---
title: "PixelUnion is now a B.V.: our new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy explained"
description: "PixelUnion has become a private limited company. Our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are rewritten. Here is everything that changed and why."
url: "https://pixelunion.eu/blog/2026/10/pixelunion-bv-new-terms/"
date: "2026-10-30"
author: "PixelUnion Team"
categories: ["Update"]
tags: ["PixelUnion","Terms of Service","Privacy Policy","GDPR"]
---


PixelUnion started as a small project by a few people who wanted a European home for their photos. That project has grown into a service that people across Europe trust with their Library. With that trust comes responsibility, and we think our company structure and our legal documents should reflect it.

So we are professionalizing. PixelUnion is now a private limited company, a B.V. under Dutch law. At the same time, we have rewritten our Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy. Both new documents apply from **30 October 2026** for new users.

Legal documents are long, and most people never read them. That is why we wrote this post. Below you find every change that matters, in plain language. If you prefer the source, you can read the full [Terms of Service](/legal/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](/legal/privacy-policy/).

### Why we became a B.V.

Until now, PixelUnion was run as a V.O.F., a Dutch general partnership. That structure works well for a small start. It has limits once a company grows: the partners are personally liable, and the structure is less suited for the long term.

A B.V. is a separate legal entity. It gives the company its own legal identity, a clear governance structure, and a stable basis to keep investing in the service. For you, the service stays the same. Your account, your Library, your Plan and your price do not change because of the new structure.

Our company details are now:

- **Name:** PixelUnion B.V.
- **Location:** Alkmaar, The Netherlands
- **Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK):** 42196550
- **VAT number:** NL870134656B01

### Why we rewrote our legal documents

Our previous Terms of Service and Privacy Policy were written when PixelUnion was much smaller. They were friendly and short, but they left gaps. Some topics were missing, such as family accounts, software updates and how we handle illegal content. Other topics were described in a single sentence where you deserve a clear explanation.

The new documents are longer and more formal. That is on purpose. A clear legal text protects you as much as it protects us, because it states exactly what you can expect from us.

### English is now the only official version

Until now, we offered our legal documents in ten languages. From today, the **English version is the only version that applies**. Legal texts need to be precise, and keeping ten translations exactly aligned with every update is a real risk. A small translation error in a legal document can change its meaning.

The pages in other languages now explain this and link to the English version. This blog post is available in all our languages, so you can still read a summary of the changes in your own language.

### A new archive of previous versions

From now on, we keep every previous version of our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy publicly available. For each version you can see the period in which it was in effect, from date to date. You can find them here:

- [Terms of Service archive](/legal/archive/terms-of-service/)
- [Privacy Policy archive](/legal/archive/privacy-policy/)

This means you can always check which terms applied to you at any moment in time. The translated versions of the previous documents are also in the archive.

### What changed in the Terms of Service

Below are the most important changes, grouped by topic.

**A summary that does not replace the full text.** The Terms start with a short list of key points. The new version states that this summary is for convenience only. If the summary and the full text ever differ, the full text applies.

**Your account covers everyone who uses it.** When you accept the Terms, you accept them on behalf of yourself and everyone who uses the Service under your account.

**Minimum age of 16.** You must be at least 16 years old to create an account and use the Service on your own. Under 16, you can only use PixelUnion through an account that a parent or legal guardian creates and manages. Parents and guardians are responsible for how the minor uses the Service.

**EU residents only, now in writing.** We already served only residents of the European Union. The new Terms add that we may refuse a registration, restrict access, or close an account when the user does not live in the EU.

**Family and shared accounts.** Sharing your login details stays prohibited, except where your Plan explicitly allows it, such as family accounts. If your Plan includes family or shared features, the account holder is responsible for everyone they invite or manage, and must make sure those users follow the Terms.

**Your content stays yours, with a clearly limited licence.** You keep all rights to your photos, videos and other content. To run the Service, we need permission to store and process your files. The new Terms describe exactly what that permission covers: hosting, storing, backing up, transmitting, displaying and technically processing your content. We may do this only to the extent necessary to provide, secure, maintain and improve the core functionality of the Service. Examples are generating previews and thumbnails, converting formats, enabling the sharing features you choose, and restoring data from backups. The previous Terms did not describe this at all.

**Responsibility for what you upload.** You are responsible for having the rights and permissions to upload, store and share your content. The new Terms name specific examples: content that shows other people, children, copyrighted works or private locations.

**Third-party services.** If you connect PixelUnion to services of other companies, those services follow their own terms and privacy policies.

