Privacy Policy

When you create an account with PaperKarma, your name, email and home (or business) addresses are collected. Your email is used for signing in and for receiving newsletter communications and communications related to the status of your junk mail "unsubscribe" requests. Your email is not sold, rented, or traded.

Images that you upload are kept on our servers in the United States. They are used to identify the publication/mail/etc., including with automated image-recognition and other machine-learning systems described below. The images are associated with your account and are shared with the original sender to help unsubscribe you after you confirm a request.
We do not give mailers your email address or phone number by default. A handful of larger mailers require an email and/or phone number to match or verify an opt-out. For those mailers only, we ask for your additional, specific consent before we furnish that extra information, we send it only for that opt-out, and we hold a written guarantee from each such company that it will not use the information for other purposes.
You may choose to share success stories on social media at your discretion. We do not require you to connect a social account to use PaperKarma.
We may also ask for demographic information, such as birthday or gender. These are fully controlled by you, and will not be sold or rented.

PaperKarma uses automated systems, including computer vision, image recognition, and other machine-learning or artificial-intelligence techniques, to:

• identify the sender or product from photos you upload so we can prepare an opt-out request;
• check quality, prevent fraud or abuse, and keep the service working; and
• improve PaperKarma’s own mailer-identification and request-routing models.

Photos of mail often include names, addresses, account numbers, and other details the sender printed. We treat that as personal information. When you confirm a request, we share the image plus your name and address with that sender, as you instruct us to. We do not include your email or phone number unless a mailer requires it for matching or verification and you have given additional, specific consent for that opt-out.

We do not sell your photos or personal information. We do not use the contents of your mail to build advertising profiles about you. We do not use your mail photos to train third-party general-purpose generative AI models (the kind used to write public text or generate public images). If a vendor’s tools would use PaperKarma customer photos to train their own general-purpose models, we will not enable that use.

Improving PaperKarma’s own identification models is part of providing the service you asked for. You can request account deletion as described below. Deletion removes associated photos from our active systems, subject to backups, legal holds, and copies already sent to mailers at your request (we cannot recall a letter already delivered).

If you visit our website, your web browser automatically sends us (and we may retain) information such as the:

• Internet domain through which you access the Internet (e.g., yourServiceProvider.com if you use a commercial Internet service provider);
• Internet Protocol address of the computer or device you are using;
• type of browser software and operating system you are using;
• date and time you access our site; and
• the Internet address of the site from which you linked directly to our site.

We will use this information as aggregate data to help us maintain this site, e.g., to determine the number of visitors to different sections of our site, to ensure the site is working properly, and to help us make our site more accessible and useful. We will not use this information to identify individuals, except for site security, fraud prevention, or law enforcement purposes. We will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information or you are a signed-in user of the Services.

We may use cookies and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember preferences, measure how the Site is used, and (where enabled) advertise PaperKarma on other sites and apps. You can refuse non-essential cookies in your browser; some features may then work less well.

Advertising and social platforms we may use for those purposes include Meta (Facebook and Instagram), X, Pinterest, Google, and TikTok, and similar social-media or advertising partners. Those platforms may set their own cookies or pixels when you visit PaperKarma or see our ads, according to their policies. We do not sell your mail photos, name, or address to them.

We use Google Analytics (including Google Analytics 4) to collect information about use of this site, such as how often users visit, which pages they visit, and which sites they used prior to coming here. We use that information to improve the Site and the Services. Google may process device identifiers and similar data as described in the Google Analytics Terms and the Google Privacy Policy. You can limit Analytics using Google’s browser add-on or by disabling cookies in your browser.

This website may use Google Ads (including remarketing) and comparable tools from the platforms named above to advertise to previous visitors. For example, we may show an ad to someone who visited PaperKarma but did not finish creating an account or choosing a plan.

Under some U.S. state privacy laws, advertising cookies can be treated as “sharing” personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising even when we do not sell your data for money. We still do not sell, rent, or trade your mail photos, name, or address. You can opt out of personalized Google ads at adssettings.google.com, use each platform’s ad settings, use industry tools such as the NAI opt-out, or email human@paperkarma.com.

We may use your Personal Information (i.e. email) to contact you with newsletters, marketing, or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions in any email we send.

We retain account, request, and image information for as long as needed to provide the Services, keep a record of opt-out requests you asked us to send, meet legal and accounting requirements, and resolve disputes. You may request deletion as described below.

Your account data, addresses, photos, and related records are stored in the United States (including on Amazon Web Services facilities we use in the U.S.). We do not routinely transfer customer data outside the United States. Access to production systems is limited and granted only to people PaperKarma authorizes for a specific task; outside developers do not have standing access. Data in transit is protected with HTTPS/TLS.

PaperKarma® does not sell, trade, or rent your information to third parties. We share your information to fulfill your request to unsubscribe with the original sender (who generally has your information already). By default that shared information is the uploaded image, your name, and your physical address.
We do not furnish your email address or phone number to a mailer unless that mailer requires it to match or verify the opt-out. For the handful of larger mailers that do, we ask for your additional, specific consent first, we send that extra information only for that opt-out, and we hold a written guarantee from each such company that it will not use the information for other purposes.
We also use processors who help us run the Services (for example U.S. hosting, payments, email delivery, analytics, and customer support) under contract. They are not allowed to use your information for their own marketing.
We will never share your information due to a creative interpretation of our privacy policy. You either request that we share, or else we won't, except as required by law or to protect PaperKarma, our users, or the public.
There is no grey area.

You can modify the name and the address associated with your account at any time via the Apps or your account on the Site.

Contact human@paperkarma.com and we will delete your account. iOS users can also request deletion in the PaperKarma app, under Settings.

As we continue to offer our customers new and improved services, we may modify our information collection/use practices. Should there be a material change, it will be reflected here in the Privacy Policy. The “Last updated” date at the bottom of this page will change when we post a revision.

To ensure compliance with Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, PaperKarma does not knowingly maintain information provided by children under the age of 13.

If you have any question about this Privacy Policy, please contact human@paperkarma.com or write to: PaperKarma, PO Box 178, Avon, CO 81620.