Privacy policy

Who we are

Quarter Inch is made by Avoxy Technologies Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16613235). Our registered office is The Old Bakery, 90 Camden Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2QP, United Kingdom. In this policy, “we” and “us” means Avoxy Technologies Limited.

This policy covers our website, quarterinch.app, and our app, app.quarterinch.app. We’re the controller of your personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. If you have a question about your data, write to us at hello@quarterinch.app. A real person reads every email.

The short version

• We collect only what we need to run Quarter Inch, keep your account safe, take payment and answer you.
• We never sell your data. We don’t show ads in Quarter Inch. We do advertise it on Facebook, Instagram and Google: if you arrive from one of our ads, we tell that ad company when you sign up, start your first quilt and become a paying member, so we know which ads work (outside the UK, the EEA and Switzerland unless you’ve said no; inside them, only if you’ve said yes).
• We never train AI on your designs. Help, our AI assistant, works only when you ask it to, sees only what that request needs, and one switch turns it off (see Help).
• Your quilts are yours. You can export everything, free, at any time, and delete your account whenever you like.
• Files you open without an account are read in your browser. They aren’t uploaded unless you choose to save them to a library.

What we collect, and why

For each kind of data, here’s what it is, what we use it for, and the lawful basis UK GDPR asks us to name. “Contract” means we need it to give you the service you asked for. “Legitimate interests” means we need it to run Quarter Inch well and safely, in ways you’d expect, and we’ve checked that this doesn’t outweigh your rights. “Consent” means you chose it, and you can change your mind at any time.

Your account

• Your email address, which is how you sign in.
• Your name, if you give one (it’s optional). If you sign in with Google, we also keep the address of your Google profile picture.
• The answers from first-time setup: whether you work in inches or centimeters, and whether you have quilts in EQ8.
• Your browser’s time zone, saved when you sign in, so dates and times in the app and our emails are in your own time.
• Your settings, such as whether we keep a copy of your original files, whether we email you when an import or export is ready, whether Help is shown, and the width of fabric you last chose.
• If you ask us to email you when the full license launches, the date you asked.

Why: to give you an account and the app. Lawful basis: contract.

Signing in

• Sign-in codes. When you sign in with your email, we email you a 6-digit code. We store it hashed (scrambled one way, so it can’t be read back), and it works for 10 minutes. The email says when and on what kind of device the code was asked for, such as “Safari on an iPad”, which we work out from your browser.
• Sessions. For each device you sign in on, we keep a session record with the device’s IP address and browser details, so you stay signed in and so you can see where you’re signed in and sign out.
• Sign-in limits. To stop people guessing codes, we count codes sent and checked by email address and by IP address. We only ever use the last day’s counts, and delete older ones.
• Apple and Google. If you choose to sign in with Apple or Google, they share your name, your email address and whether they’ve checked it. We keep a link to your Apple or Google account, with the sign-in details they send us. We only link it to an existing account when they’ve verified the email.

Why: to sign you in and keep your account safe. Lawful basis: contract, and our legitimate interest in keeping accounts secure.

Your quilts and files

• Files you open without an account are read in your browser on your device, and aren’t uploaded. If you choose “Save to my library”, they wait in your browser’s storage while you sign in, and then upload to your account.
• Files you import (EQ8 and EQ7 projects): the file’s name, size and a fingerprint (a SHA-256 hash, to spot the same file twice), what we read from it, its import report, our drawings of its quilts, and EQ’s own pictures from the file.
• Your original files. We keep a copy of each original file by default, so you can download it again and have it read again when our reader improves. You can turn this off in Account and settings (“Keep a copy of my original files”). Turning it off deletes the copies we’ve kept, and from then on each new original is deleted as soon as it’s been read.
• What you make and change: your quilts, the blocks you draw, the fabrics you save, how each quilt is cut, the lines you tick off on a cutting chart, earlier versions of each quilt, and a log of the changes you save (with the kind of device they came from, such as “iPad”).

Why: to keep your library, show and change your quilts, and work out cutting charts and yardage. Lawful basis: contract. We never look at your quilts except to help you when you ask, or to fix a problem with them.

Exports and printing

“Export everything” builds a .zip file of your quilts in our open format, your originals, a picture of each quilt, the import reports and, with a founding place, each quilt’s cutting PDF. We keep it for you to download for 7 days, then delete it. PDFs you print from the Cutting page are made on your device and never stored by us.

