Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 26, 2026

Lumo Circle is a free online community where photographers share photos and give each other honest feedback. It is run by M Wiesel Photography. This page explains, in plain words, what we keep and why.

What we store

• Your account: your name, email address and password (stored only as a secure scrambled “hash”, never readable).
• Your profile: anything you choose to add, such as a profile photo, a short bio, a website or Instagram link.
• What you post: your posts, comments, the photos you upload, challenge entries, gear-swap listings and reactions.
• Private messages you send to other members.
• Basic technical records needed to keep the site safe (for example, limits that stop spam and repeated wrong passwords).

Photo location data

Photos taken with phones and cameras can contain hidden GPS location data. We remove GPS and location data from every photo you upload before it is stored. Camera settings (camera, lens, aperture, shutter, ISO) are kept only so you can choose to show them.

What we don't do

• We do not sell, rent or trade your data to anyone.
• We do not use advertising trackers or tracking pixels, and we don't build advertising profiles.

Sign in with Google

If you choose “Sign in with Google”, we only receive and use your name and email address from Google, to create and sign in to your account. We don't get your Google password and we don't access anything else in your Google account.

Cookies

We use one cookie to keep you signed in. We don't use cookies for advertising or tracking.

Emails

We email you only about your account (for example, password resets) and, if you leave them on, alerts about replies and messages and an optional weekly summary. You can turn these off in My account, or with the unsubscribe link in any email.

Who can see what

Posts and photos are visible to members of the community (some spaces are visible only to members the admin allows). Private messages are visible only to the people in the conversation; the admin may review a message if it is reported.

Where your data is kept

The site and its data are hosted with a cloud hosting provider on secure servers.

Deleting your data

You can ask the admin at any time to delete your account and your data. You can contact the admin through the site. When an account is deleted, its posts, photos and comments are removed from the site.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update this page and the date below.