Scan photos are used to recognise your pieces, and we do not keep them. They are sent to our servers, used to find the answer, and then discarded. They are never saved to your photo library, and the app never looks at the photos already on your phone.
The only pictures we keep are the ones you send if you choose to help teach the scanner. That is separate from ordinary scans, and off unless you switch it on.
Scanning one brick
- The app takes a photo and makes a small copy, 768 pixels wide.
- The copy is sent to our servers with a list of the pieces your tubs still need.
- An AI service compares the two and answers with the matching piece.
- We do not store the photo.
Scanning a whole tray
- The photo is tidied on your phone first. It is turned upright, made smaller and saved as a new file, without the camera’s hidden details. It carries no location.
- It is uploaded to a private space on our servers. Only your account can put a photo there, and nobody can read it back through the app, not even you.
- Our recognition software finds and names the pieces. It runs with a hosting provider on our behalf, and fetches the photo through a link that expires after five minutes.
- For close calls, small cut-outs of single pieces are checked by an AI service. The whole photo is never sent to it.
- The photo is deleted from our servers as soon as the scan ends, whether it worked or not.
- As a safety net, anything left behind is deleted automatically after about a day.
The photo you see with letters on it is the copy on your own phone.
What is kept after a scan
- A short record of each tray scan: your user ID, the time, how many pieces were found and how sure the scanner was, how long it took, which version of the software ran, what we estimate it cost us, and an error code if it failed. It holds no picture.
- A count of your tray scans for each day, and of the free ones you have used, because there are limits.
Helping teach the scanner
This is separate from ordinary scans. It is optional, and off unless you agree to it. Nothing is sent before you have agreed to it on a page in the app that says what is sent. It needs an account.
- Now and then while you sort, the app asks for a photo of some pieces whose names it already knows: the copies of one piece you have just found, or what is in one of your tubs, tipped out. You can always skip it, and it asks at most once each time you sort.
- The whole photo is sent, with the list of pieces the app recorded as being in it.
- Once a day, an AI service checks the pictures that have arrived, and nothing else reads them before then. A picture that is blurred, shows no piece, shows more than one kind of piece where one kind was asked for, or shows any part of a person, a screen or writing is deleted.
- A picture that passes is kept with: the list of pieces and the set they belong to, the model of phone that took it, your user ID, and when it was sent.
- We use these pictures only to test and improve BrickSorter’s scanner, never for advertising.
- If your scans have run out and you choose to help from the screen that says so, you get five more scans, once, when a picture you send passes the check.
You can stop at any time in Settings. To have the pictures you sent deleted, email support@bricksorter.app or delete your account.
The camera itself
The camera is used on the scanner screens only, and only once you have allowed it. A photo is taken only when you tap the button. The app never asks for your location.
Who works on the photos
We do not keep photos from ordinary scans. The companies that handle them for us do so under their own terms, which for the AI service can include keeping what it is sent for a limited time. The privacy policy names them and says what each one receives.