Privacy Policy

Last Updated: October 6, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Maelo App Inc. ("Maelo", "we", "us"), a federal corporation (Corporations Canada No. 1736630-2) based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information through the Maelo platform at maelo.app and the Maelo apps for iOS and Android (the "Service"). We comply with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), and, for users in the EU/EEA and UK, the GDPR / UK GDPR. By using the Service you consent to the practices described here.

In short: we collect what we need to run bookings, payments, calendars and messages for tattoo artists and their clients. We use analytics and error reports, linked to a pseudonymous account ID, to support you and fix problems. We do not sell your personal information, we do not show ads, and we do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. You can delete your account at any time: see Account deletion.

1. Roles: Who Controls Your Data

Maelo plays two roles depending on the data:

• As a controller, for information we collect to run the platform (account data, billing, security and diagnostic data, our own communications with you).
• As a service provider for Artists, when an Artist uses Maelo to manage their own Clients. The Artist controls their Client list; Maelo processes that data on the Artist's behalf. Artists are independently responsible for handling Client information lawfully.

2. Information We Collect

• Account information (Artists): name, preferred name, email, username, auth credentials, profile and avatar images, business/studio details (including the studio address you enter), timezone, settings, and branding.
• Account and booking information (Clients): name, email, optional phone (and, if you choose texts, your consent to be texted and when you gave it), the details you submit in a booking request (description, placement, size, reference images, budget, preferred dates), and messages with the Artist.
• Messages, files and content: messages between Artists and Clients (including replies sent by email), images and files you upload (reference images, portfolio and flash images, receipts), calendar events, notes, and the pages Artists build.
• Waivers and sensitive information: waivers and details that may be sensitive, such as tattoo placement, health confirmations or other health-related answers an Artist's waiver asks for, and, if the Artist requires it, a photo of your government-issued ID. When you sign, we also record the time, your IP address and your browser/device user-agent as evidence of signing. We treat this with a higher standard of consent and protection: your handwritten signature is encrypted at rest with a dedicated key, and the rest of the submission is sent over an encrypted connection and held in access-controlled storage. We collect it only with your express consent.
• Payment and financial information: payments are processed by Stripe. Card details you enter, and the identity and bank details an Artist provides to receive payouts, are collected and held by Stripe; we do not store full card or bank account numbers. We keep transaction records (amounts, status, identifiers, the booking they belong to) and the financial records Artists keep in Maelo (income, expenses, mileage and receipts). If an Artist takes in-person card payments, Stripe's card-reader software uses the device's location, as Stripe requires for in-person payments.
• Accounting connections and exports: if you connect QuickBooks Online, we access your connected company identifier and name, home currency, chart of accounts and the journal records needed to send and verify Maelo payment activity. We store encrypted connection tokens, your account mappings and sync settings, and records of attempted and completed syncs. Exports contain payment amounts, dates, currencies, fees, taxes, tips, transaction references and recorded Client names or descriptions. We also keep export history and any import confirmation you provide.
• Calendar information: if you connect Google Calendar, Apple iCloud Calendar or Microsoft Outlook, we access the calendars you select, store encrypted connection credentials, and store the event times (and, unless you hide them, titles and details) needed to block busy times and write your bookings. See the Google user data section below.
• Support requests: if you contact support, your email, your message, your Maelo username if you give it, and technical details the form attaches (browser, operating system, screen size, the page you were on).
• Device and technical information: IP address, browser/user-agent, device model and operating system, app version, sign-in session records (shown to you as your list of signed-in devices), and security logs. In the mobile apps we also collect:
  • a push notification token, linked to your account, if you allow notifications. It is removed when you sign out;
  • a device integrity check when you sign in: Apple App Attest (iOS) or Google Play Integrity (Android) confirms the request comes from the genuine Maelo app. We store a key identifier for the device's app installation, not linked to your name or email;
  • a random app installation identifier plus app version, operating system version and update events, used by our app-update service to deliver and verify app updates.
• Analytics and diagnostics: how you use the Service and technical error and crash reports, linked to a pseudonymous account ID when you are signed in. See Section 11 for exactly what is collected.
• Approximate location: we derive an approximate location (country, region, city) from your IP address for analytics, and the dashboard weather widget uses your saved studio location or, if none, an approximate location from your IP address. We do not collect precise device location, except for in-person card payments as described above.
• Connected accounts: if an Artist connects an Instagram Business or Creator account to show posts on their page, we store the connection token and the account's public profile and post information needed to display them.
• AI feature inputs: what you choose to submit to an optional AI feature, such as a receipt image you upload for expense scanning, a question you ask the help assistant, or a short text prompt describing a page you want to build. We do not store embeddings of your messages. See Section 12.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use personal information to:

