Last updated 11 October 2026
Your photos & privacy
These are your family's precious moments. Here's exactly what we do with them, and what we never do.
Our promise, in short
- Your photos are used only to show the announcements you create. Nothing else.
- We never sell, share or license your photos or details, and never use them for advertising, marketing, galleries, or training AI.
- Nobody at Welcome to This World browses or uses your photos. We'd only look at an upload if we had to investigate a report of misuse or a technical fault.
- Photos you haven't saved are visible only to you, and are deleted automatically after 24 hours.
- When you delete an announcement or your account, its photos are deleted from our server straight away.
- No adverts. Analytics cookies are used only if you say yes, and never include your photos.
Who can see your announcement
While you're creating an announcement, the photo you upload can only be seen by you, when you're signed in.
When you save an announcement you get a share link. Anyone who has that link can open the announcement, including its photo. Share links are:
- Unlisted: they don't appear anywhere on our site, and we ask search engines not to index them.
- Very hard to guess: each one contains a long random code.
- Not password-protected: anyone you send the link to can forward it. Please share it only with people you trust.
When you send a link in an app such as WhatsApp or Messages, the app shows a small preview picture. That preview only includes your baby's photo if you tick the box to allow it; otherwise it shows the design without the photo.
Once someone has your announcement, we can't stop them saving, downloading or screenshotting it. That's true of any photo shared online, so please only share links with people you're happy to have a copy.
How we keep things safe
- The whole site uses an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
- Photos are kept in a private folder on our server, outside the public website. They can only be reached through checks that confirm you're allowed to see them.
- Every photo is checked and then re-saved by our server as a fresh image. This removes hidden information phone cameras add, such as the location where the photo was taken, and anything else that isn't part of the picture.
- Every upload is compared with a block list of images that have been removed from the site for breaking our rules. This uses a digital fingerprint of the picture, not a person looking at it. Matching images are refused.
- Anyone viewing an announcement can report it. Reports go to our team, and anything that may put a child at risk is hidden straight away.
- Passwords are stored as one-way scrambled codes ("hashes"). Nobody, including us, can read your password.
- Accounts need a confirmed email address before photos can be uploaded, and sign-in, registration and password resets are protected by Google reCAPTCHA and attempt limits.
No system is perfectly secure, but we take care to protect your information and will tell you promptly if something goes wrong that affects you.
What we store and why
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your first name, email address and password (hashed) | To run your account, confirm your email and send password-reset emails. |
| Announcement details: baby's name, birth date, time, weight, length, your names and message | To show the announcements you create. |
| Photos you upload, the preview picture made when you save, and a digital fingerprint of each one (used only to check it against our block list) | To show your announcement and its messaging-app preview. |
| Anonymous visit counts for share pages: when a link was opened, the type of device, the domain of the site it came from (such as facebook.com), and a code that changes every day | To show you how many times your announcement has been viewed, see how the site is used and improve it. No cookies are used, IP addresses aren't stored, and the code can't identify anyone or follow them from one day to the next. Deleted with the announcement. |
| Reports about announcements: the reason, any details and the reporter's email if they choose to give it | To review and act on reports. If an announcement is reported, it and its photos may be kept hidden (not deleted) while we deal with it or help the police. |
| Basic technical logs (such as IP address and time of a request) | To keep the site secure and fix problems. Kept for a short time only. |
We use this information because you've asked us to provide the service (to perform our agreement with you) and, for security logs, because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the site safe. We only send you emails about your account; we don't send marketing.
Deleting your photos
- Unsaved uploads are deleted automatically 24 hours after you upload them.
- Saved announcements stay until you delete them, so your link keeps working for as long as you want it to. Delete one from My announcements and its link stops working and its photos are deleted from our server.
- Replacing a photo when you edit an announcement deletes the old photo once you save.
- Deleting your account (from your account page) permanently removes your account, every announcement and every photo.
Copies may remain in our server backups for a short time, until those backups are replaced in the normal way. We never restore deleted photos to the site.
Messaging apps may keep their own copy of a preview picture they've already shown, and people you've shared with may have saved copies. We can't delete those.
Other services involved
- Our hosting provider runs the server where the site and your photos are stored.
- Our email provider delivers account emails (email confirmation and password resets).
- Google reCAPTCHA runs on the sign-in, registration and forgotten-password forms to block automated abuse. Google receives information about your browser on those pages, under Google's Privacy Policy and Terms. reCAPTCHA is not used on the announcement pages, and Google never receives your photos.
- Google Analytics, only if you accept analytics cookies, to count visits and see how the site is used. We don't send it your photos, your announcement details or your email address.
These services act on our instructions and are not allowed to use your information for their own purposes, except Google as described in its own policy for reCAPTCHA.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask to see the information we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, or object to how we use it. You can delete your announcements and account yourself at any time. For anything else, email [email protected] and we'll reply within one month.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
This site is run by Welcome to This World, which is responsible for your information. We may update this page; the date at the top shows when it last changed.