Privacy Policy
Effective date: September 30, 2026
Cera helps ceramists document their work and share it with other ceramists and studios. It is operated by Minji (Cheri) Kim, doing business as Cera, in California, who is the controller responsible for your personal information.
This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who can access it, and your choices when using the Cera app and website.
If you belong to or manage a studio, the Studio information and access section explains the additional rules for studio-owned content.
For questions, contact hello@madewithcera.com.
What we collect
Account and profile information
When you create an account, we collect your email address, password, first and last name, and username. Our sign-in provider stores your password in a hashed form that we cannot read. If you sign in with Apple or Google instead, we don't receive or store a password. We receive your name, your email address, and an account identifier from Apple or Google. If you choose Apple's "Hide My Email", we receive a private relay address that forwards to you instead of your real email. You can change your name before creating your profile.
Your display name is your first and last name together ("First Last"). It is visible to signed-in users and on public share previews. It changes if you edit your first or last name in Edit Profile. You can also add profile details such as a photo, bio, location, website, Instagram handle, and home studio.
Content and activity
We store the content you add to Cera, including photos, posts, clay and glaze details, firing information, test tiles, projects, drafts, reference photos, and notes.
We also store your likes, saves, collections, follows, and studio tags, along with requests to add studios or materials and any catalog corrections you submit.
Reports and blocks
When you report content or another user, or block someone, we store that report or block.
Photo metadata
Photos can contain hidden details, such as where they were taken. Cera removes this metadata before uploading photos so it is not stored with them or shown to others.
Technical information
Our hosting provider records technical information when the app connects to our servers, such as IP addresses, request times, and device or app information. We use these logs to operate and secure Cera.
To deliver fixes and improvements, Cera uses an app code-update service. In builds that include its updater, the app contacts the service at launch to check for updates. The service receives technical information such as the app version, platform, and IP address to check for and deliver those updates.
The update service also uses a randomly generated installation identifier to count active installations for service operation and billing. It is not your Cera account ID or an advertising identifier.
Beta testing
If you use a beta version of Cera through Apple TestFlight or Google Play, we may receive testing information made available by those services, such as diagnostic reports and feedback you choose to provide.
We use this information to troubleshoot problems and improve Cera, and retain it only as long as needed for those purposes. Apple and Google explain their own data practices in their respective privacy notices.
Advertising and analytics
The Cera mobile app does not include advertising or behavioural analytics. Our app-update service collects limited technical information as described above. We don’t track you across other apps or websites or sell your personal information.
Our website, madewithcera.com, uses analytics, including on shared post and profile preview pages. See Website analytics below for details.
Device permissions
Cera requests access to:
- Photos, so you can browse previews and choose images to add. Only the photos you select are uploaded; previews stay on your device. If you grant access to selected photos only, Cera can access only those photos.
- Camera, so you can take photos within the app.
You can change these permissions in your phone’s Settings at any time.
Drafts that haven’t synced remain stored on your device.
Where your operating system and app settings permit backups, on-device drafts may be included in backups managed by your device or cloud-backup provider. Cera’s Android app is configured to exclude app data from cloud backups and device transfers.
How we use your information
We use your information to:
- Run Cera’s features, including accounts, profiles, posts, projects, drafts, search, studio tools, and syncing across devices.
- Display your posts and profile as described in the sharing section below.
- Keep Cera safe by reviewing reports, preventing abuse, and enforcing our Terms.
- Send account-related messages, such as signup confirmations, password resets, and notices about important changes to Cera or this policy.
- Troubleshoot problems and improve the app.
Legal bases for EEA users
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Provide the services you request, including your account, posts, projects, sharing, studio features, and essential service messages | Performance of our contract with you |
| Keep Cera safe, moderate content, prevent abuse, and secure the service | Our legitimate interests in protecting people and operating a safe service |
| Understand website and share-link usage through optional analytics | Your consent for visitors in the EU, EEA or UK, and when we cannot determine your region. Elsewhere, our legitimate interests in understanding and improving Cera, where permitted by law and where those interests do not override your rights |
| Send waitlist launch and early-access emails | Your consent, which you can withdraw by contacting us |
| Respond to legal requests where we are legally required to do so | Compliance with a legal obligation |
Where applicable law requires consent for a particular use, we rely on consent rather than legitimate interests. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests by contacting us.
Who can see your information
Information visible to others
Your published posts and certain profile details are visible to other signed-in users. These include your username, display name, profile photo, bio, website, Instagram handle, follower and following counts, and studios you’re tagged with. Your home studio is also visible unless you hide it.
Follower and following lists are not public. Each follow relationship is visible to the two people involved, administrators managing a studio involved in that relationship, and Cera’s operator.
Although the Cera app requires sign-in, some public information, such as shared previews and profile photos, may also be accessible outside the app without signing in.
