Privacy Policy
This policy explains what Vasari collects when you use the Vasari streaming art service, what we do with it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It replaces our previous privacy policy of 12 August 2023 in full.
1. Who we are
Vasari is operated by Filetrack Inc., a Delaware corporation trading as Vasari, at 11870 Santa Monica Blvd Suite 106-660, Los Angeles, CA 90025. In this policy “Vasari”, “we” and “us” mean Filetrack Inc., and we are the controller of the personal information described here.
Questions, requests and complaints go to support@vasari.art. A real person reads that address.
2. What this policy covers
The Vasari streaming art service: the web app at vasari.art, the Vasari apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Android phones and tablets, Android TV, Roku, Samsung and LG televisions, the Vasari Art Stick, and the ArtCapture app. It covers your account, the art you upload, the screens you send it to, and your membership if you have one.
The Vasari Codex has its own policy. The research service at codex.vasari.art collects different things and is described at codex.vasari.art/legal/privacy. One Vasari account works across both, so both are worth reading if you use both.
This policy does not cover other companies' products. Where Vasari runs inside someone else's television platform or app store, that company has its own policy for what it collects about your use of their device.
3. The short version
The detail is below, but in summary:
- An account needs an email address. Your password is stored as a salted, repeatedly hashed value that we cannot reverse, and never in a form anyone here can read.
- Card numbers never reach us. They go to Stripe, PayPal or Apple. We keep the last four digits and the processor's reference so we can show you which card is on file.
- We run no advertising and no ad networks, and we do not track you across other apps or websites. The Apple builds deliberately use the version of Google's analytics that has no advertising identifier at all.
- We keep a record of each screen you sign in on, because sending art to a television requires knowing which television.
- On older Android versions the app asks for location permission. That is Android's requirement for finding an Art Stick over Bluetooth. The app never reads your location.
- You can delete your account yourself, and we email you when it is done.
- We do not sell personal information.
4. Information you give us
Your account
Registering needs an email address. You can add a name, a display handle, an avatar and a language preference, and you can change or remove them whenever you like. A phone number is optional and only needed if you turn on two-factor sign-in or use the text-message features; we do not ask for one otherwise.
Your password is never stored as you typed it. It is stored as a salted PBKDF2-SHA256 hash at 600,000 iterations, which means we cannot recover it, tell you what it is, or hand it to anyone else. If you have two-factor sign-in on, we store the secret that makes the codes and the phone number the codes go to.
The art you upload
If you upload work, we store the image or video file and what you tell us about it: title, artist, year, medium, dimensions, description, provenance, credit line and price where you provide them. Files are stored on Amazon S3 in the United States. You decide what is private, what appears on a page, and what is sent to a screen.
Sending art to other people
When you send or share work with someone, we store the address you sent it to and the record of what was sent, so that delivery works and so both of you can see the history. We do not use an address you supplied for that purpose to market anything to that person.
Payment
Payments are handled by Stripe, PayPal, Apple (for purchases made inside an Apple app) or your television platform's own billing, depending on how you signed up. Card details are entered into their systems, not ours. We hold no card numbers and no security codes. What we keep is the last four digits, the type of card, the processor's reference for you, and the record of what you bought and when, which tax and accounting rules require us to keep.
When you contact us
If you write to support, use the contact form on this site, or ask us for help, we keep the message and the name, email address and phone number you give us with it.
5. Information we collect automatically
Your devices
Vasari exists to put art on screens, and a screen has to be identifiable for that to work. Each phone, tablet, computer or television you sign in on gets a device record holding: an identifier for the device, the platform and app version, the browser or app user agent, the last IP address it connected from, the name you gave the display, its time zone, and what it is currently showing, including the playlist and the position within it. The last of those is what lets a television resume where it left off, and what lets you change what a screen is showing from your phone.
Use of the service
We log access to the service: which page or action, when, the IP address and the browser. We also record streaming sessions, which is a periodic signal from a playing screen saying that it is still playing. This is what tells us a display is alive, and it is how we count how much the service is used.
Cookies
The web app sets a session cookie to keep you signed in, a cookie recording that you acknowledged our cookie notice, and cookies that remember how you set the viewer: whether music or ambient sound is on, whether audio announcements are on, and how long each work stays on screen. There are no advertising cookies, because there is no advertising.
App diagnostics
The mobile and television apps use Google's Firebase to report a small set of technical events: that the app was opened for the first time, that the display component crashed and had to be rebuilt, and that a link could not be opened. This exists so that a television failing in someone's living room is something we can find and fix. The Apple builds use the variant of Firebase that has no advertising identifier, and no build of any Vasari app contains an advertising or attribution SDK.
Notifications and text messages
If you allow notifications, the app registers a token with Apple or Google and sends it to us so we can deliver them. Turning notifications off in your device settings ends that. If you use two-factor sign-in or pair a screen by text message, we send the code through Twilio and keep a record of the message.
6. The permissions the apps ask for, and why
Permission prompts are alarming when nothing explains them, so here is the whole list:
- Bluetooth - to find and set up a Vasari Art Stick. Nothing else uses it.