Lawful basis: contract.

Buying a founding place

Payments are taken by Stripe, through Stripe’s Managed Payments. Onelink, Stripe’s store, is the merchant of record: it takes your payment, works out and pays any sales tax or VAT, and sends your receipt and invoice. Stripe and Onelink handle your card or other payment details, your billing country and any VAT number you give, under their own privacy policies. We never see or store your card number.

From Stripe, we keep a record of each purchase: the email address it was made with, what was bought, the amount and currency, the dates it was paid or refunded, Stripe’s reference numbers and a link to Stripe’s receipt. A place bought on our website joins the account you make or sign in with using the same email.

Why: to give you your founding place, handle refunds and keep our accounts. Lawful basis: contract, and our legal obligation to keep accounting records.

Updates by email

If you sign up for updates (on our About page; before the app opened, this was our waitlist), we keep your email address, which form you used and, if you answered them when you joined, your answers to the questions we asked then (such as what you design on). If you later sign in to the app with the same email, your sign-up is linked to your account. We use it only to send you news about Quarter Inch. Lawful basis: consent. To leave the list, reply to any of our emails or write to hello@quarterinch.app.

Founding designer applications

If you applied for a founding designer place (we no longer take applications), we keep your name, email address, shop or Instagram link, where you sell, how many patterns you’ve published and whether you’d publish a live version. We use them to consider your application and reply. Lawful basis: steps you asked us to take before any agreement, and our legitimate interest in running the designer program.

Messages you send through our contact form

If you write to us through our contact page, we keep your name, your email address, what your message is about (the topic you choose, or “Something else” if you don’t choose one), your message, the page you came from on our site, and the file you attach, if you attach one (one file: an EQ8 or EQ7 project, a picture or a PDF). To limit how many messages one place can send in an hour, so the form can’t be used to flood us, we count them under a code made from your IP address and a secret of ours (a salted hash). Without that secret, the code can’t be matched to an address; with it, we could check whether a given address made it. We keep the code only in that hourly count, not with your message, and clear it once the hour is up.

We email you once to say your message arrived. That email doesn’t repeat what you wrote, so nobody can use our form to send their words to someone else’s address. Messages that look like spam (for example, sent within seconds of the page opening, or nothing but a link) are set aside without any email. The people who run Quarter Inch read your message in our admin pages, which only they can open, and reply to you by email. Each of them is also sent a copy of your message by email (through our email provider, Resend), with your name and email address, so it reaches them quickly; those copies stay in their own inboxes, which they manage like any work email. If you have an account with the same email address, they can see it beside your message, so they can help with it. Files are kept in our file storage under a name we give them, never opened anywhere but in our own reader, and only our admins can download them. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in answering you, and contract, when you write about your account or a purchase.

Emails we send, and emails you send us

We email you sign-in codes and messages about your account: when an import or export is ready (only if you left before it finished, and you can turn these off), a founding place or refund, an email change, and a deletion. When you write through our contact page, we email you to say your message arrived. When you write to us, we keep your email and our reply so we can help you. Lawful basis: contract, and our legitimate interest in answering you.

Error reports

When something goes wrong in the app, our server sends an error report to Sentry, so we hear about a failed import before you have to tell us. A report says where in our code it happened, the error message and some fixed labels. We remove anything that looks like an email address or a file name first, and reports never include your files, your quilts’ names or your IP address. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in keeping Quarter Inch working.

Analytics

We use Plausible Analytics to count how Quarter Inch is used, such as how many imports finish or how many people reach checkout. We run our own copy of Plausible on our servers, so this data doesn’t go to Plausible’s company. Plausible uses no cookies and doesn’t track you across websites.

• In the app, our server sends Plausible the name of an event and a few fixed words or numbers about it (for example, how many quilts an import had), never anything you typed or named, never a file name, a quilt’s name or your email. So that Plausible can count visitors without cookies, we pass along your browser details and IP address; Plausible uses them to make a daily visitor count and doesn’t store them.
• On our website, Plausible’s script counts page views, clicks on the buttons that open the app (and which button), and our forms being sent (which form; for a message, the topic chosen), never what you typed.

Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in understanding how Quarter Inch is used, so we can improve it.