• Provide, operate, and maintain the Service (accounts, bookings, messaging, payments, accounting connections and exports, calendars, notifications, app updates)
• Send transactional communications (booking confirmations, reminders, receipts, security notices)
• Send marketing or product-update emails only with your consent (CASL), with an unsubscribe link in every such message
• Prevent fraud and abuse and keep the Service secure (including device integrity checks and bot protection)
• Provide customer support, and diagnose and fix errors and crashes
• Understand how features are used so we can improve them, using analytics linked to a pseudonymous account ID (see Section 11)
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not use personal information for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not combine it with data from other companies to track you across apps or websites. We collect only what is needed for these purposes (data minimization) and do not use personal information for materially new purposes without appropriate consent.

4. Legal Basis and Consent

• PIPEDA / BC PIPA: we rely on your consent (express for sensitive information; implied for routine processing necessary to deliver a service you requested, including security, support and diagnostics), and on other lawful bases where permitted.
• CASL: we obtain consent before sending commercial electronic messages and honour withdrawal of consent.
• GDPR / UK GDPR: our lawful bases are performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f), for security, fraud prevention, error diagnostics and product analytics), and legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)). For sensitive data we rely on explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a)). Where we rely on legitimate interests you can object (Section 9).

You may withdraw consent at any time (subject to legal or contractual restrictions) by contacting us or using in-product controls.

5. How We Disclose Information: Service Providers

We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We share it only:

• With the Artist / Client you are transacting with, as needed to fulfil a booking
• With services you choose to connect (for example, writing your bookings into the calendar you connected)
• With service providers who process data on our behalf under contractual and technical safeguards:
  • Stripe: payment processing, Artist payouts and the identity checks payouts require, and in-person card payments. Stripe also processes some of this information under its own privacy policy, for example to meet financial regulations and prevent fraud;
  • Cloudflare: hosting, content delivery and file storage, security (Turnstile bot protection), and the AI features in Section 12;
  • Hetzner: the servers that run our database, and the servers on which we run our own analytics, error-monitoring and app-update software;
  • Resend: delivery of transactional email (booking confirmations, sign-in links, and similar);
  • Telnyx: delivery of text messages (SMS) about your booking or visit, if you opted in. It receives your mobile number and the message text, and we do not allow it to use them for its own marketing (see Section 10);
  • Apple: push notifications to iOS devices, App Attest device checks, maps and address search, the weather widget (Apple WeatherKit), and iCloud Calendar if you connect it;
  • Google: push notifications to Android devices (Firebase Cloud Messaging), Play Integrity device checks, and Google Calendar if you connect it;
  • Microsoft: Outlook calendar if you connect it;
  • Meta (Instagram): if an Artist connects Instagram to display posts;
  • Telegram: an internal alert to our own staff when a support request arrives, containing the requester's email and message
• When required by law: to comply with a valid legal request or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Maelo, our users, or the public

Our product analytics (Rybbit), error monitoring (GlitchTip, which receives reports from the Sentry software in our apps) and app-update service (Capgo) are software we run ourselves on servers we rent. That data is not sent to an analytics or advertising company, but it is still personal information we collect, and it is described in Section 11.

Accounting services you choose

Connecting QuickBooks Online authorizes Maelo to access the selected company. After you choose account mappings and enable sync, we send payment-activity journal entries to Intuit (QuickBooks), including amounts, dates, currencies, account references, fees, tax and tip amounts, and transaction descriptions and references. A description may contain a Client name. We read company and account information to configure the connection and journal details to verify deliveries and avoid duplicates. We use this information to provide and support your accounting connection, not for advertising or AI training. Intuit processes information under its own privacy statement and your agreement with Intuit.

