Privacy policy

Who is responsible

WallpaperLIFT is run from Québec, Canada. To reach the person in charge of the protection of personal information, use our contact form.

Your account

When you sign up and use your account, we keep:

your username and your name, which are public: they credit your wallpapers and comments and name your artist page;
your email address, to log you in and to write to you; it’s never shown to anyone;
your password, stored only as a hash we can’t read back, and, if you turn on two-factor authentication, its secret and recovery codes, encrypted;
your preferences: your language, your theme, your time zone, the licence your new wallpapers start with, and the settings below;
your last visit: the time you last used the site, recorded at most once an hour. Your artist page shows it to the day (never the time) unless you turn off “Show my last visit”;
when you joined: your artist page shows it (“Artist since”).

Signing in with Google

You can sign up and log in with Google (“Continue with Google”) instead of a password, or connect a Google account to your WallpaperLIFT account in Settings › Connected accounts, even one with another email address. Google is the only provider today. It’s optional: you can always use your email address and a password.

What we receive from Google when you continue with it:

your email address and whether Google says it’s yours (an address Google hasn’t confirmed is never used to create an account);
your name;
Google’s own account ID for you.

What we keep: Google’s account ID for you and your email address at Google as it was the last time you signed in with it, connected it or confirmed with it, so the next sign-in finds your account. Your name is used only when you sign up, to fill in the name of your new account; while you finish signing up, what Google gave us waits, encrypted, in your session, until you finish or soon after the session expires. We never keep Google’s tokens, your Google photo or your contacts, and we never post anything to your Google account.

Why: to sign you in, and to keep the link between your Google account and your WallpaperLIFT account. We never use it to match you by email address: an account can only be entered through its own link or its own password.

How long: the link lasts as long as your account. When you delete your account (Delete account) it’s hidden with it, so signing in with Google can offer to recover it; when your account is deleted permanently, the link is erased. To erase it sooner, disconnect Google in Settings › Connected accounts, as long as your account keeps another way in (a password, or another connected account); if you have questions, write to us through our contact form. Google’s own handling of your data is described in Google’s privacy policy.

WallpaperLIFT apps

WallpaperLIFT’s apps (for Windows and for Android) sign you in through this website: the app opens WallpaperLIFT, you log in here and choose “Allow”, and the app never sees your password or your email address; it only gets your name, your username, your language and your time zone. From then on it acts as you through our API, only for what you can do yourself on the website.

What we keep for each device where you’ve signed in to an app:

which app it is (WallpaperLIFT for Windows or for Android);
the device’s name, as the app sends it (a computer sends its name, a phone sends its model name), cleaned up; an app may send none;
when the app signed in, when it was last used (each time it renews its access, so never more than about an hour off while you use it), when its access was last renewed, and when it was signed out;
the tokens that let the app act as you, and nothing more: an access token lasts 60 minutes, a refresh token one year, renewed each time the app renews its access, and the code the app trades for its first tokens lasts 5 minutes.

The apps have no tracking, no analytics, no ads and no crash reporting. To limit abuse, we count the apps’ requests by the minute: yours, all your devices together, or, for a request with no valid sign-in, its IP address, which we only ever keep as a hash (see “IP addresses and cookies”), never as the address itself.

An app’s settings, and the wallpapers it downloads, stay on your phone or computer. Your favorites, ratings, collections and follows live on the website, under the same account, so the rest of this policy applies to them.

When an app checks whether a new version is out, it only asks our CDN (cdn.wallpaperlift.com) for a file: it sends nothing about you, no token and no identifier, only the request itself.

If you choose, in an app, where your wallpaper of the day comes from (the site’s pick, your favorites, one of your collections or the favorites of the artists you follow), or skip one, we keep that choice and the wallpaper picked for you each day, so all your devices show the same one, and the wallpapers you skip, so they don’t come back until you undo the skip. A copy of your data lists them in wallpaper_of_the_day.json; they’re erased when your account is deleted permanently.

How long: until you sign the device out, or until the app has gone a year without being used, when its sign-in ends by itself. Once a device is signed out, its record, codes and tokens are erased about a week later, by a cleanup that runs every day. You can sign a device out any time in Settings › Signed-in apps, and an app can sign itself out. We also sign all your apps out when you log out everywhere, when you change or reset your password, and when our team suspends or bans your account.

When you delete your account (Delete account), your apps are signed out with it, and they stay signed out if you recover it. When it’s deleted permanently, each device’s record, codes and tokens are erased with it. A copy of your data (Settings › Privacy) lists each device in signed_in_apps.json, never its tokens.

Your artist profile

Every field of your artist profile is optional (Artist profile settings):

your hometown, occupation, gender, birthdate and “about me”: what you fill in shows on your artist page (your birthdate as its month and year, your gender unless you leave it undefined); empty a field to hide it;
your website and your social links (Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn): public, on your artist page and with each of your wallpapers, on its page and in listings, once you’ve published your first wallpaper.

An artist imported from the InterfaceLIFT archive has no account: their artist page shows their InterfaceLIFT name and the website their InterfaceLIFT profile listed.

What you do on WallpaperLIFT

Who you follow (artists and tags): how many artists and tags you follow, and how many artists follow you, are public. The list of who you follow is public only if you turn on “Show who I follow”; whatever that setting, an artist you follow sees you among their followers.
Your favorite wallpapers: their count is public, and so is the list, unless you turn off “Show my favorite wallpapers”.
Your ratings: only each wallpaper’s average and number of ratings are public, never who rated it.
Your comments: public, with your name, on the wallpaper’s page. When you edit one, we keep the earlier text for our moderators; when you delete one, it’s hidden, not erased, and kept for moderation. Reports you send about a comment are seen by our moderators only.
Messages you send to an artist: the artist gets your name and email address so they can reply to you; we keep the message.
Messages you send us through our contact form: your name, email address and message, seen only by our team, to answer you.
Moderation: if our team suspends or bans your account, the reason, which only our team sees; every action our team takes (on an account, a wallpaper, a comment) is recorded in a log, which names who it was about.

Wallpapers you submit

The file you upload is kept privately: it’s never offered for download. The downloads we make from it carry no metadata.
Its camera data (EXIF) is read into the wallpaper’s photo details: the camera, the lens, the settings and, if the photo has one, the location where it was taken. The wallpaper’s page shows the location unless you turn it off for that wallpaper; the coordinates stay stored either way.
We record which version of the Submission licence you accepted, and when.

Removal requests

When you ask for a wallpaper’s removal (Copyright & takedown), we keep your name, your email address, what you are to the wallpaper, your reason and the link you give. Only our team sees them, and our emails never repeat them. A request you don’t confirm is deleted after 7 days; a confirmed one is kept as the record of our decision.

IP addresses and cookies

IP addresses: we use yours to count each download once an hour and to limit abuse (too many logins, sign-ups, messages, requests or searches). We only ever keep it as a hash (scrambled one way), never the address itself, with two exceptions: your session’s record, below; and the addresses our team adds to the list of who may see the site before it opens, kept as they are (with a label, the address itself unless we name it) until we remove them, and in our team’s action log. With a message or a removal request we keep only that hash, to handle abuse.
Failed logins: to stop password guessing, we count them for a minute under the email address or username you typed and your IP address, both hashed.
Cloudflare Turnstile, which protects our forms from spam, receives your IP address when it checks a form.
These counters are deleted within about two hours.
Your session: while you browse, a record tied to your session cookie holds your IP address and your browser’s name, to keep you logged in and protect the forms. It’s deleted soon after the session expires.
Emails: if sending one of our emails to you fails, a copy of it, with your address, is kept so we can look into it.
Essential cookies, set without asking: your session and its protection against forged forms; “Remember me”, if you tick it when you log in; your language, your time zone and your theme; your cookie choice (kept 12 months); Cloudflare Turnstile’s, on the forms it protects from spam; and Cloudflare’s own, which its network in front of the site sets to protect it from bots.
Google Analytics: its cookies are set only if you accept them in the cookie bar. They help us see which wallpapers people like, so we can improve what we publish. Change your choice any time with “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page.

