Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Hero & Ink (the "Service") is operated by Z Pixel Labs, LLC ("we," "us," or "our"), a U.S. limited liability company located at 2810 N Church St STE 88974, Wilmington, DE 19802. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect about you when you use heroandink.com or purchase from us, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

2. What we collect

We collect the following categories of personal information:

Contact information.

Your email address when you place an order or contact us.

Order details.

The recipient's name, relationship, city, occasion, and any character / story details you provide.

Photos.

Photos of the recipient (and optionally other supporting characters) that you upload to build the comic.

Payment information.

Processed entirely by our payment processor (Stripe). We do not store your full card number or CVV; we receive a confirmation token and the last four digits of the card for reference.

Technical data.

IP address, browser type, device information, referring URL, and pages visited - used for analytics, fraud prevention, and rate limiting.

Cookies and similar.

See the Cookies section below.

3. How we use it

We use the information we collect to:

• Produce and deliver the comic book you ordered.
• Send you transactional emails: order confirmation, status updates, delivery notification, revision communications.
• Process payments and prevent fraud.
• Respond to support requests, feedback, and refund inquiries.
• Maintain the security and integrity of the Service (logging, rate limiting, abuse prevention).
• Comply with legal obligations and respond to lawful requests from authorities.
• Improve our pipeline and product quality (using aggregate or anonymized data - never your specific photos for training third-party models).

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your photos to train AI models, ours or any third party's, without your explicit consent.

4. Photo retention

Photos you upload are stored in private cloud storage in the United States. After your comic is delivered, we retain your photos for up to 90 days to support customer service requests (revisions, re-deliveries, refunds). After 90 days, original uploaded photos are automatically deleted from our active systems. Backup copies may persist in encrypted system backups for an additional 30 days before being purged.

You may request earlier deletion of your photos at any time by emailing us at support@heroandink.com. Once your photos are deleted we may no longer be able to fulfill revision requests for that order.

5. Service providers we share data with

We share your data only with third-party service providers necessary to operate the Service:

Stripe

payment processing. Receives your email, billing details, and payment information.

Cloud database & storage provider

hosts order records and uploaded photos in private cloud storage in the United States.

Email delivery provider

sends transactional email (order confirmations, status updates).

AI story-generation provider

receives anonymized story-prompt data (recipient first name, city, theme, story preferences). Does NOT receive your uploaded photos or payment information.

AI illustration provider

receives photo references and rendering prompts to produce the comic art, under its own data retention and usage policy.

Print-on-demand partner

for printed editions only. Receives the final PDF and shipping address. Does NOT receive your original uploaded photos.

Website hosting provider

serves the website.

Error monitoring service

collects technical error data. Does NOT receive your uploaded photos.

Advertising & measurement partners

receive website interaction and purchase-event data (pages viewed, checkout started, purchase completed, order identifier, order value, currency) to measure advertising performance and attribution. Do NOT receive your uploaded photos, story details, names you enter, or any other form content.

Each provider operates under its own privacy policy. We require all providers to handle data only for the purposes we direct and to maintain commercially reasonable security measures.

6. Cookies and analytics

We use essential cookies to run the site, such as keeping your session and your order draft between pages.

With your consent, we also use analytics and advertising measurement cookies, including the Meta pixel, to understand how the site is used and whether our own ads bring people who order. We never share your photos, story details or order contents with advertising services, and we do not sell tracking data. You can decline these cookies in the banner and nothing is loaded.

7. Your rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Delete your data, subject to legal retention requirements.
• Receive a copy of your data in a portable format.
• Object to or restrict certain processing.
• Withdraw consent where consent is the legal basis.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@heroandink.com. We will respond within 30 days. If you are a resident of California or the European Union/UK, you have additional rights under the CCPA / GDPR.

8. Children

Our Service is intended for users 18 years and older. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected such information, we will delete it promptly. A parent or guardian may submit photos of a child recipient for the purpose of creating a comic gift for them.

9. International users

Our service is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred to and processed in the U.S. By using the Service, you consent to this transfer.

10. Security

We implement commercially reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data, including encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, access controls, and secure key management. No system is perfectly secure; we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we will notify you and applicable authorities of any breach affecting your personal information as required by law.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be announced on the Site with a revised effective date.

12. Contact

For data requests or complaints, write to support@heroandink.com; for general questions, hello@heroandink.com - or write to Z Pixel Labs, LLC, 2810 N Church St STE 88974, Wilmington, DE 19802.