Shared links and public previews
To make it easier to share your work and profile with others, Cera provides public previews of shared posts and profiles on madewithcera.com. Anyone with the link can view the preview and pass it on without signing in.
- Post previews can show the post photo, title, caption, creator’s display name, username and avatar, and clay and glaze swatch colours or public catalogue swatch photos. The preview does not expose structured material names or amounts. Anything you include in the photo, title or caption is still visible.
- Profile previews can show the display name, username, avatar and bio.
We mark share pages so search engines are asked not to index them. This is not an access restriction. Messaging and social apps may save link cards or cached previews; we cannot recall copies already sent or stored by those services.
Information private to you
Your email address and profile location are not shown to other users.
Your private personal posts, drafts, projects, reference photos, private notes, saves, and collections are also private. Private posts are not included in public share previews. Studio-owned content has different access rules, explained in Studio information and access below.
Operator access
To help with support requests, investigate abuse, keep Cera running, and meet legal obligations, Cera’s operator may need to access account information or content. The operator has administrative access to this information, including email addresses and private content. “Private” means not visible to other ordinary users; it does not mean inaccessible to Cera’s operator.
Blocking
When you block someone—or they block you—you won’t see each other’s posts or profiles while signed in.
Blocking doesn’t make public information private. It may still be accessible while signed out or through another account.
Who we share your information with
We don’t sell your personal information. We use the following service providers to operate Cera:
- Supabase stores app and waitlist information and provides account sign-in and photo storage.
- Apple and Google let you sign in with your Apple or Google account if you choose to. They tell us who you are; we don't share your Cera content with them.
- Resend sends account emails, such as signup codes and password resets.
- Cloudflare hosts our website, processes waitlist signups, helps prevent signup abuse, and routes emails sent to hello@madewithcera.com.
- PostHog helps us understand website usage. Analytics information is stored in Frankfurt, Germany, and retained for one year under our current plan.
- Shorebird checks for and delivers app code updates using technical information such as app version, platform, and IP address.
These providers must protect your information and use it only to provide their services to us.
Apple and Google distribute Cera through their app stores and beta-testing services. Their handling of information is governed by their respective privacy policies.
We may also disclose information when required by law, to protect people’s safety, or as part of a merger or sale of Cera. We’ll notify you before a merger or sale involves your information.
Keeping and deleting your information
You can edit or delete your posts, drafts, and profile details in the app.
How long we keep information
- Unfinished sign-ups: if you start creating an account but never finish (for example, you sign in with Apple or Google but don't choose a username, or never confirm your email), we delete that sign-in after 7 days.
- Account information and personal content: while your account exists, unless you delete the content earlier; account deletion follows the 30-day waiting period below.
- Waitlist information: until launch and early-access communications are complete, or until you ask us to remove it, whichever comes first.
- Website and share-page analytics: one year under our current analytics plan.
- Reports: reports you submit are deleted when your account is permanently deleted. Reports about your account or content may remain for safety and abuse prevention. There is currently no fixed automatic deletion period for those retained reports.
- Notifications and studio join attempts: your account’s notifications and join attempts may remain while your account exists and are removed with it, although some records may be removed earlier. Notifications received by other people may remain with the link to your deleted account removed.
- Studio project edit history: retained with the studio project. When your account is deleted, its entries are no longer linked to you.
Deleting a project
Deleting a project hides it immediately on your device and removes it from your other devices when they next sync.
Deleting a project removes its saved content and queues its photos for permanent deletion. Queued photos become eligible for the nightly cleanup after one day. We retain a minimal deletion marker so your other devices can sync the deletion. Photos still used elsewhere in Cera are not removed by deleting this project.
Deleting your account
You can request account deletion in Settings → Account & Security → Delete account. Your posts are hidden immediately.
You can also request account deletion through our account deletion page.
After a 30-day waiting period, our nightly deletion process permanently removes your account and the information you own. This includes your profile, personal posts, projects, drafts, photos, private notes, presets, personal materials and tags, studio and administrator-access requests, likes, follows, saves, account notifications, studio join attempts, and reports you submitted.
If you signed in with Apple, deleting your account also cancels Cera's access to your Apple sign-in.
The waiting period applies to standard account closure. If you exercise a legal right to have your information erased, we assess your request separately and handle it within applicable legal deadlines; the waiting period does not automatically apply.
To cancel your deletion request during the waiting period, email hello@madewithcera.com. If your account is restored, your posts remain unpublished until you choose to republish them.
Information that may remain
Studio profiles you requested for the directory remain listed. Clays and glazes you contributed to the shared catalog also remain.
Studio-owned content follows the rules in Studio information and access below.
Some information may remain briefly in backups until those backups expire.