Our ads, and knowing which ones work

We advertise Quarter Inch on Facebook and Instagram (Meta) and Google. To know which ads are worth paying for, we count who arrives from an ad, signs up, starts their first quilt and becomes a paying member. We don’t load Meta’s or Google’s tracking scripts on our website or in the app.

• When you arrive from a link with campaign details (an ad, or a link in an email with utm_ words in its address), we keep those details in one cookie, qi_attr: the campaign’s name and source, the ad company’s click reference (Google’s gclid, Meta’s fbclid), the page you landed on and the website you came from. Never your name or email. If you then make an account, we keep the same details with it.
• If you came from one of our ads, our server tells that ad company when you sign up, start your first quilt or import from EQ, and pay for Quilter (with the amount): their click reference, a one-way code (a SHA-256 hash) of your email address and of our ID for you, and, when you sign up, your IP address and browser details, which they use to match it to the ad. We never send your quilts, files or anything you typed. Someone who didn’t arrive from one of our ads is never sent anywhere.
• In the UK, the EEA and Switzerland we do none of this unless you’ve said yes. Elsewhere, we do it unless you’ve said no: your browser’s Global Privacy Control setting counts as a no.

Lawful basis: consent in the UK, the EEA and Switzerland; elsewhere, our legitimate interest in knowing which of our ads work. Meta and Google use what we send them under their own terms as well, to measure and improve ads.

Server logs

Like every website, our servers and the services in front of them see your IP address and browser details when you visit, and keep short-lived logs of requests to keep the service running and secure. Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in security.

Project files sent through our old website form

Before the app opened, our website’s “Send us one EQ8 project” form took project files. Those files were never stored: they were discarded as they arrived. The form has gone. To try a project now, open it in the app.

Help, our AI assistant

Help is the part of Quarter Inch that works from your words: Describe it, Help me choose, Ask Help and its jobs, Just tell it, colors from a photo, and Make it with help for a pattern. It runs only when you ask it to, and every change it suggests waits for you to accept it.

• What a model sees. Only what that request needs: what you wrote or chose (your description, question or request), and your quilt in words: its blocks, layout, borders, size, and its fabrics’ names and colors. Describe it, Help me choose, Ask Help, jobs and colors from a photo are also sent the names and colors of your My fabrics, how much of each you have, and the sentences under “What Help has noticed” that you’ve left on. A photo is sent only when you ask for colors from a photo: a small copy, re-made without its location or camera details. For Make it with help, the model is sent the pattern’s fabric names and the choices you made; if you choose an earlier pattern of yours under “Sound like”, that one pattern’s words too.
• What a model never sees: your name, your email address, your account details, or your other quilts.
• Where it goes. Help’s requests are sent from our server to OpenRouter, an AI provider, which passes each one to the model that answers it (models made by companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic). Your browser never talks to a model directly.
• What we keep. Help keeps a log of each request it makes (the kind, the model, its size, cost and time); what you typed into it is deleted from that log after 30 days. A plan from Describe it, with your description, is deleted after 7 days. A photo for its colors isn’t kept. What you ask Help about a quilt with Ask Help, and what it suggested, is kept with that quilt’s suggestions until the quilt is deleted for good. Just tell it and Make it with help keep no copy of your words: we count your requests each month, and a pattern keeps a record of what Help suggested and whether you used it, so a published version can show how it was made. A quilt Help built keeps a short summary of what Help chose, with your account. What Help has noticed stays until you forget it.
• No training. We never use your quilts or designs to train AI.
• Turning it off. “Show Help” in Account and settings turns Help off everywhere: nothing of it is shown, and none of it runs. Check my quilt’s measurements stay, because they’re worked out by our code, not AI.

Export everything includes your Help settings, what Help has noticed and the quilts it made for you, and deleting your account deletes everything Help kept. Why: to give you Help when you ask for it. Lawful basis: contract.

Cookies and your device

We use cookies that Quarter Inch needs to work, and one more, qi_attr, only if you arrive from a link with campaign details (see our ads). There are no third-party advertising or tracking cookies, and otherwise our website sets no cookies at all. These are the app’s cookies (on a secure connection, the first one’s name starts with __Secure-):

The app also keeps a few things in your browser’s own storage on your device: files you’re saving while you sign in, changes not yet saved to our server, your undo history, a random ID for the device (so the app knows which changes are its own), and whether you’ve seen an explanation once. They stay on your device; you can clear them in your browser’s settings.

