Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

• Account info: name, email, and profile photo from your login provider (Google or email).
• Demographics: gender, age range (18+ only), and country, collected during onboarding. You must confirm you are 18 or over before using the service.
• Dental history: optional answers about braces, veneers, whitening, or implants, used only to contextualise your result.
• Photos: the smile photos you upload for assessment (see the Photo Usage Policy below).
• Contact form: name, email, optional phone number, and message, when you write to us.
• Assessment results: your scores, grades, and certificates.

2. Photo Usage Policy

This is the part we want to be extra clear about, since it's your face:

• Photos of children are not allowed. This service is for users aged 18 or over only. Do not upload photos of anyone under 18.
• Your photos are used only to generate your smile assessment. Free (Tier 1) photos are analysed using an on-device model in your browser wherever possible; they are uploaded to our secure storage only when you submit your assessment, so we can save your result and let you revisit it later.
• We never sell your photos, and we never share them publicly or with third parties for marketing purposes.
• We do not use your photos to train AI models unless you explicitly opt in via the 'Help improve our AI' checkbox during onboarding. This is optional and off by default. You can change this preference at any time.
• We do not feature your photos publicly unless you explicitly opt in via the 'Feature my smile' checkbox during onboarding, which is also optional and off by default, and your result is A or above.
• You can delete assessment photos in the app from your result. They disappear from your result and card at once. We keep a copy for up to 30 days so we can restore it if you email contact@smileresearch.org. After that the file is permanently erased.
• During that 30-day window, authorised staff may view the photo and keep an internal deletion log (email, gender, and dates) only to restore it if you ask. Deleting a photo does not delete your grade or certificate. A recheck or new assessment needs new photos.
• Paid (Tier 2) assessments may be processed by a third-party AI vision provider (for example, OpenAI) solely to generate your result, never for the provider's own model training, per our processing agreement with them.

3. Not a medical record

Smile Research is not a medical or dental diagnosis. Results are an appearance reference only, not a medical assessment. We do not treat your photos or results as medical records, and you should always consult a licensed dentist for any real health question.

4. How we use your data

• To run your smile assessment and show you your grade and certificate.
• To maintain your account and assessment history.
• To respond to enquiries and partnership requests sent through our contact forms.
• To improve the accuracy of our scoring, using anonymised, aggregated data, or your photos only if you've opted in.
• To send you service-related emails, for example result-ready notifications and subscription receipts.
• To comply with legal obligations.

5. Who we share data with

We use a small number of trusted service providers to run the app: Supabase (database, authentication, and photo storage); Resend (sending and receiving contact-form email); Cloudflare Turnstile (spam protection on contact forms); and, for paid assessments, an AI vision provider. These providers only process your data to provide their service to us and are bound by their own data protection obligations. We do not sell your personal data to anyone.

6. Data retention & your rights

• You can delete assessment photos in the app from your result. Hidden photos stay available for restore for 30 days if you email contact@smileresearch.org, then they are permanently erased.
• You can request full account deletion by emailing us. We'll erase your account, photos, and history within 30 days.
• You can request a copy of the data we hold about you.
• You can withdraw AI-training or feature consent at any time from your account settings.

7. Children's privacy

Smile Research is for users aged 18 or over only. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have collected such information, we will delete it. Do not create an account or upload photos if you are under 18.

8. Cookies

We use cookies that are needed to run Smile Research. These include:

We do not use advertising or analytics cookies at this time. You can still use the public pages if you ignore the bar; signing in requires the sign-in cookies above. Details of how we use your account and photo data are in the rest of this policy.

• Sign-in cookies: set by our authentication provider (Supabase) so we can keep you signed in and protect account pages.
• Cookie notice: a first-party cookie that remembers you accepted this notice, so we do not show the bar on every visit.
• Staff session: a separate cookie on the admin tools, used only to keep lab staff signed in.

9. Security

We use industry-standard measures, including encrypted connections, access-controlled storage, and row-level database security, to protect your data. No system is 100% secure, but we work to keep your information safe.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated in the app or by email before they take effect.

11. Contact

Questions, data requests, or deletion requests? Email us at contact@smileresearch.org.