Reports filed by other people about your account or content may remain for safety, even after account deletion. Reports you filed are deleted with your account.
Studio information and access
Your personal content stays yours. Joining a studio or tagging it in a post does not transfer ownership of your content to the studio or give its administrators access to your private personal content. The studio-owned content rules apply only to content created or contributed on behalf of the studio.
Studios can own their own studio posts, projects, and drafts on Cera. One or more administrators manage each studio and its contents.
What administrators can see
Studio administrators can view and manage all studio-owned content, including drafts, reference photos, project notes, and private notes on studio posts.
Being a studio administrator does not grant access to your private personal content.
When someone edits a studio project, we record who made the change and when. Studio administrators can view this history. Personal projects do not keep this edit history.
Studio blocking
Administrators can block someone on behalf of the studio, which removes that person’s work from the studio’s showcase.
This is separate from personal blocking and does not change what administrators can see through their own accounts.
Deleting a studio project
Deleting a studio project hides it and removes it from other devices when they next sync.
Deleting a studio project removes its saved content and queues its photos for permanent deletion. Queued photos become eligible for the nightly cleanup after one day. We retain a minimal deletion marker so other devices can sync the deletion. Photos still used elsewhere in Cera are not removed by deleting this project.
When you delete your account
Studio-owned posts and projects you contributed to remain with the studio. Clays and glazes you added to the studio’s shelf also remain.
Your entries in studio project edit history remain, but they are no longer linked to you.
Studio profiles
Studio names, locations, and addresses are public.
Our website
Waitlist
When you join the waitlist at madewithcera.com, we collect your email address, signup date, and any optional answers you provide: whether you are a ceramist, a studio, or both, and whether you use iPhone or Android.
We store this information separately from the app, with our database provider in Canada. We use it to contact you about Cera’s launch and early access, including invitations relevant to your answers. We delete it when launch and early-access communications are complete, or when you ask us to at hello@madewithcera.com, whichever comes first.
Our website hosting provider records technical logs and briefly uses your IP address to limit repeated signup attempts. The website has no advertising.
Website analytics
To understand which parts of the website people use and where we can improve the experience, we collect analytics. This includes page and section views, waitlist interactions, and basic browser, device, and referral information.
To understand how people discover Cera through shared work and profiles, share links may include a referral code in the utm_content tag. Cera can link that code to the person who shared the link; it is not anonymous to Cera. Share pages send page views and button interactions, the app or browser used to open the page (opened_in), and referral tags (UTM tags) to our analytics provider so we can understand how those links are used.
Our analytics provider uses IP addresses to estimate location and filter bots, then discards the raw IP addresses.
Our analytics use temporary identifiers held in memory. We save your analytics preference in your browser’s local storage, separately from those identifiers, so we can remember your choice for up to 180 days. We don’t record browsing sessions or send your email address to our analytics provider.
We ask for your permission before enabling analytics when you visit from the EU, EEA or UK, or when we cannot determine your region. You can decline or withdraw permission through Analytics preferences on the website. Declining does not affect your ability to use the website or join the waitlist. Withdrawing permission stops future analytics; it does not undo processing that happened before withdrawal.
Age requirements
Cera is for people aged 18 and older. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe someone under 18 has a Cera account, contact hello@madewithcera.com so we can delete it.
Your privacy rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, download, or delete your personal information, or object to how we use it.
To make a request, email hello@madewithcera.com. We’ll respond within 30 days. You can also request account deletion directly in the app.
European Economic Area residents
You may have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a portable copy of your personal information, and to restrict or object to certain uses of it. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting processing that happened before withdrawal.
To exercise these rights, email hello@madewithcera.com.
If you have concerns about how we handle your information, please contact us. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.
California residents
Under California law, including the CCPA as amended by the CPRA, you can request information about the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, and request a copy.
We don’t sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. We don’t use sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you, and we won’t treat you differently for exercising your privacy rights.
We may need to verify your identity before completing a request.
Do Not Track
We don’t track you across other apps or websites. Our website analytics do not currently respond to browser “Do Not Track” signals.
Where we store your information
Cera’s app information is stored with our database provider in Oregon, United States. Website waitlist information is stored with the same provider in Canada, and website analytics are stored with our analytics provider in Frankfurt, Germany.
If you use Cera from another location, your information is transferred to these locations.
When your information is transferred outside the EEA, we use safeguards required by applicable law, such as European Commission-approved Standard Contractual Clauses. You can contact hello@madewithcera.com for information about the safeguards that apply to your data.
How we protect your information
We use encrypted connections, access controls, and private storage for non-public photos to help protect your information.
Changes to this policy
If we make a meaningful change to this policy, we’ll update the effective date and notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect.
Contact us
If you have questions about this policy or your information, email hello@madewithcera.com.