Privacy Policy

PhotoBalance has no server, no database and no backend. There is nowhere for your data to go, and that is a property of how it is built, not a promise about how it is operated.

Last updated: 25 August 2026

Who is responsible

PhotoBalance is an independent tool published at photobalance.emergence.md. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google LLC. Contact: contact@photobalance.emergence.md.

What PhotoBalance accesses

PhotoBalance has two independent modes, and the more detailed one uses no Google account at all.

1. The storage split (optional Google sign-in)

If you sign in, PhotoBalance requests a single OAuth scope:

• https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file

It uses that token for exactly one request — Google Drive's about.get endpoint — to read your storage quota: your plan size, your total usage, and how much of it is Drive. That is the entire set of data retrieved. Your name and email address are read only to display which account you are looking at.

drive.file is Google's non-sensitive access tier. It grants an application access only to files that the application itself creates, or that you explicitly open with it through Google's own file picker. PhotoBalance does neither, so the token it holds cannot read, list or modify any file, message or photo of yours. There is no broader scope available to it and none is requested.

The access token is held in your browser's sessionStorage and disappears when you close the tab. Signing out revokes it.

2. The Takeout breakdown (no account, no connection)

If you analyse a Google Takeout export, the archive is opened by your own browser from your own disk. It is never uploaded, transmitted or copied anywhere. PhotoBalance reads only the archive's internal file index — the list of names, sizes, checksums and dates that every ZIP file carries at its end — which is typically a few hundred kilobytes even for an archive of tens of gigabytes. No photo or video is ever decompressed, opened or looked at. This mode makes no network requests whatsoever.

What is stored, and where

Everything is stored on your own device, by your own browser:

• IndexedDB (photobalance) — the index built from your Takeout export: filenames, sizes, checksums, folder names and dates. Never image data.
• localStorage (photobalance_gmail_bytes) — the Gmail figure you optionally enter, so the split survives a reload.
• sessionStorage (photobalance_token_…) — the access token, until the tab closes.

You can delete all of it from Settings → Delete local index, by signing out, or by clearing site data in your browser. Nothing is retained anywhere else, because there is nowhere else.

What is not collected

• No account, registration or password — PhotoBalance has no user accounts.
• No photos, videos, file contents or thumbnails, in either mode.
• No cookies, no tracking pixels, no advertising, no fingerprinting.
• No data sent to the publisher or to any third party.

Analytics

The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless: it records aggregate page views and referrers, and does not set cookies, use localStorage, or fingerprint visitors. It cannot see your Google data, your storage figures or your Takeout export.

Hosting

The pages are static files served by Cloudflare Workers. Cloudflare processes standard server request logs (IP address, user agent, timestamp) as part of delivering the site. No application data reaches the host, because the application does not send any.

Google API Services Limited Use disclosure

PhotoBalance's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

In particular, PhotoBalance does not:

• transfer Google user data to any third party;
• use Google user data for advertising, or serve ads of any kind;
• sell Google user data, under any circumstances;
• allow humans to read Google user data — no employee, contractor or operator of PhotoBalance can access it, because it never leaves your device;
• use Google user data to develop, improve or train generalized or non-personalized artificial intelligence or machine-learning models.

Revoking access

Sign out inside PhotoBalance to revoke the token immediately, or remove it at any time from your Google Account's third-party access page.

Your rights

Because PhotoBalance holds no data about you, there is nothing for it to disclose, correct or erase on request — deleting your browser's site data is complete erasure. If you have a question about this policy, write to contact@photobalance.emergence.md.

Changes

If a future version of PhotoBalance requests a different scope or stores something new, this page changes before that version ships, and the date at the top is updated.