Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to Swagzeum, operated by Aiuaina LLC, a California limited liability company ("Swagzeum," "we," "our," or "us"). Swagzeum is a digital museum and community archive celebrating the material culture of the tech industry — preserving the stories, memories, and human narratives behind branded merchandise from the companies and movements that shaped Silicon Valley.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect your personal information when you visit swagzeum.com (the "Site") and use our services. It also describes your rights and how to exercise them.

This policy is a notice: it tells you what we do with your information. It is not a contract, and agreeing to our Terms of Use does not mean you have consented to anything in it. Where we need your consent — for analytics where the law requires it, and for launch updates and newsletters if you do not have an account — we ask for it separately.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Information You Provide Directly

We collect information you voluntarily give us, including:

• Account registration: Display name, email address, and password when you create an account.
• Profile information: Your display name, profile photo, bio, LinkedIn profile URL, and whether your profile is public — all optional, and all editable or removable at any time from your profile page.
• Contributions: Item submissions, descriptions, tags, photos, and stories you contribute to the archive, and recollections you add to any piece — and, for a video piece, the link to a video published on YouTube. When you add a video, our server (not your browser) asks YouTube for the video's title and poster image.
• Communications: Messages you send us via contact forms, support requests, or email.
• Launch updates and newsletters: If you sign up for updates on the Site, we keep your email address, your subscription status, and records of when you confirmed and unsubscribed, and we send updates only after you confirm. If you have an account, you receive these updates automatically, without signing up separately. Every update has an unsubscribe link. Once you unsubscribe, we keep a record of it so that you are not added again, including automatically. If you delete your account, we stop sending you the updates you were receiving because you had one. We use Resend to deliver these emails on our behalf.
• Photos and their metadata: Photos you upload may contain information beyond the image itself, including where and when they were taken. We automatically remove location data — in your browser for most photos, and on our servers for iPhone photos and for photos too large to shrink in your browser, which we convert there. For a photo we convert, the original reaches our servers with its location still in it; it is never shown on the Site, and we delete it once it has been converted, or within two days if it was left behind (for example, a photo you removed from the form before sending). If we cannot read a photo well enough to check it, we refuse the upload and tell you why rather than publishing it unchecked. One exception we cannot cover: some phones attach a short video to a photo (a "live" or "motion" photo), and we do not alter that attachment, because removing it would destroy the video. That attachment may still carry information about where it was taken.
• Embedded videos: Some pieces are videos hosted on YouTube. We store a poster image of the video ourselves and show the video through YouTube's player only after you press play; until then, nothing about your visit is sent to YouTube. When you press play, YouTube (Google) receives the information a video view ordinarily involves — such as your IP address, device details, and what you watch — under the Google Privacy Policy. We use YouTube's privacy-enhanced player, which limits the cookies YouTube sets before playback.
• Contribution notifications: If you have an account, we email you about your own contributions — for example, when swag you added is published, when a curator changes something on your swag and you have a set time to review it, or when a curator removes a recollection you wrote, or asks you to change one, or answers your appeal. When someone adds a recollection to swag you contributed, we may include it in that same email. If you follow a company or a contributor, we may include swag they add in that same email; you can stop by unfollowing or by turning the emails off. You can turn these emails off at any time in your account settings, or from the unsubscribe link in any of them. We use Resend to deliver them on our behalf, and we keep a record of what we sent and whether it arrived — including if your mail provider rejected it or you marked it as spam — so that we stop writing to an address that is not working.

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

When you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain technical information, including:

• Device and browser information: IP address, browser type and version, operating system, and device identifiers.
• Approximate location: City, region, and country, estimated from your IP address. We never ask your device for its location, and we do not ask you to enter one. Location information stored inside a photo you upload is covered in Section 2.1.
• Usage data: Pages visited, time spent on pages, links clicked, referring URLs, and navigation paths.
• Your viewing history, if you have an account: When you are signed in and open an item's page, we record which item it was and when you opened it. We use it for two things: showing you your own Recently Viewed list, and moving stories you have already opened further down the Reading Room so that unread ones come first. It is stored against your account, and the Site shows it only to you — no page shows it to other members or to our curators. This is a feature of your account rather than analytics. It is separate from Section 7, it never reaches our analytics provider, and it is not affected by your analytics choice. If analytics is active, your visits to item pages are also recorded there as page views, the same as visits to any other page — that is part of analytics (Section 7), not of this list.
• Cookies and similar technologies: We use cookies and browser local storage to operate the Site, remember your preferences, and understand how visitors use the Site. See Section 7 for more detail.
• Analytics details: Where analytics is active (see Section 7), we also collect technical details about your device — such as screen and window size, processor and memory characteristics, language, and time zone — together with the version of the Site you are running. This helps us understand which devices to support and which release a problem came from.

