This policy explains what L21STUDIOS SARL does with the personal data you entrust to it when you use the l21studios.com website. Cameroon has no full equivalent of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): we apply this European standard to everyone, in addition to Cameroonian Laws No. 2010/012 (cybersecurity) and No. 2010/021 (electronic commerce).
1. Data controller
L21STUDIOS SARL, Michaus Hôtel, Ngousso, Yaoundé, Cameroun, represented by Daniel Noël MVONDO MVONDO (Leinad Mvondo), Managing Director (gérant). For any question about your data: contact@l21studios.com.
2. Data collected, field by field
We only ask for what is useful. Every field below has a reason to be there.
| Where | Field | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Identification (before a booking, an order or access to your account) | First name, surname, phone number, email address | To recognise you from one visit to the next, send you your login code and reply to you. The number or email address is verified with a one-time code. |
| Booking request | Type of event, dates, venue, description, approximate budget, services wanted | To prepare a suitable quote. |
| Contact form | Name, email, phone, subject, message | To reply to you. |
| Print order | Photos sent, sizes and frames chosen, town, delivery address if you choose delivery, Mobile Money number used to pay | To print, take payment, and deliver or hand over your prints. |
| Private galleries | Photos of your event, access history | To give you your photos online. |
| Photo book | Photos sent (original and lightweight copy), book design (page layouts, texts, style choices), delivery address if needed, Mobile Money number used to pay | To let you design your book and find it again on all your devices, and to print it, take payment and deliver it. |
| Photo upload by link or QR code (photo book) | Photos uploaded, optional first name of the person uploading | To add your loved ones' photos to your book. Only the owner of the book sees them; the person uploading sees nothing else. |
| Adviser code (business introducer programme), when you sign up or in your account | Code entered, date of your consent, adviser you are linked to | To link your account to the adviser who recommended you, so that they receive a commission on your purchases and you enjoy the benefit attached to their code. Only if you tick the consent box. |
| The editor's “A problem? An idea?” button | Your message, the page concerned, the type of browser | To fix problems and improve the editor. |
| Automatically | IP address, type of browser, pages requested (server technical logs) | To run the website and protect it against abuse (limit on the number of codes sent per address). |
Audience measurement: our server counts page views anonymously, without cookies and without keeping your IP address (details on the Cookies page).
What we do not do: no external measurement tool, no advertising tools, no social networks loaded in the page, no sale or rental of your data, no profiling.
3. Purposes and legal bases
- Performance of the contract: preparing a quote, carrying out the service, designing, printing and delivering your prints and photo books, giving you access to your galleries and your customer account.
- Legal obligation: keeping invoices and payment records (OHADA accounting law).
- Legitimate interest: website security, prevention of abuse, follow-up of requests.
- Consent: publication of your photos in our portfolio or on our social networks (see Image rights); linking your account to an adviser (see below). You can withdraw your consent at any time.
Linking to an adviser (business introducers)
Some people recommend L21STUDIOS and earn a commission on the purchases of the clients they bring in. If you enter an adviser's code (from a link you received or a code given to you in person) and tick the box “I agree that my L21STUDIOS adviser may see my first name and the amount of my purchases for 12 months”, your account is linked to that adviser for 12 months (Law No. 2024/017, Sections 9 and 21: consent, data minimisation).
- What the adviser sees: your first name and the initial of your surname, the date and amount of your purchases, and their commission. Never your number, your email, your address, your photos or the details of your orders.
- What you gain: the benefit attached to their code, on your first print order (free delivery or a discount, depending on the code).
- Duration: the link ends automatically 12 months after your consent. Every time the adviser views their area, the visit is logged.
- Withdrawal: write to us at contact@l21studios.com: the link is removed and the adviser no longer sees your later purchases.
We send no newsletter or promotional message without your explicit consent.