Xero support uses files that you download and import yourself; Maelo does not connect to your Xero account or send exports directly to Xero. The same applies to general accounting exports: you decide who receives them, including an accountant or another accounting service. Their handling of those copies is subject to their policies and your arrangements with them.

You can pause QuickBooks sync or disconnect in Financial → Accounting or Settings → Integrations → Accounting. When disconnection completes, Maelo revokes the connection and removes its stored connection tokens. Disconnecting Maelo does not delete entries already sent to QuickBooks, files you downloaded, or copies you imported or shared. You manage those records with the recipient. See Section 7 for the records Maelo retains.

Google user data (Calendar)

If you choose to connect a Google Calendar, Maelo requests two narrowly scoped permissions: calendar.readonly (to see the calendars you choose and the times you are already busy) and calendar.events. We use them for exactly two purposes, both of which you initiate: reading your existing events, so that times you are already busy are blocked out and clients cannot book them; and writing your Maelo bookings into your calendar, so a confirmed appointment appears alongside the rest of your day.

We access only the calendars you select in Settings → Scheduling. Event titles and details are used solely to compute your availability and to create or update the events for your own bookings; you may hide event titles from the Maelo interface at any time.

Maelo’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

We do not sell Google user data, do not use it for advertising, do not use it to train any AI or machine-learning model, and do not transfer it to others except as needed to provide the Service, comply with applicable law, or with your explicit consent.

You can disconnect at any time in Settings → Scheduling, or revoke Maelo’s access directly at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Disconnecting stops all further access; calendar tokens are deleted and imported event data is removed within 30 days.

6. Where Your Data Is Stored (Cross-Border Transfers)

Maelo operates globally and uses providers located outside Canada. Your personal information is stored or processed in the United States (our primary database), Germany and elsewhere in Europe (our analytics, error-monitoring and app-update servers, and encrypted database backups), and other countries via our providers' global infrastructure. While in another country, data may be accessible to that country's courts, law enforcement, and regulators under its laws. We use contractual and technical safeguards (including, where applicable, GDPR Standard Contractual Clauses) to require comparable protection for personal information transferred outside Canada, consistent with PIPEDA and BC PIPA.

7. Data Retention and Deletion

• Account and booking data: for the life of your account plus a reasonable period for legal, tax, accounting, and dispute-resolution purposes
• Payment/transaction records: as required by financial and tax law. Canadian tax law requires business records to be kept for 6 years after the end of the year they relate to, so after an Artist account is deleted we keep a limited payment record for that long (see below). Stripe keeps its own records under its own legal obligations
• Accounting connection and export records: we retain mappings, sync settings, attempted and completed journal delivery records, and export history while your Maelo account exists to support the feature and prevent duplicate postings. Delivery and export history can remain after you disconnect QuickBooks. Deleting your Maelo account removes this integration state and its credentials; the separate payment records we must retain are described below. Copies already held by QuickBooks, Xero or an accountant are not deleted by deleting your Maelo account.
• Analytics, error reports and security logs: a limited period for diagnostics and security. These are keyed to a pseudonymous account or installation ID, not your name or email
• Database backups: encrypted, and replaced on a rolling schedule, so deleted data leaves backups when they expire

Deleting your account. Artists can delete their account in the app under Settings → Account. Anyone, including Clients and people who no longer have the app, can request deletion at maelo.app/account-deletion, which explains the steps, what is deleted, what we must keep, and how long it takes. When an account is deleted we delete or de-identify its personal data, except records we must keep for legal, tax, fraud-prevention or security reasons. As part of the deletion we also ask our analytics software to erase the analytics history linked to your account ID; if that step does not complete automatically, it is flagged for our team to follow up. Error reports are not linked to your account, so they cannot be found or deleted by account; they are deleted automatically at the end of their retention period.

Payment records we keep after an Artist account is deleted. Canada’s tax rules require us to keep business records, including records of payments made through Maelo and the fees Maelo charged, for 6 years after the end of the year they relate to, and platform operators must keep seller and payment records for 6 years after the end of the calendar year they relate to. If an Artist took payments through Maelo, we keep only: the Artist’s name, business name, email address, country and province, business number (if provided) and Stripe account ID; and for each deposit, payment, quick sale, Tap to Pay payment, no-show fee, refund and payout, its type, amount, currency, date, status, tax, tip, Maelo fee, payment method, the Client’s name where the payment had one, and the Stripe reference numbers. We do not keep Client email addresses, phone numbers, messages, notes or images. Each record is kept until 6 years after the end of the calendar year of that payment, access is restricted to the people who handle our tax and legal obligations, and it is then deleted automatically. Artists can download a copy of these records in the app before deleting their account.

If you are a Client. Deleting your Client Hub account removes your sign-in account and the data we hold only for you. Booking requests, messages, waivers and payment records you shared with an Artist stay with that Artist, because they are part of the Artist’s business records (see Section 1). To ask for them to be deleted, contact the Artist, or email support@maelo.app and we will help. If the Artist later deletes their account, a payment you made to them may remain in the limited payment record described above, with your name only.

8. Security

We protect personal information with administrative, technical, and physical safeguards, including encryption in transit (TLS) for all data sent between the apps, your browser and our servers, encryption at rest for sensitive fields (waiver signatures, calendar credentials and accounting connection tokens), encrypted backups, role-based database access, scoped tenant isolation, device integrity checks, and bot/abuse protection. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and respond quickly if an issue arises.

9. Your Rights

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete information
• Withdraw consent to processing or marketing
• Delete your account and associated personal data (see Section 7 and Account deletion)
• Port your data in a portable format (Artists can export their data in the app)
• Object to / restrict certain processing, including analytics based on our legitimate interests (GDPR)

We respond to access and correction requests within 30 days (PIPEDA / BC PIPA). To exercise any right, contact our Privacy Officer (Section 14). You may also complain to:

• the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (OIPC BC)
• the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC)
• your EU/EEA Data Protection Authority
• the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)

Extra rights where you live

• Quebec: Quebec’s private-sector privacy law (as amended by Law 25) applies to Quebec residents. You may also complain to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (CAI).
• California and other US states: we do not sell or “share” personal information (as those words are defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act) and we do not use it for targeted advertising. You can ask to know, access, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you by contacting our Privacy Officer (Section 14). You may use an authorized agent, we will verify requests before acting on them, and we will not treat you differently for making one.
• Australia: you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

10. Text Messages (SMS) and Marketing

Text messages (SMS)

If you give us a mobile number and agree to be texted, for example by ticking “Receive booking updates by SMS text” on a booking form, or by saying yes when a studio front desk asks to text you about your place in the queue, we send text messages about your booking or visit. We do not send marketing or promotional text messages.

• What we text: booking confirmations, deposit and payment receipts, appointment reminders, reschedules, walk-in queue updates, and replies on your request.
• Who sends them: the artist or studio you booked with, through Maelo. Messages are delivered by our messaging provider, Telnyx, which handles your mobile number and the message text only to deliver them.
• Consent is optional. It is never a condition of booking or of any purchase. Without it we use email instead.
• Frequency and cost: message frequency varies with your booking. Message and data rates may apply.
• Opt out or get help: reply STOP to any message and we stop texting you immediately. Reply HELP for help, or email support@maelo.app. Replying C to a walk-in message cancels your place in the queue.
• Records: we keep a record of your consent (when and where you gave it, and the number) and of your opt-out, as Canada’s CASL and the United States’ TCPA require.
• Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

We will not share or sell your mobile information to third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third parties, other than our messaging provider as needed to deliver your messages. See also How texting works and our Terms of Service.

Marketing email (CASL)

Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. You can also email support@maelo.app with "Unsubscribe" in the subject. We process opt-outs promptly (within 10 business days as required by CASL). Transactional messages necessary to a booking are not marketing and may still be sent.

11. Cookies, Analytics and Diagnostics

Cookies and storage. We use strictly necessary cookies and on-device storage for sign-in, security and your preferences. On the web we use Cloudflare Turnstile for bot protection; in the apps, the device integrity checks in Section 2 do that job. We do not use advertising cookies. This is everything we store on your device:

Content an Artist adds to their page. If an Artist embeds content from another website on their Maelo page (for example a video or a map), that website may set its own cookies under its own policy.