2.3 Signing In Through Other Services

We do not currently offer sign-in through third-party services, and we do not receive information about you from them. If we add such an option in future, we would receive only what that service makes available based on your privacy settings with them, and we would update this policy before doing so.

2.4 Information About Other People

Contributions can include information about people other than the member who added them — a colleague named in a story, or someone who appears in a photo. If that is you, you can ask us about it without an account; see Section 6.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Operate and improve the Site — display the archive, enable contributions, and maintain the community.
• Manage your account — create and authenticate your account and remember your preferences.
• Communicate with you — respond to inquiries, send transactional emails (e.g., account confirmations and notices about your contributions), and send launch updates and newsletters — automatically if you have an account, and otherwise only if you sign up and confirm. You can unsubscribe from any of them at any time.
• Optional writing help — if you press one of the writing-help buttons (Tidy up, Improve my story, or Improve my bio), the text you are editing is sent to an AI service to suggest a revised version. This happens only when you press one of them — never as you type and never when you save — and the suggestion is yours to accept or discard. The service is OpenAI, reached through Lovable's AI gateway. OpenAI states that data sent to its API is not used to train or improve its models.
• Analyze usage — understand how visitors engage with the Site so we can improve it.
• Keep the archive safe — review content you submit for material that violates our Terms before it is published: by our curators, and automatically for your profile details, recollections, and Suggestion Box notes (see Section 4). Recollections are the exception to review by a curator before publication: depending on how the Site is set, a curator reads them either before they appear or after.
• Ensure security — detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, abuse, or technical issues.
• Comply with legal obligations — meet applicable legal requirements and enforce our terms.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties.

4. How We Share Your Information

We may share your information in the following limited circumstances:

• Service providers: We share data with trusted vendors who help us operate the Site. These currently include Supabase (database and authentication), Cloudflare (hosting and delivery), Lovable (hosting, deployment, and the AI gateway), Resend (email delivery), Google (Google Workspace, which holds our email inboxes, so messages you send to any of our addresses are stored there), Mixpanel (analytics), and OpenAI (automated content moderation and the optional writing help). We use them to process data on our behalf, under their terms with us, which include confidentiality obligations.
• Automated content moderation: Your profile details — display name, bio, and profile photo — recollections you add to a piece, and notes you leave in the Suggestion Box are sent to OpenAI's moderation service to be checked automatically against our Terms before they appear. OpenAI processes this content on our behalf solely to perform that check and returns only a result to us. Swag you add — its descriptions, stories, captions, and photos — is reviewed by our curators and is not sent to this service.
• Public contributions: Content you submit to the archive — such as item descriptions, photos, and stories — is publicly visible and may be indexed by search engines. Do not include sensitive personal information in your contributions. Recollections are public, signed with your display name, and may be indexed by search engines. Your profile photo appears beside them only while your profile is public.
• YouTube: Video pieces play through YouTube's embedded player. When you press play, YouTube (Google) receives the information a video view ordinarily involves, as described in "Embedded videos" above. YouTube is not our service provider; it handles that information under the Google Privacy Policy and the YouTube Terms of Service.
• Your name on your swag: Swag you add is credited to your display name, which appears on the swag and in lists of the museum's contributors. That credit stays even if you make your profile private. A private profile hides your profile photo, your bio, and your LinkedIn link from everyone but you. Your profile page and the swag on it stay visible without them, and your name stays on the swag you added. To take your name off your swag, see Section 5.
• Legal requirements: We may disclose information if required by law, court order, or government authority, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Swagzeum, our users, or the public.
• Business transfers: If Swagzeum is acquired, merged, or its assets transferred, your information may be part of that transaction. We will notify you before your information becomes subject to a materially different privacy policy.

5. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide our services.

Deleting your account. You can delete your account from your Account page, and you choose what happens to the swag you added:

• Keep my swag, remove my name: your swag stays in the museum, and your name and email address are removed from it straight away, so it is no longer credited to you. If you cancel during the waiting period, the credit comes back.
• Delete my swag too: your swag comes off the public site straight away, and is deleted for good at the end of the waiting period below.

Either way, your account and the personal information stored with it are deleted after a waiting period, which your Account page shows you when you begin. You can cancel during it. We keep a short internal record that the account existed and was deleted, so that it cannot be confused with a new one. Deleting your account does not remove activity already sent to our analytics provider (see Section 7), or a newsletter sign-up you made yourself with your email address, which you can end from the unsubscribe link in any newsletter. We may also keep information we are required to retain for legal, tax, or compliance purposes, and copies in our database provider's routine backups expire on that provider's schedule rather than straight away.

Anonymizing removes your name, not your words or your photos. If a story or a photo you added identifies you or somebody else, edit it before you delete your account, choose "Delete my swag too," or ask us to remove it.

Recollections. If you edit a recollection, we keep its earlier wording as part of the record until you delete the recollection or your account, or a curator erases its words. When you delete a recollection yourself, its words and every earlier wording are deleted at once. If a curator removes one of your recollections, we keep it, with the reason and any appeal, as a record of that decision, and you cannot delete it yourself; a curator may erase the words themselves while keeping the record. When you delete your account:

• Keep my swag, remove my name: your recollections stay in the museum, unsigned — they read "A former member" from the moment you ask, and your name comes back if you cancel. Their earlier wordings are deleted with your account.
• Delete my swag too: your recollections come off the public site straight away, and are deleted for good at the end of the waiting period, as your swag is, together with your own words in any appeal. The record that a recollection was removed, with the curator's reason, is kept without your words.

Your viewing history is kept for as long as your account exists, and is deleted when you delete your account. We do not expire it on a schedule: an entry that aged out would make a story you had already read look unread again.

If you would like specific contributions removed, with or without deleting your account, contact us at privacy@swagzeum.com.

6. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you are located, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction: Request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Deletion: Request that we delete your personal information, subject to certain exceptions.
• Portability: Request your data in a machine-readable format.
• Opt-out of marketing: Unsubscribe from marketing emails at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email or by contacting us.
• Restriction: Request that we restrict processing of your data in certain circumstances.

California Residents (CCPA/CPRA): You have the right to know what personal information we collect and how it is used, request deletion, opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell your data), and be free from discrimination for exercising your rights. You may also request access to personal information we have collected beyond the prior 12 months if we retain it longer. We honor the Global Privacy Control signal: a browser sending it is asked before any analytics runs (see Section 7).

EU/UK Residents (GDPR): You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, or object to processing of your personal information, and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. Our legal bases for processing include legitimate interests (operating and improving the Site), contract performance (managing your account), and consent (marketing communications, and analytics where consent is required — see Section 7).

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@swagzeum.com. Before we act, we confirm the request comes from you — usually by replying to the email address on your account, so please write from that address if you can. If we cannot confirm it that way, we may ask for a little more, and we use it only to confirm the request. We will respond within a reasonable period.

If you appear in something on the Site. You do not need an account to ask us about content that shows you, names you, or is about you — for example, a photo you appear in, or a story that mentions you. Email privacy@swagzeum.com with a link to the page and what you would like changed. Every swag page says how to reach us.

7. Cookies, Local Storage, and Analytics

What we use these for

• Keeping you signed in and remembering your preferences.
• Understanding how the Site is used, so we can improve it.

Our analytics provider

We use Mixpanel to measure how the Site is used. Where analytics is active, Mixpanel receives a randomly generated identifier for your browser, the pages you view, your approximate location derived from your IP address, and technical details about your device such as browser, operating system, screen size, language, and time zone.

Mixpanel also receives the actions you take on the Site, such as adding a piece of swag, leaving a note in the Suggestion Box, or using the writing help, along with simple facts about them, such as how many photos you added, whether you included a story, and how many of your photos carried location data. It never receives what you wrote or uploaded: not your story, your notes, your photos, or the names of your swag.