4. Who sees your data
The L21STUDIOS SARL team, within the limits of each person's role, and the technical service providers below, who act only on our instructions. Your data is hosted in Europe (Germany and the European Union, Switzerland), and in Cameroon for payments; some providers are American companies, but the servers we use are located in Europe.
| Provider | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Render Services, Inc. | application hosting (the website’s server) | United States, servers in Frankfurt (Germany) |
| Supabase, Inc. | database and accounts, and a few images of the website | United States, data in Frankfurt (Germany) |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | storage of order photos, galleries and website images (Cloudflare R2) | United States, data in the European Union |
| Infomaniak Network SA | domain name, email mailboxes, sending and receiving emails | Switzerland |
| Infobip Ltd | sending WhatsApp messages (login codes, updates) | European Union (Croatia), via Meta’s WhatsApp Business API |
| NotchPay | Mobile Money payment (Orange Money, MTN MoMo) | Cameroon |
| Replicate, Inc. | computing for the restoration of old photos by artificial intelligence (the photo is kept there only while it is being processed) | United States |
5. Retention periods
| Data | Period |
|---|---|
| Requests and quotes not followed up, contact messages | 24 months after the last exchange |
| Customer account and services provided | 5 years after the last service |
| Invoices, receipts, payments | 10 years (OHADA accounting obligation) |
| Photos sent for prints | 24 months after the prints are handed over, so that you can order them again |
| Photos sent for a creation (photo mosaic, shape, collage) | 6 months after handover |
| Finished creations (the printed file of your photo mosaic, shape or collage) | 24 months after handover |
| Photos from an order never paid or cancelled | 3 months after they were sent or the order was cancelled, without prior notice since nothing was bought |
| Photo books ordered | Photos sent: 6 months after handover. Print file of the book: 24 months after handover, for an identical reprint |
| Photo books never ordered, with their photos | 12 months after your last change |
| Photo restoration | Photo sent and versions not bought: 6 months after your last visit. Version bought in high definition: 24 months after purchase. Retouching by our team: 24 months after delivery. At the computing provider: only for the time needed to process it |
| Private galleries | 24 months after publication, extendable on request |
| Thumbnail and details of each order in your history | As long as your account (5 years after the last service) |
| Messages sent from the editor | 24 months |
| Link to an adviser (first name and purchases visible to the adviser) | 12 months after your consent; the record of the consent and of the commissions is kept with the payment records (10 years) |
| Login codes | 10 minutes, after which they no longer work |
| Technical logs | 12 months at most |
An order in progress keeps all its photos. For an order handed over, a photo book or a restoration, we let you know by email one month before the end of the period (and also one week before for a book). From your client account, you can then download all your photos at once, or keep them 12 more months, free of charge, in one click; you can renew this. At the end of the period, the photos first spend 30 days in a bin from which we can still put them back, then they are removed. Your orders, your invoices and the history of your services remain, for the periods given above.
More generally, deleting something in our tools moves it to a bin, from which it can be restored; it is never erased straight away: this is what lets us correct a mistake.
6. Your rights
You may access your data, have it corrected, have it deleted (except where the law requires us to keep it), object to a use, withdraw a consent, and obtain a copy of what you have sent us. Write to contact@l21studios.com from the email address or phone number we know you by; we reply within 30 days. If you disagree with our answer, you can refer the matter to ANTIC (Agence nationale des technologies de l'information et de la communication, the National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies) in Cameroon, or to the data protection authority of your country if you live in the European Union.
7. Security
The website is served over HTTPS. Data is encrypted at rest by our hosting providers. There is no customer password to protect: you log in with a one-time code, sent to your WhatsApp or your email and valid for 10 minutes. Access to the administration is restricted to the team, and sensitive operations (prices, refunds) are logged. The number of codes sent is limited per contact and per IP address.
In the event of a data breach likely to harm you, we will inform you within 72 hours of discovering it.
8. Cookies
The website sets no cookies until you log in, except for a 30-day functional cookie that remembers an adviser's code when you open their referral link, and a cookie that remembers the language you choose yourself (FR · EN button). Details are on the Cookies page.
9. Minors
Requests and orders are reserved for adults. Photographs of children are only published with the written consent of a parent or guardian.
10. Changes
The applicable version is the one published on the date of your visit, with its update date at the top of the page. Any significant change is notified to clients who have an online account.