Privacy: what stays on your device, and what is sent

A picture you open here is read by your browser and never leaves it. Its pixels, its name and anything computed from it are never sent to us or to anyone else, and every file you download is produced by your browser. There is no account, no saved project and no advertising. The site does make three kinds of request, and this page names each one: the cut-out model, a cookie-free page-view count on the live site, and the contact form when you press send.

To separate a subject from its background the page needs a segmentation model: a file of numbers, 25 MB for the portrait model or 84 MB for the object model. The first time you ask for a cut-out, the page shows the size and waits for you to agree. It then downloads the model from our model file server and keeps it in your browser’s cache, so it is not downloaded again.

That request goes in one direction. It asks for the model file and carries nothing about your picture. Like any web request, it does reveal the ordinary details every request carries, such as your IP address and browser type, to the server that answers it. You can watch this in your browser’s network panel: after the model arrives, cutting out a picture makes no request at all.

The tools that need no model (white background removal and signature extraction) download nothing extra. To remove a stored model, clear this site’s data in your browser settings.

On the live site at bgimage.com, and nowhere else (not on preview copies or a local copy), the page loads Cloudflare Web Analytics, a small script served by Cloudflare. It sets no cookie, does not use local storage and does not follow you between sites. It reports aggregate figures to Cloudflare: the page address and the page that referred you, your browser, operating system and device type, an approximate country, and how quickly the page loaded. Cloudflare sees your IP address in the course of receiving that report, as any server does; it states that it does not use it to fingerprint or track visitors.

The analytics script has no access to your pictures, your cut-outs or the design in the background maker. We use the counts to see which pages are used and whether they load quickly.

The contact page is the one place where something you type leaves this site. When you press its send button, and only then, it sends what you entered (your name, email address and message) together with this site’s domain, bgimage.com, to a Google Forms form. It never sends a picture, a design or anything computed from either.

A background you build in the maker is written into the fragment of the page’s address, the part after the #, so that a link reproduces it. Browsers do not send the fragment to the server when they load a page. It is still part of the address, so scripts running on the page can read it and it travels with the link wherever you paste it. A fragment never holds a picture, a file name or a cut-out mask.

Only the cut-out model, in your browser’s cache, once you have agreed to download it. No cookie is set by this site, and nothing is kept in local storage or session storage. A recipe file is written only when you press Save recipe, and it goes to your downloads folder like any other file. Pictures are gone when you close the tab.

There is none. The site carries no advertising code and no advertising network sees these pages. If that ever changes, this page will change first and say exactly what the new script does.

If any of this changes, this page changes with it. A change that sent anything you open or make here would be a change to what the site is, not a revision to a policy. Questions can be sent through the contact page.

• AboutWhat this site is for, how it works, and who keeps it.
• TermsThe terms of use.
• BgImageRemove, change or make a background, with the picture kept on your machine.
• Remove backgroundThe background off any picture, as a full-size transparent PNG.