**A new section on software.** You receive a limited, personal licence to use our apps and software. You may not copy, resell or reverse engineer the software, except where the law allows it. Software may update automatically when that is needed for security, compatibility or proper functioning. If an update materially reduces core functionality, we give reasonable notice in advance where the law requires it and where it is technically feasible. Some components are open source and follow their own licences.

**A longer payment timeline.** When a payment fails, you now have more time before restrictions apply, and you receive an extra warning before we delete anything:

| Day | Previous Terms | New Terms |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Payment fails, we notify you | Payment fails, we notify you |
| 14 / 15 | Uploads restricted (day 14) | Uploads restricted (day 15) |
| 21 / 23 | Service suspended (day 21) | Service suspended (day 23) |
| 45 | No step | We may notify you that your content is at risk of deletion |
| 62 | We may begin deleting your data | We may begin deleting your data |

During a suspension, we may still give you limited access to fix the payment, cancel your subscription, or export your content.

**Subscriptions and cancellation in writing.** The new Terms state clearly that subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period. You can cancel at any time through your account settings. After you cancel, you keep access until the end of the current billing period, and your subscription does not renew. If you delete your account, we also cancel the linked subscription from the end of the current billing period.

**Price changes with notice.** We may change our prices. If you have a subscription, we give you reasonable notice in advance.

**Refunds stay the same.** You can still request a refund for payments made within the last 14 days, through our [contact page](/legal/contact/). One-time purchases, custom services and accounts closed because of a violation are not eligible.

**A new section on termination.** You can stop using PixelUnion at any time. The new Terms list when we may suspend or close an account: a violation of the Terms, unpaid fees after reasonable notice, a legal obligation, a risk to us or others, or when we discontinue the Service or a large part of it. Where reasonably possible, we warn you first and give you the chance to resolve the issue. In urgent cases, such as serious security threats, illegal content, fraud or abuse, we may act immediately. Where it is technically and legally possible, and you have met your obligations, you get a reasonable opportunity to export your content before we delete it.

**Clearer limits on liability.** The previous Terms already limited our liability. The new Terms describe it more precisely:

- We are not liable for indirect damages, such as lost profit, lost business or lost goodwill, for damages caused by content uploaded by users, or for events beyond our reasonable control.
- Our total liability is limited to the higher of two amounts: what you paid us in the 12 months before the event, or EUR 100.
- This limit never applies where the law does not allow it. That includes intent, gross negligence, death or personal injury, and your mandatory consumer rights.

**Your photos, in more than one place.** We take great care of your Library and keep encrypted backups of our systems. Still, photos you cannot replace should never exist in only one place, whether that is a phone, a hard drive or a cloud service, ours included. That is why the new Terms say that keeping an independent copy of important content is up to you. A second copy at home or with another provider is all it takes.

**A clear path for disputes.** If you have a dispute with us, we first try to solve it together. You send us a written notice with your account details, a description of the issue and what you ask for. Both sides then try to find a solution within 30 days. If that does not work, the case can go to the court in Alkmaar (Rechtbank Noord-Holland). As a consumer, you keep your right to go to a court in your own country.

**Changes to the Terms.** Under the previous Terms, continued use of the Service meant you accepted any update. Under the new Terms, we notify you in advance by email or in the Service when a change materially affects your rights or obligations. Where the law requires it, we ask for your consent. If you do not agree, you can cancel your subscription before the changes take effect.

**Dutch law.** The Terms are governed by Dutch law. Disputes go to Dutch courts, unless local consumer protection law gives you other options.

**Standard legal clauses.** The new Terms add a few standard clauses. If we do not enforce a right immediately, we do not give up that right. If one clause turns out to be invalid, the rest stays in force.

### What changed in the Privacy Policy

Our approach to privacy does not change. We still do not track you, we do not sell your data, and we do not show ads. What changed is that the new Privacy Policy describes much more precisely what we do with your data, why, and for how long.

**Our principles, up front.** The policy now opens with five principles:

- No tracking or user profiling.
- No analysis of your photos or media for advertising, profiling, sale of data or unrelated analytics.
- No selling of personal data, and no sharing with third parties except where necessary to provide the Service, process payments, comply with the law, or where you ask us to share content.
- No advertising based on your data.
- Full user control and ownership.