What others can see

In short, on your artist page and with your wallpapers and comments: your username and name, what you filled in your artist profile, your website and social links once you’ve published a wallpaper, when you joined, your last visit (unless you turn it off), your following counts (artists and tags) and follower count, your favorites’ count and list (unless you turn it off), who you follow (only if you turn it on; the artists you follow always see you among their followers), and your wallpapers with their photo details. Your email address, your ratings, your messages and your requests are never public.

Why we use it

to run your account, log you in and keep it secure;
to show your artist page and credit your wallpapers and comments;
to let you follow, favorite, rate, comment and send messages;
to publish your submissions and review removal requests;
to send you the emails your account and your requests need;
to prevent spam and abuse, and to moderate the site;
to count downloads and, only if you accept, measure how the site is used.

We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t use it for advertising.

Who else handles it

We use a few service providers, who handle personal information only to provide their service to us:

DigitalOcean: the servers that run the site and its database;
Amazon Web Services: storing and delivering the wallpapers, and sending our emails;
Cloudflare: our domain, the network in front of the site, and Turnstile’s spam protection;
Google: Google Analytics, only if you accept its cookies; and, if you choose “Continue with Google”, signing you in (see Signing in with Google).

Some of them store information outside Québec and Canada, for example in the United States.

How long we keep it

Your account: as long as it exists. When you delete it (Delete account), it’s hidden, not erased: your artist page disappears and we keep it so you can recover it, until you ask us to delete it permanently. Then we erase your email address, name, password, profile, links, settings, favorites, ratings and follows, your apps’ sign-ins and their tokens, your last visit, and the name and email address in your messages; your username is released.
What a permanent deletion keeps, on purpose: your comments’ text and their earlier versions, credited “Artist removed”, kept for moderation; your messages’ text, kept for moderation; your removal requests, with the name and email address in them, and our team’s action log (records of the rights and moderation decisions); and your wallpapers, unless you ask us to take them down too, credited “Artist removed”, without their location shown, their originals keeping their camera data. An InterfaceLIFT artist’s username stays reserved, so the archive never brings it back.
Removal requests: 7 days if you don’t confirm them; a confirmed one is kept as the record of our decision.
Connected accounts (Google): as long as your account exists, or until you disconnect it; hidden with your account, erased when it’s deleted permanently.
Messages: as long as we need them to answer and to handle abuse; ask us if you want yours deleted.
A copy of your data you ask for: its file, 7 days, then it’s deleted; the record that you asked for it, as long as your account exists.
Counters for downloads, logins and limits, which hold your IP address only hashed: about two hours at most. Sessions, whose record holds your IP address: until soon after they expire. An address on the list of who may see the site before it opens: until our team removes it; our team’s action log keeps the record of adding and removing it.

Your rights

You can ask us, at any time:

to access the personal information we hold about you, and to get a copy of it: download it yourself (Settings › Privacy), or ask us;
to correct it: you can change most of it yourself in your account settings;
to delete your account: do it yourself (Delete account); it’s hidden and can be recovered;
to delete your account permanently: what that erases, and the little it keeps, is under “How long we keep it”;
to withdraw a consent: your cookie choice, or the settings that make things public.

Write to us through our contact form. We answer within 30 days. If you aren’t satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (opens in a new tab) or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (opens in a new tab).

Security

Passwords are hashed, two-factor authentication is available, and the original files you upload are stored privately. Only our team can see what isn’t public.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date at the top of this page says when it last changed.

Contact

For any question or request about your personal information, write to the person in charge of the protection of personal information through our contact form.