Privacy policy
Last updated 23 October 2026
Who we are
Ages Ago is a trading name of Highfold Group Ltd (company number 17521208, registered in England and Wales). Registered office: Office 21848, 182-184 High Street North, East Ham, London, E6 2JA. The "controller" of the personal data described here ("we", "us") is Highfold Group Ltd. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under reference ZC280583.
Questions about your data? Email hello@agesago.co.uk. We read every message and reply by email, usually within a working day.
What we collect
- Details you give us - the photos you upload, which often show people, sometimes children; we detect faces on our own server only to compare the mended photo with your original; your email address (to keep your photos and send sign-in links) and, for prints, your name, delivery address and phone number; your orders, credits and any problem reports or messages.
- Payment details - handled entirely by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
- Messages - what you send us by email or through our contact forms.
- Basic usage data - we count page views without cookies. To count unique visitors we use a one-way, daily-changing hash of your IP address and browser; we can't use it to identify you and it resets every day. For each visit we keep the pages viewed, the kind of device, the country (worked out from your IP address, which isn't stored) and whether the visit ended in a purchase, chat or message, for 90 days, without cookies. To leave robots out of our counts we also compare a similar one-way daily code of your IP address between our own websites for up to two days, and for nothing else.
- Security logs - like most websites, our web server and mail server keep logs of each request: your IP address, the date and time, the page or service requested and your browser details (and, for emails, the sender and recipient addresses). We use them only to keep our services secure and working.
- Live chat - the messages you type into our chat assistant and any details you choose to send through it (see Live chat below).
Why we use it, and our lawful basis
| Purpose | Lawful basis (UK GDPR Art. 6) |
|---|---|
| Providing what you've ordered or signed up for, and talking to you about it | Contract |
| Replying to your messages and enquiries | Legitimate interests (or steps you ask us to take before a contract) |
| Taking payment, keeping accounts and tax records | Legal obligation |
| Keeping our services secure and preventing fraud and abuse | Legitimate interests |
| Improving our website using cookieless statistics | Legitimate interests |
| Sending you news and offers (only if you opted in - unsubscribe any time) | Consent |
Who we share it with
We never sell your data. We share it only with the suppliers below, who help us run Ages Ago. Suppliers that act for us may use it only on our instructions, under contracts that require them to protect it. Where a supplier also uses data for its own purposes (as the table says), its own privacy policy covers that use.
| Supplier | What for |
|---|---|
| Contabo GmbH (servers in United Kingdom) | hosting: the server that runs this website and stores its database and files, and our own mail server on it, which sends and receives our emails |
| Stripe Payments UK Ltd | card payments and billing (Stripe is also an independent controller for fraud prevention and its own legal obligations) |
| Microsoft | an encrypted off-site copy of our backups (weekly and monthly copies are kept, so deleted data can stay there for up to about 3 months) |
| Prodigi Group Ltd (UK) | printing, framing and delivering prints (your name, delivery address, email and phone for delivery updates, and the print file) |
| Abacus.AI, Inc. (USA), and the image model it passes your photo to (currently Nano Banana 2.1, made by Google, which adds an invisible SynthID watermark to the images it makes) | mending your photo. Only the cropped photo and our fixed instructions are sent, never your name, email or address |
| Abacus.AI, Inc. (USA) | AI processing of live chat messages to write the assistant's replies |
Some of these suppliers may process data outside the UK (for example in the USA). Where they do, the transfer is protected by UK adequacy regulations (including the UK-US data bridge), or the ICO's International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
How long we keep it
- Photos you keep, with all their versions and files: deleted 90 days after you keep them (we email you 10 days before).
- Print files: kept while the print is being made, then deleted about five weeks after it is dispatched (35 days after a cancelled one), or with the photo at 90 days if that comes first.
- Photos sent with a problem report: deleted 6 months after the report.
- Names, delivery addresses and phone numbers given for a print: removed 6 months after it is dispatched or cancelled.
- Face measurements made to compare your mended photo with the original: never stored.
- Accounts with no orders: deleted 12 months after you last signed in (we email you a month before).
- Account and order data: while you're a customer, then 6 years (UK tax and limitation rules).
- Photos you don't keep, and their previews: deleted 30 days after you last used them.
- Enquiries that don't lead anywhere: 2 years.
- Emails to and from our hello@agesago.co.uk mailbox: deleted from our mail server 2 years after they arrive.
- Our log of the emails we send you (address, subject and whether it was delivered): 1 year.
- Security logs on our servers: 14 days.
- Cookieless page-view and visitor counts: about 13 months (400 days).
- Backups: anything we delete can stay in our backups (nightly copies, plus weekly and monthly encrypted off-site copies) for up to about 3 months, then it's gone.
- Live chat conversations: 180 days after the last message; details you send through the chat, with the recent part of the conversation, are kept like other enquiries.
Live chat
Our website has a chat assistant. It is an automated AI assistant, not a person: it answers questions using Ages Ago's own web pages and information we've written for it, and it can make mistakes. If it can't help, it can take your details so we can reply to you by email.
- What we keep - the messages you type, the assistant's replies, the page you started the chat on, when it happened, and a one-way hash of your IP address that changes every day (only to stop one connection using up the assistant - we don't use it to identify you). Please don't type card details or sensitive personal information into the chat; card numbers are removed automatically, from the chat and from details you send.
- AI processing - to write its replies, your messages and the relevant parts of our website are sent to Abacus.AI, Inc. in the United States, which acts as our processor under a contract that requires it to protect your data. The transfer is protected by UK adequacy regulations (including the UK-US data bridge), or the ICO's International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
- Details you send us - if you choose to leave your details (for example your name, email address and phone number) they reach us in the same way as a message through our contact form, together with the recent part of your conversation so we know what you asked. We reply by email. Nobody joins the chat itself: the assistant stays automated.
- Why (lawful basis) - legitimate interests (answering questions about mending your photos and your orders), and steps you ask us to take before entering into a contract when you ask us to get back to you.
- How long - chat conversations are deleted 180 days after the last message. If you send your details, they and the recent part of the conversation that goes with them are kept like other enquiries (2 years).
- On your device - once you start a chat, your browser keeps the conversation (in local storage, not a cookie) so it stays open as you move between pages. It's cleared the next time you visit after 24 hours without using it, or straight away when you choose "Start a new chat" or clear this site's data. Once you've sent your details, your browser no longer keeps them.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, or to receive it in a portable format. You can withdraw consent at any time. If you have an account you can delete it yourself from your account page. Email hello@agesago.co.uk for anything else - we'll respond within one month.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Changes
If we make important changes we'll update the date above and, where appropriate, tell you by email.