Who helps us run Quarter Inch

These companies process personal data for us, under contracts that only let them use it to provide their service to us. Stripe (with Onelink), Apple, Google and Meta also act as controllers of the data they hold for their own services.

We may also share data if the law requires it, or to protect people from fraud or harm.

Where your data is kept

Our servers, database and file storage are in the EU, in the Netherlands. Some of the companies above are based in the United States, or may handle data there or elsewhere. When personal data leaves the UK, we rely on the safeguards UK law provides: UK “adequacy regulations” for the country it goes to (including, for US companies certified to it, the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework), or the data transfer agreements approved by the Information Commissioner in our providers’ contracts. Ask us for details.

How long we keep it

• Your account and quilts: while you have an account.
• A quilt or file you delete goes to Recently deleted for 30 days, so you can restore it. Then it’s deleted for good, with its pictures and its original file (unless another file in your library still uses it).
• Earlier versions of a quilt: one a day, kept for 30 days. The version “as it came from EQ8” is kept as long as the quilt. The log of your changes is kept with its quilt.
• Exports: 7 days, then deleted.
• Help: what you typed is deleted from Help’s log after 30 days, and Describe it’s plans after 7. What you asked about a quilt stays with that quilt’s suggestions until the quilt is deleted for good. The rest goes with your account (see Help).
• Sign-in codes: they stop working after 10 minutes, or when you ask for a new one. Sign-in limit counts: a day.
• Sessions: kept with your account, so you can see where you’re signed in, and deleted with it.
• Which ad or campaign you came from: kept with your account and deleted with it. The IP address and browser details we pass to an ad company when you sign up are dropped as soon as it has them (a week at most if it can’t be reached).
• Deleting your account: you can delete it from Account and settings. We wait 30 days, in case you change your mind (signing in during that time lets you keep it). Then everything goes: your quilts, blocks, fabrics, original files, exports, settings, what Help kept, sessions, sign-in records and sign-up for updates.
• What we keep after that: a record of each purchase, for our accounts, with your name taken off and your email address replaced by a one-way code: what was bought, the amount, the dates and Stripe’s reference numbers. UK law requires companies to keep accounting records for at least six years. Stripe and Onelink keep their own records under their own policies.
• Sign-ups for updates: until you leave the list, or delete your account.
• Founding designer applications: while we run the founding designer program. They aren’t part of an app account, so deleting your account doesn’t remove one: ask us, and we’ll delete it.
• Messages through our contact page: 2 years after the last thing that happened to them (our reply, or our closing them), then deleted. Messages set aside as spam: 30 days. A file you attached: 90 days after we close the message (or set it aside as spam). The code made from your IP address is kept only in the count behind the hourly limit, which is cleared once its hour is up. Copies emailed to our admins stay in their inboxes until they delete them.
• Emails you send us: as long as we need them to help you and keep a record of what we agreed.
• Error reports and logs: for a limited time set by Sentry and Railway, then deleted.
• Backups: backups of our database are kept for a limited time and then replaced, so deleted data can stay in a backup until it is.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

• get a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
• have it corrected if it’s wrong;
• have it deleted;
• limit how we use it, or object to our using it on the basis of our legitimate interests;
• get it in a format you can take elsewhere;
• withdraw your consent, where we rely on it (such as our update emails), at any time.

You can do a lot of this yourself in the app: change your name and email in Account and settings, export everything, and delete your account. For anything else, write to hello@quarterinch.app. We’ll answer within one month. Some rights have limits: for example, we must keep purchase records for our accounts.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, please tell us first, and we’ll try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or 0303 123 1113.

Keeping it safe

Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Your files are private to your account: links to them are signed and short-lived. Sign-in codes are stored hashed, and we never have a password of yours to lose. Only the people who build and support Quarter Inch can reach our systems, and only to run them or help you.

Children

Quarter Inch isn’t meant for children, and we don’t knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you think we have, tell us and we’ll delete it.

Changes to this policy

When what we collect or how we use it changes, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change matters to you, we’ll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect. Our terms cover using Quarter Inch and buying a founding place.

Contact us

Email hello@quarterinch.app, or write to: