Event photo album and GDPR: where are your memories and who can access them
Photos from an event are personal data, often intimate. Before entrusting the memories of your wedding or family to a service, it's worth knowing where they are stored and who can see them. Here's the essentials.
The real issue: where do your photos go
When you upload photos to an online service, they are stored on servers. The question is where these servers are located, how the data is protected, and what the service is allowed to do with it.
Many free tools earn money indirectly: selling data, targeted advertising, or using content to train models. For family memories, this deserves attention.
Hosting in the European Union or elsewhere
Hosting in the European Union places your data under the General Data Protection Regulation, one of the most protective in the world.
A service hosted outside the European Union may be subject to other, sometimes less protective, legislation that allows broader access to content. The location of the servers is therefore not a minor detail.
GDPR and your rights
GDPR gives you concrete rights: to be informed about the use of your data, to access it, to correct it, and to have it erased.
A compliant service must also apply minimization: only collect what is necessary, and delete data when it is no longer needed. Automatic deletion after the event is a good sign.
How to choose a respectful service
Check hosting in the European Union and media encryption.
Look for a clear commitment: no resale, no advertising, no training of third-party artificial intelligence on your content.
Ensure that access remains private, via link and code, and that media is automatically deleted after the event. This is the approach Fotelya follows.