnostic and usage data — such as SDK and model version, API calls, error and performance information, and device type — to Google. Your photos, thumbnails, face descriptors, labels, and results are not part of that; ML Kit sends no image content anywhere. Google's handling of that diagnostic data is described in the ML Kit terms and Google's privacy policy. The iOS build uses Apple's on-device Vision framework and does not include ML Kit.

8. Cloud-Synced Libraries

Your media may be managed by iCloud Photos, Google Photos, a device manufacturer, NAS, external storage, or another third-party service. GoldenPhotos may interact with local representations of those assets through supported operating-system APIs. Deleting a synchronized asset on one device may propagate that deletion to other devices or cloud copies according to your provider's rules. A4TEAMS does not control those synchronization rules.

9. How We Use Information

provide scanning, grouping, storage analysis, previews, albums, and cleanup recommendations;
perform actions you expressly request, including confirmed deletion;
maintain local indexes, caches, preferences, albums, and scan state on your device;
process or restore purchase entitlements;
respond to support and privacy requests;
comply with legal obligations.

10. Sharing

We do not sell your personal photo/video content, and there is no photo data on our side to share. We may share limited information — such as an email you send us — with service providers that support hosting, email, or support, only as reasonably necessary. Apple and Google process purchases under their own privacy terms. We may disclose information where required by law or in connection with a legitimate business transaction.

11. Advertising and Profiling

GoldenPhotos does not use photo content, face data, or location for advertising, profiling, or cross-context behavioral advertising, and contains no advertising SDK. If our practices materially change, this Policy will be updated and legally required choices will be provided.

12. Retention

Local indexes, hashes, quality scores, scene labels, face descriptors, albums, settings, and caches remain on your device until refreshed, cleared by you, removed by turning a feature off, or removed with the app, subject to your own device backups. Support records, purchase records, and legal/accounting records may be retained by us as reasonably necessary.

13. Privacy Rights

Depending on your location, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a copy of personal information we control. Because photo analysis data never leaves your device, you exercise those rights directly: turn a feature off, clear the app's data, or uninstall the app. You may also revoke photo-library permissions in your device settings and manage subscriptions through the applicable app store.

Privacy requests may be sent to privacy@a4teams.com. We may need to verify your request before acting.

14. Automated Recommendations

GoldenPhotos uses deterministic algorithms, image analysis, computer vision, and on-device machine-learning models. Similarity, blur, quality, best-shot, scene, place, and face-grouping results may be imperfect, incomplete, or subjective. These outputs are recommendations only. GoldenPhotos is designed so that a recommendation alone never authorizes deletion — you confirm every deletion.

15. Deletion, Recently Deleted, Trash, and Backups

When you request deletion, GoldenPhotos uses supported operating-system or media-library APIs. Your operating system or cloud service may move items to Recently Deleted, Trash, Bin, or a similar location, or may permanently delete them depending on platform behavior and settings. GoldenPhotos also keeps its own in-app Trash for a period you choose, so a deletion can be undone from within the app.

GoldenPhotos is not a backup service. You are responsible for maintaining backups appropriate for the importance of your media and reviewing selected items before deletion.

16. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards appropriate to the information we handle. Analysis data is kept in the app's own protected storage on your device. No device, software, network, or storage system can be guaranteed completely secure.

17. Children

GoldenPhotos is a general-audience utility and is not directed to children under 13 or the minimum age required by applicable law.

18. International Users

Limited personal information such as support emails or subscription records may be processed in the United States or other countries where A4TEAMS or its service providers operate, subject to applicable transfer requirements. Photo analysis data stays on your device and crosses no border.

19. Third-Party Platforms

Apple, Google, cloud-photo providers, device manufacturers, app stores, and other third parties are independent from A4TEAMS. Their APIs, permissions, cloud rules, storage behavior, pricing, availability, and policies may change and may affect GoldenPhotos functionality.

20. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy to reflect changes in law, security, operations, or product behavior. Material changes will receive additional notice where required.

21. Contact

GoldenPhotos is an A4TEAMS product.
Privacy: privacy@a4teams.com
Support: support@a4teams.com
Website: a4teams.com
Product: goldenphotos.a4teams.com

Release alignment: This Policy describes GoldenPhotos 1.0 for iOS and Android as submitted. If GoldenPhotos later adds cloud photo processing, accounts, advertising, remote AI, cloud backup, a macOS app, or any analytics SDK, this Privacy Policy must be updated to match the actual production build before that build ships.