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.

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

Artist information: display name, bio, years tattooing, styles and specialties, studio affiliation, travel radius, pricing, availability, portfolio images and, where submitted, verification licence details and documents.

Activity information: offers, bookings, conversations and messages, reviews, favourites, reports, notifications, and basic product analytics events such as "request posted" so we can see which parts of the product work.

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 is never shown publicly

Your email address, your password, your exact street address and exact coordinates, your private messages, your reference images, verification 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.

5. 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 offers, 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.

6. 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.

7. 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 request deletion of your account — 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.

8. 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.

9. Children, transfers and changes

STNCL is not for children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the minimum age described in the Terms of Service, and we delete such accounts when we find them.

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.

10. Contact

Questions about this document can be sent to the support address published on the STNCL website, or raised through the in-app report and support tools.