Privacy Policy

1. Our approach

STNCL is built so that a customer can be matched accurately without exposing where they live. We collect what the marketplace genuinely needs, keep exact locations and private files locked to the account that owns them, and show artists only a city and a distance.

2. What we collect

Account information: your email address, password (stored only as a hash by our authentication provider), first name, display name, role (customer, artist, studio or staff), the terms and age confirmations you gave at signup, and your notification preferences.

Location information: the address you enter, the standardised address and the exact coordinates returned for it, plus your city, region, postal code and how far you are willing to travel.

Browsing information: the area and distance you choose for browsing and for the STNCL Weekly edition, the styles you say you like, the artists you follow or save, the work and designs you save, the searches you save, and the artists you recently viewed. Recently viewed artists are private to you and you can clear them at any time.

Request information: your tattoo idea, placement, size, styles, color preference, budget band, timing, whether it is a cover-up, optional notes, and any reference images you upload.

Artist information: display name and username, bio, years tattooing, styles and specialties, studio affiliation, travel radius, pricing, calendar availability and private calendar notes, portfolio images, Available Flash, Guest Spots, Books Open announcements, social and website links and, where submitted, verification license details and documents.

Activity information: proposals, bookings, conversations and messages, reviews, favorites, reports, notifications, and basic product analytics events such as "request posted", recorded in our own database so we can see which parts of the product work. No third-party analytics or advertising service receives them.

Payment information: where you pay a deposit by card in the app, the card details are entered with our payment processor (Stripe) and never reach STNCL. We keep a record of the deposit itself — the amount, currency, the booking it belongs to, its status, refunds and the processor's reference — because tax and dispute rules require it. We never see or store your card number.

Calendar subscription: an artist can create a private link that lets their own calendar app (Apple, Google, Outlook) read their STNCL appointment times. The link carries an unguessable token, contains only the artist's own appointment times, kind and status, and never includes customer names, messages or notes. Artists can replace the link at any time, which immediately stops the old one working.

Studio information: if you run or join a studio, we store the studio name, its public details, the invitations you send or accept, and which artists are on the roster and in what role. Studio owners and managers can see the roster, the bookings taken by their artists and the availability they publish; they cannot read their artists' private messages.

STNCL Weekly: the area, distance, styles and follows you have saved are used to build your edition, and we record which editions were generated for you and which items you opened so the same item is not repeated. You can turn STNCL Weekly off at any time in your notification settings, which stops future editions being built or sent to you.

3. Addresses, geocoding and distance

When you confirm an address we send that address text to Google Maps Platform to convert it into coordinates. We do not send your name, email or any other account detail with it. Google processes the address under its own terms as our service provider.

Your exact address and exact coordinates are stored privately against your own account. Only you, and STNCL staff acting on a support, safety or legal matter, can read them. Artists never receive them.

What artists see on a request is your city and region, your travel radius, and a distance calculated on the platform. Requests carry only a deliberately rounded coordinate — accurate to roughly a kilometre — so distance works without revealing an address. Artist locations are handled the same way: the exact studio address is private, and customers see the city plus a distance.

4. What becomes public on an artist or studio profile

If you hold an artist or studio account, the following becomes a public marketplace listing once you publish it: your display name and username, profile and cover photos, bio, years tattooing, styles and specialties, your city and region and an approximate distance, your studio name and — only if you choose to add them — a public studio address, phone number and links such as a website or Instagram, your portfolio images and their descriptions, your Available Flash, Guest Spots, Books Open announcements, the pricing figures you choose to show, the appointment times you publish, your review rating and the text of reviews left about you, and any verification badges STNCL has granted.

These listings are visible to other STNCL users, can be opened by anyone with the shareable link, may appear in search results and discovery sections, and may be included in the STNCL Weekly edition for people browsing your area. You can unpublish or delete them at any time; that stops new views but cannot recall copies someone else has already saved or shared.

What stays private for artists too: your exact street address and exact coordinates, your email address, private calendar notes, identity and license documents, your private analytics, and the identities of the people who viewed, saved or followed you — artists only ever see counts.

Customers have no public profile. Your display name is visible to an artist you are in a conversation with, or who has your booking request or tattoo request. Your browsing area, saved artists, follows, saved searches and recently viewed artists are private to you, and artists are never told who saved or followed them.