If you have an account, Mixpanel also receives your account's internal identifier and your public display name, so that we can understand how signed-in members use the Site. We do not send your email address to Mixpanel. Your email address stays in our own systems.

Your choice

If you visit from Europe (the EU, EEA, United Kingdom, or Switzerland), we ask you before any analytics information is stored on your device. We treat you as visiting from Europe if either your connection's country or your device's time zone points there. Nothing analytics-related is stored or collected until you choose "Allow."

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it the same way, wherever you are. We ask before any analytics information is stored on your device, and nothing is collected until you choose "Allow." Some browsers, such as Brave and DuckDuckGo, send this signal automatically; others let you turn it on.

If you choose "No thanks," we stop, remove the analytics information already stored on your device, and delete the analytics profile linked to your account — straight away if you are signed in, or the next time you sign in on that browser. Activity that was already sent to Mixpanel before you declined stays there, but nothing more is added, and it never included your email address.

Declining analytics does not switch off your own account's features. If you are signed in, we still record which items you open, because that is what powers your Recently Viewed list and moves stories you have already opened further down the Reading Room — see Section 2.2. That record stays in our own systems, is shown only to you, and is never sent to our analytics provider.

If you visit from elsewhere and your browser does not send Global Privacy Control, analytics is active by default, as described in this policy.

We remember your answer, and when we change our analytics, we ask again. Your answer is stored on your device together with the date you gave it and the version of our analytics it applies to. If we change our analytics in a way that matters — for example, a new provider or a new kind of information — we ask again anyone who agreed to an earlier version where we ask first, and nothing new is collected from them until they answer. A "No thanks" always stands: we never ask you again, or turn analytics back on, because we changed something.

Changing your mind, at any time and from anywhere

Every page has an Analytics Settings link in the footer. It reopens the choice, whichever region you are in and whichever way you answered before. You can also control cookies through your browser settings, though note that browser cookie controls may not clear local storage, and disabling them may affect how the Site works.

What we do not do

We do not use cookies for cross-site behavioral advertising, we do not run advertising networks, and we do not record your screen or replay your session.

Embedded videos

A video piece shows our own copy of its poster until you press play. Once you do, YouTube's player loads, and YouTube may store its own cookies or similar information on your device under the Google Privacy Policy — not ours, and not covered by the analytics choice above. If you never press play, YouTube stores nothing from our pages. See "Embedded videos" in Section 2.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

Some browsers transmit a "Do Not Track" signal. There is no industry consensus on how to interpret these signals, and we do not currently respond to them. We do respond to Global Privacy Control: as described above, a browser sending it is asked before any analytics runs. Separately from any browser signal, you can turn analytics off at any time using the Analytics Settings link in our footer.

8. Where Your Information Is Processed

Swagzeum is operated from the United States, and the service providers listed in Section 4 process information in the United States.

If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, this means your information is transferred outside your home country to a jurisdiction whose data protection laws differ from your own. We rely on the safeguards offered by our service providers for these transfers, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable. You can ask us at privacy@swagzeum.com which safeguards apply to a particular provider.

You can avoid analytics-related transfers entirely by declining analytics, as described in Section 7.

9. Children's and Minors' Privacy

Swagzeum is intended for adults. Our Terms of Use require account holders to be at least 18 years old, the Site is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 — including, in particular, children under 13.

If you believe someone under 18 has provided us personal information, please contact us at privacy@swagzeum.com and we will delete it promptly.

10. Security

We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, loss, or disclosure. However, no system is perfectly secure. You are responsible for keeping your account credentials confidential.

11. Third-Party Links

The Site may link to third-party websites or embed third-party content. This policy does not apply to those sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Whenever we do, we post the updated policy on this page with a revised Last Updated date. If the change affects what we collect or how we use it, we also set a new Effective Date. When a change is substantial and you have an account, we also show you a notice summarizing it the next time you visit the Site signed in. If you keep using the Site after a change, the updated policy describes how we handle your information from then on. Where a change needs your consent, we ask for it rather than assume it.

13. Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please contact us:

Aiuaina LLC (operator of Swagzeum)
Email: privacy@swagzeum.com