Privacy at Tapestry

Private sharing by design

Every Tapestry Show is private.

There are no public Shows and no public photo feeds. A Show creator chooses who to invite, and each person invited to a Show must have their own Tapestry account with a verified email address and password.

Only the Show creator can invite people to their Show.

Tapestry Shows are accessed through the Tapestry apps on supported mobile devices, tablets and TVs. Show photos and other Show content are not published as publicly accessible web pages and are not available for search engines to index.

The idea is simple: sharing a photograph shouldn't automatically mean publishing it to the internet.

Private sharing is different from public posting

When you post a photograph publicly on a website or social network, that photograph can potentially reach an audience far beyond the people you originally had in mind.

Private sharing starts from the opposite direction.

With Tapestry, you decide who you want to share a Show with and invite those people into it. Instead of asking who should be prevented from seeing something you've published, Tapestry starts by giving access only to the people you have chosen.

That distinction is particularly important for personal photographs involving family, children, celebrations, vacations and everyday life.

Not every photograph needs an audience. Sometimes it just needs the right people.

No advertising. No behavioral advertising model.

Tapestry isn't supported by advertising.

We don't need to build an advertising profile around your family, interests or photographs in order to fund the service. Tapestry does not sell or rent your identifiable personal information to advertisers.

That business model matters.

Tapestry is designed as a service for people who want to privately share photographs—not as a platform whose success depends on making personal content public, increasing engagement around it or using it to sell advertising.

Your photos are not training data

Artificial intelligence has introduced another important question when deciding where to upload personal photographs: what happens to those images after they are uploaded?

Tapestry's position is straightforward.

Tapestry does not and will not use customer photos to train AI models.

Tapestry also does not perform AI analysis or processing on customer photos.

Our cloud service providers are contractually restricted in how they may use customer data. Tapestry will also review the privacy implications and applicable terms before introducing any future technology that would process customer photos using artificial intelligence.

Your family photographs shouldn't quietly become training material simply because you chose to share them.

Family and children's photos deserve particular care

Family photographs can document an entire childhood.

A photograph that feels ordinary today may remain online for years when it is posted publicly. Children may also have little or no involvement in the original decision to publish photographs of them.

Tapestry cannot determine whether a photograph contains a child because we do not analyze uploaded photographs for that purpose. Tapestry also does not currently perform age verification when an account is created.

What we can do is provide families with an alternative to publicly posting photographs when their real intention is simply to share them with relatives and friends.

Private sharing does not eliminate every privacy risk, but it can fundamentally change the audience for a photograph.

Protecting access to your Shows

Access to Tapestry is controlled through authenticated user accounts. Accounts use a verified email address and password, and access to individual Shows is limited according to the Show's invitations and permissions.

Photos are encrypted while being transmitted between your device and Tapestry's services.

We are continuing to document the technical safeguards used throughout Tapestry's infrastructure and will only describe security measures here that accurately reflect how the service operates.

Security and privacy claims should be specific, understandable and verifiable—not marketing promises.

Privacy also depends on the people you trust

Private sharing involves trust.

When you invite someone into a Tapestry Show, you are giving that person access to photographs that aren't available to the general public. Invited participants have a responsibility to respect the privacy of the people whose photographs and memories have been shared with them.

Tapestry currently allows photographs to be downloaded. We are developing additional controls that will allow Show creators to determine whether downloading is permitted for their Show.

It is also important to recognize a limitation that applies to any private photo-sharing service: once an authorized person can see a photograph, no technology can completely prevent that person from reproducing what they can see. Screenshots, screen recordings, another camera or other methods may allow someone to make a copy.

Privacy therefore involves both technology and trust.

Choose the people you invite with the same care you would use when sharing personal photographs with them in any other private setting.

Privacy without pretending there is no risk

No online service should promise absolute privacy or absolute security.

Our responsibility is to design Tapestry to limit unnecessary exposure, protect access to private Shows, use appropriate security safeguards, minimize unnecessary uses of personal information and be clear about the limitations of the technology.

We also believe people deserve understandable answers about what happens to their photographs.

As Tapestry evolves, we will continue to evaluate new features and technologies against those principles.

A different approach to photo sharing

Tapestry isn't trying to replace public social media.

There are times when people deliberately want to publish something publicly. There are also many moments that were never intended for the entire internet.

A family gathering. A new baby. A birthday. A vacation. Photographs of grandparents and grandchildren. Everyday moments between friends.

Tapestry exists for those moments.

Your photos are memories, not content.

When you want to share them, you should be able to decide who gets to be part of them.

Our formal Privacy Policy

This page explains the principles behind Tapestry's approach to privacy and private photo sharing. It is not a replacement for our Privacy Policy.

For detailed information about the personal information Tapestry collects, how information is used, service providers, data handling and your privacy rights, please read the Tapestry Privacy Policy.