Privacy policy

This policy covers animatedsignature.com and the signatures it builds. It is written to be read rather than to be survived, so it says plainly what is collected and, just as plainly, what is not. Questions go to hello@animatedsignature.com.

What we collect from you

• Your account. Your email address, the name you give it, and a record of each device you are signed in on (when it signed in, its IP address and its browser), kept until that session ends. If you use Google or Microsoft we also keep that account's id, name and photo, and nothing else from it. You sign in with a code sent to your address, a password, or Google or Microsoft. A password is kept only as a one-way hash that cannot be turned back into it.
• Your signature. Everything you type into the builder, such as your name, job title, company, phone number, website and social links, and the design and colours you choose.
• Your images. The photo, logo and banners you upload. They are stored in a folder that belongs to your account and are served from our own asset domain so they can appear in an email.
• Your campaigns. The banners, links and schedules you create.

What we collect when someone reads your email

Your signature carries no tracking pixel, so nothing is recorded when an email is opened. Two things are counted, and both are counts rather than records of a person:

• Clicks on your links, while link tracking is on. We store which of your links was followed and when. You can switch tracking off from your dashboard, and a signature already installed keeps the links it has until you copy the new one across.
• Where a click came from, as a number per country and per device type (phone or computer) per hour. No IP address, no user agent and no identifier is stored, and a country we cannot determine is recorded as unknown.
• Campaign banner loads, as a number per campaign per day, because a banner filled at the moment of opening has to be fetched from us. No address, device or recipient is recorded with it, and mail providers that pre-fetch images make this figure approximate, which is why the dashboard says so.

What we deliberately do not do

• We do not track opens, and we will not add an open pixel.
• We do not store the IP addresses or user agents of the people who read your email.
• We run no advertising tags, and nothing on this site profiles you or follows you to another one.
• We do not sell or share your data, or your recipients' behaviour, with anyone.

Installing your signature in Gmail or Outlook

Install to Gmail. If you press it, Google opens a window asking you to let Animated Signature see and change your Gmail settings, and nothing more. That permission is given to the page in your browser and never reaches our servers. The page uses it once, straight away: it looks up which address is your Gmail account's main one, writes the signature you designed into that address's signature setting, and then cancels the permission, so it cannot be used again. Nothing from your Gmail account is sent to us or stored by us, and we do not read, keep or share your messages, contacts, labels, filters or anything else in it. None of it is used for advertising, sold, or used to train AI models. Showing that button loads Google's sign-in script from Google, which sees your IP address and browser as any site you load something from does.

Animated Signature's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. You can see and remove the apps you have given access to at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

The Outlook add-in. It carries a key you make on the Install page, which Outlook keeps in its own settings and of which we keep only a one-way hash. When you start a new email, the add-in sends that key to fetch your signature and puts the signature into the email. It reads nothing from your mailbox and sends nothing from it to us. Making a new key stops the old one working.

Cookies

The only cookies we set are the ones that keep you signed in, one that lasts a few minutes while Google or Microsoft sends you back to us, and one that remembers for 30 days which way you last signed in, so the log in page can point at it. That last one never leaves your browser except to us. They are necessary for the service to work at all, and there are no advertising cookies and no cookies that follow you anywhere.

Counting visits to this website

We count page views on our own marketing pages using Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookie, reads nothing already stored on your device and builds no profile: what it records is that a page was viewed, from which country, and which page sent you there. None of it identifies you, and none of it is joined to your account.

Because it sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device, we are not required to ask your permission for it. We ask anyway, the first time you visit, and the answer does something: choosingEssential only stops the counter loading at all for the rest of your visits. That choice is remembered in your browser's own storage rather than in a cookie, it is never sent to us, and clearing your browsing data resets it.

This is about visits to this website, and is separate from the clicks on your signature's links, which are described above and which you can switch off on your dashboard.

Who processes data for us

• Google and Microsoft sign you in, if you choose to use them, and Google's script runs Install to Gmail.
• Neon hosts our Postgres database, in its London (eu-west-2) region.
• Cloudflare runs the site, stores your uploaded images, and checks the sign-in form for bots with Turnstile.
• Resend sends the email we send you about your account, including sign-in codes.
• Stripe takes payments if you subscribe. Your card details go to Stripe and never reach us.

Some of these providers operate outside the United Kingdom. Where data leaves the UK it is covered by the safeguards those providers offer under UK data protection law, such as standard contractual clauses.

Why we are allowed to hold it

We hold your account, your signature and your images to provide the service you asked for, which is a contract with you. We count clicks and banner loads on the basis of our legitimate interest in giving you figures about your own signature, kept deliberately narrow: counts, never a record of an individual reader.

How long we keep it

Your account and its content stay while your account exists. Click and load counts are kept as ongoing totals for your dashboard and analytics. Delete your account and all of it goes, as described below.

Deleting your account

Settings has a delete button that really deletes: your uploaded images are removed from storage and purged from the cache, every row that belongs to you is removed from the database, and then the login itself is removed, in that order. Nothing of yours is kept behind, except that the database keeps six hours of history so it can be restored after a fault, and your rows leave that history once the deletion is six hours old. An installed signature will stop loading its images once they are gone.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we use it. Write to hello@animatedsignature.com and we will answer within a month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Children

The service is for working adults and is not intended for anyone under 16.

Changes

If this policy changes we will update this page and the date at the top of it. A change that affects how your data is used will be sent to you by email as well.