Privacy Policy

Vela (“we,” “us,” “our”) operates the website at vela.study. We are committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains what data we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, and your rights regarding that data.

Vela is operated by Bicycle LLC. For privacy inquiries, contact us at mike@peopleanalyst.com.

Account data. When you create an account, we collect your email address and store a hashed password. We never see or store your plaintext password.

Membership and billing. If you subscribe, payment is processed by Stripe. We store your Stripe customer ID and subscription status. We never see or store your card number.

Interaction data. When you use the player, we record your ratings, saves, and dwell time to personalize your experience. This data is tied to your account and is not shared with advertisers.

Gallery data. If you access a private gallery via an access code, we process your selected images and transformation preferences. Original and transformed images are stored in private cloud storage.

Contributions and model releases. If you contribute an image to the Vela library, we record your consent text, timestamp, IP address, and credit preference as a legal record.

We use your data to:

• Provide and personalize the Vela experience
• Process payments and manage memberships
• Deliver private gallery images and transformations
• Send transactional emails (purchase confirmations, gallery access)
• Improve our service through aggregate, anonymized analysis

We do not sell your data, serve advertising, or share your personal information with third parties for their marketing purposes.

Vela conducts peer-reviewed research on aesthetic perception. If you opt in via your preferences, your anonymized response data (ratings, timing, save behavior — never your identity or images) may be used in published research. You can withdraw consent at any time, and withdrawal is immediate. Data already included in published research remains anonymized and cannot be traced to you.

We use the following services to operate Vela:

• Supabase — database and authentication (privacy policy)
• Stripe — payment processing (privacy policy)
• Vercel — hosting (privacy policy)
• Resend — transactional email (privacy policy)
• Replicate — image transformation processing (privacy policy)
• Sentry — error monitoring, production only (privacy policy)

Vela uses only functional cookies required for authentication. We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics cookies. See our Cookie Policy for details.

Account data is retained for as long as your account is active. You may request deletion at any time.

Gallery images expire after 30 days by default. Purchased transformations remain available for download for one year from purchase.

Payment records are retained as required by tax and financial regulations (typically 7 years).

Interaction data is retained while your account is active and deleted upon account deletion, except for data already included in published research (which is anonymized and not traceable to you).

Under GDPR, CCPA, and similar regulations, you have the right to:

• Access — request a copy of all data we hold about you
• Rectification — correct inaccurate data
• Erasure — request deletion of your account and associated data
• Portability — receive your data in a machine-readable format
• Objection — opt out of research participation at any time

To exercise these rights, email mike@peopleanalyst.com or use the data export and account deletion features in your account settings.

Vela is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors.

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email to registered users. The “last updated” date at the top reflects the most recent revision.