Privacy notice
Great Big Photography World is a photography community, podcast and learning platform at greatbigphotographyworld.com. This notice explains what we collect about you, why, who helps us handle it, and what you can ask us to do. We keep it short and specific to what we actually run.
Who we are
Great Big Photography World is operated by Manfred Limited, Room 1405, 14/F., 135 Bonham Strand Trade Centre, 135 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. Manfred Limited is responsible for your data. For anything in this notice, write to hello@news.greatbigphotographyworld.com.
What we collect
- When you join through one of our pages: your email address, and your name if you give it, plus the page you joined from and the ad or link that brought you there.
- When you create a community account: what you enter in your profile, and what you choose to post, upload or send in the community, such as photos, comments and messages.
- When you visit our pages: a random visitor id stored in a cookie (
gbpw_aid, 180 days), the ad, campaign and click ids in the link, the referring website, the type of browser and device, and your cookie choice. We do not store your IP address with these records. - When you write to us: your message and whatever details you include in it.
- When you pay for something: your payment is handled by our payment provider. We see what you bought and when, never your full card number.
Why we use it
- To run your account and the community, and to give you what you signed up for (a contract with you).
- To send you emails about the community, new features and photography content. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe (your consent, which you can withdraw at any time).
- To see which of our ads and links bring people to us, to stop showing acquisition ads to members, and to show our ads to people who already know us (your consent where the law requires it, otherwise our legitimate interest in reaching our own community).
- To keep the platform safe and prevent fraud and spam (our legitimate interest).
Advertising
When you arrive from one of our ads we use pixels from Meta, TikTok and Google, with your consent where the law requires it, to see which ads bring people to us. When you become a member we send a hashed (unreadable) version of your email to the same platforms to stop showing you our ads and to measure results. Write to hello@news.greatbigphotographyworld.com to opt out at any time.
We also use hashed emails to show our ads to the right people. Members, people who started joining through one of our pages, and newsletter readers can be grouped into audiences on Meta, TikTok and Google: to invite someone who started joining to finish, to welcome new members, to invite members who have gone quiet back to the community, and to find people similar to our members. Only the hash leaves us, the platforms match it against their own users and cannot read it back. People we contacted first, such as podcast guests or photographers in our directory, are never put in these audiences.
Visitors in Europe see a cookie choice first, and the pixels only load after you say OK. You can change your choice with the Cookie settings link at the bottom of our pages, or by clearing this site's data in your browser.
If we contacted you first
We invite photographers to our podcast, our classes and our photographer directory. If we wrote to you without you signing up first, we found your professional contact details on public sources such as your own website or public profiles, and we keep a note of where we found them. You can reply to any of those emails, or write to us, and we will not contact you again. We keep your address on a do-not-contact list only so that promise holds.
Who helps us
We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with service providers that run parts of the platform for us, under their own data protection terms:
- Hosting and security: Hetzner, Cloudflare.
- The community platform: our technology partner that builds and hosts the community app.
- Email delivery: Resend, Instantly.
- Analytics: PostHog (EU hosting), RedTrack (ad attribution).
- Advertising: Meta, TikTok and Google, as described above.
- Payments: our payment provider, when you buy something.
Some of these providers process data outside your country, including in the United States. Where that happens they rely on the safeguards the law requires, such as standard contractual clauses.
How long we keep it
- Account and membership data: while your account is open, and deleted when you ask us to close it, unless the law requires us to keep a record (for example invoices).
- Ad click ids: no longer than 90 days. Visitor records: up to 180 days after your last visit.
- Emails to and from us: as long as needed to answer you and keep a record of the conversation.
Your rights
You can ask us to show you the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, limit how we use it, object to how we use it, or give it to you in a portable format. You can withdraw consent at any time, which does not affect what we did before. California residents can ask what we collected and ask us to delete it; we do not sell personal data. Write to hello@news.greatbigphotographyworld.com and we will answer within one month. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live.
Children
Great Big Photography World is not meant for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has given us personal data, write to us and we will delete it.
Changes
When we change this notice we update the date at the top. If a change matters for how we use your data, we tell members by email or in the community.
Great Big Photography World · Manfred Limited, Hong Kong · Terms of service