Privacy Policy
Cliki is a photo sharing app for gatherings. You only see an event's shared album if you were physically there.
Last updated 17 September 2026
The short version. Cliki searches your photo library on your phone. You choose whether to submit attendance metadata, confirm gathering details, or upload photos. Your location is used to confirm you are at an event; the record we keep says that you were there, not where there is. Your photos are visible only to other people who were at the same event.
Photo safety review and OpenAI
Before sharing, you are asked to agree to automated safety review. Cliki sends a preview of selected photos or a frame from a selected video to OpenAI to detect unsafe content. If a photo preview is unavailable, the photo itself may be sent. You can decline and continue browsing albums you can access. We do not send your entire camera roll for this review. Automated decisions can be mistaken; contact support about a blocked photo. Reviewing a video frame does not review the full video or its audio.
Finding gatherings and verifying attendance
With photo permission, Cliki groups photo dates and locations on your phone to suggest past gatherings. That search does not upload photos. Confirming an album sends the gathering details to Cliki. Verifying with a photo sends its recorded capture time and location before any photo upload. Location and metadata checks are required for access, but device-supplied metadata is not tamper-proof proof of attendance.
Finding albums from gatherings you were at
This is off unless you turn it on. When you turn it on, Cliki sends us a short summary of each gathering your phone finds in your photo library: when it started and ended, and where it was, rounded to about 100 metres. We do not receive your photos for this, and we do not track your location continuously. We keep these summaries only to tell you about albums from gatherings you were at.
When someone creates an album whose time and place overlap a gathering we hold for you, we may send you a notification saying an album was created from a gathering you were at. That notification includes the album's time window and location so your phone can look for your own matching photos.
While album matching is on, albums made for gatherings your photos show you attended are added to your Albums automatically when you open Cliki. To do that, your phone sends the recorded capture time and location of your own matching photos, and we compare them with the album using the same time and location check as any other album. The album's name, photos and other details are not shown to you until that check passes. An album added this way does not need a join code.
The person who created the album is told when someone joins it this way, by a notification with that person's name, and can remove them from the album. Someone removed by the album's creator loses access to it, the photos they shared there are hidden from the album, and matching will not add them to it again. Album creators can also turn matching off for any album they created; while it is off, nobody is added to that album or notified about it through matching, and people already in the album stay.
To stop, go to Profile, Settings, Privacy & data and turn it off. Turning it off deletes every gathering summary we hold for you. Deleting your account deletes them too.
Deleting your account
Request deletion in Profile. Your account is disabled and contributed photos are hidden immediately. We queue permanent removal of contributed media, avatars and your Clerk sign-in account and retry failed cleanup. Cleanup normally completes within 24 hours. Stored attendance and scan history are removed, and so are any gathering summaries kept for album matching. A generic, non-identifying database placeholder may remain for historical references. Copies already saved by other attendees cannot be recalled.
What we collect
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Name and email | From Sign in with Apple or Google, so your albums follow you to a new phone. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we only ever see the relay address. |
| Photos and videos you choose to share |
To put them in that event's shared album. |
| Your location, at check-in only |
To confirm you are at the venue. See below. |
| Comments and reactions | So the album is something people can talk in. |
| A push notification token | To tell you when someone tags you or your upload finishes. Only if you allow notifications. |
| Gathering times and places, only if you turn on album matching |
To tell you about albums from gatherings you were at. Places are rounded to about 100 metres. See above. |
| Counts from a photo scan | How many photos matched an event and how many you shared. Numbers only, never filenames or content. |
We do not collect your contacts, your browsing, or your advertising identifier. We do not store IP addresses or device fingerprints with your account, and there is no analytics or advertising SDK in the app.
Your photo library
Cliki searches the photos you allow for matching event dates and locations. You can grant access to selected photos or your library. Photos without a matching location cannot establish attendance or be shared to an event.
That search happens entirely on your phone. Your library is never uploaded, never indexed on a server, and never seen by us. When you choose a photo to verify attendance, its recorded date and coordinates are sent to Cliki for comparison with the event. The verification record stores the event boundaries, method and verification time, not the submitted photo coordinates. Photo files are uploaded only when you choose to share them.
Photos you do not choose are never transmitted, and your originals are never moved, edited, or deleted by Cliki.
Location
Cliki uses your location for one thing: confirming you are inside the venue's area while an event is running. That check is what unlocks the shared album, and it is the entire reason the app exists.
Your coordinates are used and then discarded. The attendance record we keep contains the event, your identity, and how you were verified. It does not contain your coordinates. We do not track you, we do not build a location history, and Cliki does not read your location in the background unless you separately allow it. The one thing we keep, and only if you turn on album matching, is the rounded time and place of gatherings found in your photos, described above.
One honest exception. Photos taken by many cameras contain the location where they were taken, inside the photo file itself. When you choose to share such a photo, that information travels with it and we store it alongside the photo, exactly as any photo sharing service would. You can turn this off for future photos in iOS under Settings, Privacy and Security, Location Services, Camera.
Who can see what you share
Only people who were physically at the same event. Being invited is not enough; being sent the join code is not enough. Someone has to have actually turned up and checked in before they can open the album.
This is enforced on our servers on every single request, not in the app, so it cannot be bypassed by a modified client.
There is no public sharing. Cliki has no public links, no web gallery, and no way to make an album visible to the internet. If that ever changes it will be announced here first, and it will be a choice you make rather than a default.
Removing things
- Your own photos: you can remove any photo you contributed, at any time, and it comes out of the album for everyone.
- The organiser of an event can remove anything from their own album, and can remove a person from it.
- Leaving an album: you can leave any album you did not create. You lose access to it, and matching will not add you to it again. The photos you shared there stay unless you choose to remove them when you leave, in which case they are removed for everyone.
- Your account: delete it yourself, in the app, under Settings. Your photos and the files behind them, your comments, your reactions, your devices, your name and your picture are all removed permanently, and you cannot sign back into it. Stored attendance and scan history are removed. A generic, non-identifying database placeholder may remain for historical references and grants no account or album access.
How long we keep photos
Cliki stores two versions of a photo: the full sized original, and a smaller copy sized for viewing on a phone.
Cliki is currently free. Photo originals may be deleted 30 days after upload or the event ends, whichever is later. The viewing copy is kept for as long as the album exists. Videos are excluded from this original-deletion rule because their smaller copies are still poster images, not playable videos. There are no paid plans or subscriptions.
Companies that help us run Cliki
| Who | What they do |
|---|---|
| Clerk | Handles sign in with Apple and Google. Holds your name and email. |
| Cloudflare R2 | Stores photos and videos. Our bucket is private; every view is a short lived signed link. |
| Replit | Runs our server and database. |
| GIPHY | Provides GIFs for comments. A GIF is loaded from GIPHY's servers when it is displayed, so GIPHY can see that a device requested that GIF. |
| Apple, Google, Expo | Deliver push notifications. |
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising. Nobody buys access to your photos or your attendance.
Children
Cliki is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.
Your rights
Depending on where you live you may have the right to see the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or take it elsewhere. Write to us at the address below and we will do it. We will not charge you and we will not make you justify the request.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we do with your information, we will update the date at the top and tell you in the app before the change takes effect.
Contact
Questions, deletion requests, or anything else: privacy@cliki.app