Product analytics

We run our own analytics software (Rybbit) on servers we rent. Your activity is not sent to Google Analytics, Meta, or any advertising network, and we do not sell or share it. The analytics do not use cookies. Visitors who are not signed in are counted without any identifier being stored on their device. We record:

• pages and screens viewed and the order you viewed them in, plus how you arrived (e.g. a link in an email)
• your device type and model, browser, operating system, app version, screen size, language and approximate location (country, region, city). Your IP address is used to derive that location and is not stored by our analytics
• which buttons you press, and which form fields you interact with. We never record what you type into a field.
• errors and page-performance measurements

For signed-in users this is linked to your Maelo account ID (and whether you use Maelo as an Artist or a Client) so that we can reproduce a problem you report and see what actually happened. We do not send your name, email address or phone number to our analytics. Support staff can match the account ID to your account when helping you.

We do not use session recording. We do not capture video or screen replays of your visit. Sensitive values are excluded before storage: any single-use sign-in link, token or secret in a web address is discarded rather than recorded.

Error and crash reports

When something goes wrong, the website and apps send an error report to our own error-monitoring server (GlitchTip). A report contains the error message and technical trace, the page or screen, app and operating system version, and device model; in the apps it can include crash data captured by the device. Reports do not include your name or email, but an error message can occasionally contain content that was on screen when the error happened. Error reports are also recorded in our analytics, where they are linked to your account ID as described above.

App updates

The mobile apps check our own update server (Capgo) for app updates. This sends a random installation identifier, the app and operating system version, device platform, and whether an update was downloaded, installed or failed.

No tracking

We do not show ads, we do not use your device's advertising identifier, and we do not share analytics, diagnostics or identifiers with advertisers or data brokers. Maelo does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

You can ask us to delete your analytics history at any time, and it is erased as part of deleting your account (Sections 7 and 9). Error reports held by our error-monitoring server are not linked to your account and are deleted automatically after a limited period; the copies recorded in our analytics are erased with your analytics history.

12. Artificial Intelligence

Maelo includes a small number of optional AI features. Every one of them runs on Cloudflare’s AI platform (Workers AI and AI Search), part of our hosting provider. We do not send your data to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any other third-party AI provider.

No Google user data is used with AI

Data obtained from the Google Calendar API is used only to calculate your availability and to write your Maelo bookings into your calendar. It is never sent to an AI model, never included in an AI prompt, and never used to develop, improve, or train any AI or machine-learning model, whether ours, our providers’, or a third party’s.

We do not train models on your data

Cloudflare states that it does not use the content we send to its AI platform to train AI models or to improve its services. Nothing you enter into Maelo is used to create, improve, or fine-tune any AI or machine-learning model.

Receipt Scanning (OCR)

When an Artist uploads a receipt image for expense tracking, we use a vision AI model on Cloudflare Workers AI (Llama 3.2 Vision) to extract details such as vendor, date, amount, and line items. The image and extracted data are stored in the Artist’s own account.

Page Building Assistance

When an Artist describes the page they want to build, a text model on Cloudflare Workers AI suggests which page components to use, and can generate a background configuration (colours and gradients) from a short text prompt you provide. The only input is the Artist’s own description. No Client information and no calendar data is involved.

Help Assistant

When you ask the in-app help assistant a question, your question is sent to Cloudflare AI Search, which answers it from Maelo’s public help articles. Maelo does not store your questions in your account.

Automated Decision-Making (GDPR Article 22)

Our AI features provide suggestions and extracted data only. They do not make automated decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects; all final decisions remain with you.

Retired Features

Maelo previously offered an AI Draft Assistant that suggested replies to Client messages using per-user embeddings of your past messages. This feature was removed in July 2026, together with the stored embeddings and the vector indexes that held them. Maelo no longer creates or stores embeddings of your messages.

13. Children

The Service is not directed to, and may not be used by, anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Privacy Officer and Contact

We have designated a Privacy Officer at Maelo App Inc. responsible for compliance with this policy and applicable privacy law (PIPEDA / BC PIPA). Contact: support@maelo.app (response time: within 30 days).

15. Breach Notification

If a privacy breach occurs that creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify affected individuals and the OIPC BC / OPC (and applicable EU/UK authorities) as required by law, and keep records of breaches as required.

16. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy. If we make material changes we will update the "Last Updated" date and, where appropriate or required, notify you by email or in-app, and seek new consent where needed.

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