**Face recognition, explained in detail.** The previous policy said that face recognition works entirely within your account. The new policy adds what that means in practice. Face recognition and face grouping are always on and cannot be turned off. The Service creates technical identifiers from faces in your photos, such as face templates or embeddings, to help you group and find photos. We never use this data for advertising, for profiling outside your account, to identify people across accounts, or to share with third parties. Face data is deleted when you delete the photo it comes from, or when your account is deleted. If you use face recognition on photos of other people, you are responsible for doing so lawfully.

**Why we process data, in full.** The previous policy mentioned two purposes: payments and legal obligations. The new policy lists all of them. We use your data to create and manage your account, to upload, store and give you access to your photos, to keep you signed in, to handle payments, to provide the core functionality, and to meet legal obligations such as tax filings. We also process limited technical data, such as IP addresses and system logs, to prevent unauthorized access, fraud and abuse, to keep our systems secure and stable, and to fix bugs. We do not use this data for behavioral analytics, profiling or tracking.

**Email only for the service.** We use your email address only for service messages, support and important updates or security notices. We do not send marketing emails or newsletters unless you explicitly ask for them.

**Security, described in more detail.** The new policy describes our security measures. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Where end-to-end encryption is offered and you turn it on, your files are encrypted on your device before upload, with keys that only you control and we cannot access. Internal access to systems is limited to authorized staff, based on the principle of least privilege, and all access is logged and monitored. We collect and store as little data as possible. No system is 100% secure, and the policy says so. You can read more about how we protect your data in our [data security article](https://pixelunion.eu/nl/help/other/data-security/).

**Data sharing, stated precisely.** The previous policy said that your uploaded media is "never shared with anyone, ever." That sentence was too absolute to be accurate. In practice, there are situations where media can leave your account: when you share an album yourself, when the law requires it, or when it is needed to deal with serious abuse, security incidents or legal claims. The new policy names these situations openly. It also lists the categories of parties that may receive limited personal data: payment processors such as Stripe, hosting and infrastructure providers, email and communication providers, customer support tools, professional advisers where necessary, and authorities or courts where the law requires it. With parties that process data on our behalf, we sign data processing agreements.

**Subprocessors.** The new policy explains that we work with carefully selected subprocessors, for example for hosting, security monitoring and customer communication. They only get access to the personal data they need for their task, under contracts with data protection obligations similar to ours. We remain responsible for them. You can ask us for the current list of subprocessors.

**New retention periods.** This is one of the larger changes:

| What | Previous policy | New policy |
|---|---|---|
| Account data after you close your account | Up to 1 year after you stop using the service | Deleted or anonymized within 90 days, unless we must keep certain data for legal, security, accounting or dispute reasons |
| Content you delete | Up to 30 days after you delete your installation | Permanently removed from active systems within 30 days, after which it cannot be recovered |
| Backups | Not described | Encrypted backups may hold data for up to 1 year after your account is deleted. They are isolated, protected and only restored for disaster recovery, security or legal compliance |

**Your privacy rights, in full.** The new policy lists all your rights under the GDPR: access, correction, deletion, restriction of processing, objection to processing, data portability, withdrawing consent, and lodging a complaint with a supervisory authority. Two practical changes:

- **Identity checks.** Previously, we asked for a copy of your ID with sensitive details blacked out. Now, we only ask for additional information when it is reasonably necessary to verify your identity, and never more than needed.
- **Response time.** We respond within one month, instead of four weeks. For complex requests or a high number of requests, the law allows us to extend this by two months.

**Cookies.** We use only essential cookies, needed for signing in and security. We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies or third-party analytics cookies. On our public website, we may collect limited, aggregated and anonymized statistics to understand how the site performs. We never use these statistics to identify you or combine them with your account data.

**Children.** PixelUnion is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. The new policy adds that many of you store photos of your children, and that the account holder is responsible for doing so lawfully and with respect for their privacy. Where parental consent is required, the parent or guardian provides and manages it.

**Removed from the policy.** The new policy no longer uses the technical term "installation" and talks about your account instead. The separate mention of a Data Protection Officer is also removed. For all privacy questions, you can reach us through our [contact page](/legal/contact/).

### What this means for you

You do not need to do anything. The new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply from 30 October 2026, and your account and Plan continue as before.

We do recommend three things:

1. Read the new [Terms of Service](/legal/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](/legal/privacy-policy/), or at least the parts that matter most to you.
2. Keep an independent copy of photos you cannot replace.
3. Know that face recognition runs on all your photos and cannot be turned off.

If you do not agree with the new terms, you can cancel your subscription in your account settings. And if anything is unclear, [contact us](/legal/contact/).

*Want to know more about how we look at technology and responsibility? Read our statement on [how we use AI](/about/ai/).*