5. What is never shown publicly

Your email address, your password, your exact street address and exact coordinates, your private messages, your reference images, verification or identity documents, reports you file, and any payment details are never shown on public pages or to other users, except as needed for the specific person you are talking to (for example, your display name in a conversation).

Reference images and portfolio files are held in private storage and served through short-lived signed links, so they cannot be opened by anyone who has not been granted access.

6. Why we use your information

To create and secure your account; to show your request to relevant artists; to calculate matches and distance; to deliver proposals, bookings, conversations, reviews and notifications; to moderate content and investigate reports; to keep the platform safe and prevent abuse; to measure and improve the product; and to meet legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use advertising trackers, and we do not build advertising profiles.

7. Who we share it with

Other users, only to the extent described above — artists see request details plus city and distance; the artist you select sees the conversation you have with them.

Service providers who operate parts of the platform on our behalf: our hosting and database provider, our authentication and file storage provider, our email delivery provider, and Google Maps Platform for address lookup. They may only use the data to provide their service to us.

Authorities or advisers, where we are legally required to disclose information or need to protect someone's safety or our legal rights.

8. Your choices and rights

You can edit your details and address, change your travel radius and notification preferences, edit or delete your requests, block another user, report content, and delete your account outright — all from within the app.

Depending on where you live you may also have the right to access, correct, export or restrict processing of your personal information, and to object to it. Contact us and we will respond within the time your local law allows. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time.

Data export as a self-service download is planned and not available yet; until then we will provide a copy on request.

9. Retention and security

We keep account and request data while your account is open. When you delete your account we remove or anonymise your personal information, except records we must keep for a limited period for legal, tax, safety or dispute-resolution reasons — for example a report or a review left on someone else's profile, which may remain without your identifying details.

Access to data is enforced at the database level: every table restricts rows to the account entitled to see them. Files are private by default. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password and tell us immediately if you think your account has been accessed.

10. Children, transfers and changes

STNCL is an adults-only service. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and we close such accounts when we find them. We record the date each account confirmed being 18 or older.

Customers are never asked for identity documents. Artists who ask STNCL to verify their identity, license or studio submit documents such as a photo ID or tattoo license; this is optional and only artists do it. Those documents are held in private storage, are visible only to the STNCL staff reviewing them, are never shown on a profile or any public page, and are deleted when the account is deleted.

Our providers may process data in countries other than yours; where that happens we rely on the safeguards those providers offer, such as standard contractual clauses.

If this policy changes materially we will update the date on this page and notify account holders in the app.

11. Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself at any time in Profile → Settings → Account → Delete account. You do not need to email us. We show you exactly what happens first, then ask you to re-enter your password (or confirm that you sign in with Apple or Google) and type DELETE, so it cannot happen by accident. Deleting the account immediately signs you out of every device by invalidating your sessions, and unlinks any connected Apple or Google login.

If you cannot sign in, you can ask us to delete your account and data from https://getstncl.com/delete-account or by emailing help@getstncl.com. We verify the request, then complete it within 30 days and confirm by email.

Deleted: your name, address, saved coordinates and travel radius; your reference photos, portfolio images and any verification documents, removed from private storage; photos you attached to messages; saved artists, wish list, notifications and push notification tokens; and your sign-in, which is permanently disabled.

Anonymised: reviews you wrote stay published without your identity; message text stays readable for the other person in the conversation, shown as a deleted account; an artist profile becomes "Former STNCL artist".

Kept: completed bookings, deposits, refunds and payout records, which tax and dispute rules require us to retain, and moderation and safety records, so that deleting an account cannot be used to escape a suspension.

Active activity: open requests are cancelled and stop receiving proposals, proposals you sent that were not accepted are withdrawn, and bookings that have not happened yet are cancelled with refunds following the Refund & Cancellation policy.

12. What we disclose on the App Store

Linked to you: email address, name or display name, city and region, precise address and coordinates (private, used for distance only), tattoo requests and reference images, artist professional information, portfolio images, messages, reviews, bookings, notification tokens, and your account identifier.

Not linked to you: aggregate product analytics and crash diagnostics, used only to see which parts of the product work and to fix faults.

Not collected: contacts, browsing history, search history outside STNCL, health or fitness data, advertising identifiers, and biometric data. We do not use data for tracking across other companies' apps or websites, and no advertising SDK is included in the app.

13. Contact

Questions about this document can be sent to help@getstncl.com, or raised through the in-app report and support tools.