- Location, on Android 11 and older only - Android itself requires location permission before an app may scan for Bluetooth devices, so the Art Stick cannot be found without it. On Android 12 and newer the platform separated the two and we ask only for Bluetooth. The app contains no code that reads your location, and no location is ever sent to us.
- Files and photos - only when you choose something to upload, and only what you choose.
- Notifications - optional, and only used for the service itself.
- Camera - in ArtCapture only, because photographing your work is what that app is for.
7. Why we use it, and our legal bases
We use the information above to run the service: to sign you in, to store your work and deliver it to the screens you choose, to take payment, to send you what you asked for, to answer you when you write to us, to keep accounts secure, and to keep the records the law requires. Where the law asks us to name a legal basis, ours are these:
- Performing our contract with you - your account, your uploads, your displays, your membership.
- Our legitimate interests - keeping accounts and screens secure, diagnosing failures, and understanding how much the service is used.
- Your consent - marketing email where consent is required, notifications, and the device permissions above. You can withdraw it at any time, and marketing messages carry a working unsubscribe link. Messages that are part of the service, such as a sign-in code or a receipt, are not marketing and do not stop.
- Legal obligation - tax and accounting records, and responding to lawful requests.
8. Who we share it with
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We share it with the companies that operate parts of the service for us, under contracts that limit them to doing what we ask:
- Stripe, PayPal and Apple - payments and subscriptions.
- Amazon Web Services - hosting, file storage and the email we send.
- Google - notification delivery and the app diagnostics described above.
- Twilio - text messages.
- Television platforms - where you subscribe through a television maker's own billing, that company tells us the subscription is active.
Beyond that we share personal information only where we are required to by law or valid legal process, where it is necessary to investigate abuse or protect someone, or as part of a merger or sale of the business, in which case this policy travels with the information.
9. Where information is processed
Vasari is based in the United States and your information is processed there, including by the providers named above.
If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, transferring your information to the United States means it goes somewhere whose laws differ from your own. Where those laws require a transfer mechanism, we rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses and the equivalent UK and Swiss provisions, together with the terms our providers offer for international transfers. We do not rely on the Privacy Shield frameworks, which have been invalid since 2020. Our previous policy said we adhered to them; that statement was out of date and this policy corrects it.
10. How long we keep it
- Your account - until you delete it, or ask us to.
- Art you uploaded - until you delete it or close your account, apart from copies in backups for a reasonable period.
- Device records - while the device is signed in. Sign a screen out and it stops being one of yours.
- Access and streaming logs - kept for a limited period for security and for counting usage.
- Payment and accounting records - as long as tax law requires.
- Support correspondence - for the life of the account and a reasonable period after, so we can answer a question about what was said.
11. Security
Everything runs over encrypted connections. Passwords are stored as salted, iterated hashes that cannot be reversed. No card number or security code is stored anywhere in our systems. Two-factor sign-in is available and we recommend it. Access to member information is limited to the people who need it to do their jobs, and the most sensitive columns are restricted further so that ordinary internal queries cannot read them at all.
None of that is a guarantee. If we ever learn of a breach affecting your information, we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires. If you think your account has been used by someone else, write to support@vasari.art and we will help.
12. Your choices and your rights
Everyone can do these things, wherever they live. You can see and change your account details in the app. You can unsubscribe from any marketing email using the link in it. You can sign a screen out from your account. And you can delete your account yourself: we delete the account and the data held against it, and email you to confirm that it is done. If you have a paid membership, cancel it first so that billing stops.
If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, you have the right to ask for a copy of your personal information, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive what you gave us in a portable form. Where we rely on consent you can withdraw it without affecting what we did before. You can complain to your national data protection authority; we would rather you told us first at support@vasari.art, but that right does not depend on our agreement.
If you are in California, you have the right to know what we collect, use, disclose and retain, to a copy of it, to correct it, to delete it, and to limit the use of sensitive personal information. The categories we collect are: identifiers (your email address, and a phone number if you provide one), commercial information (what you bought), internet and device activity (the device, log and streaming information described in section 5), and the content you choose to upload or send us. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we have not done so in the preceding twelve months. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights, and an authorised agent may act for you with proof that you asked them to.
If you are in another US state with a privacy law - Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana and the rest - you have the equivalent rights that law gives you, including the right to appeal if we turn a request down. Tell us the state you are in and we will apply its rules.
How to make a request. Write to support@vasari.art from the email address on the account, which is how we verify it is you. We answer within the time the applicable law allows, and where we need longer we will say so before that time runs out.
13. Children
Vasari is not directed to anyone under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16, and if we find that we have, we delete it. If you believe a child has given us information, write to support@vasari.art.
14. Changes to this policy
We will change this policy when the service changes, and the date at the top of this page is the version in force. Where a change materially affects you we will tell you rather than rely on you noticing.
15. How to reach us
Filetrack Inc. dba Vasari11870 Santa Monica Blvd Suite 106-660
Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-684-3968
support@vasari.art