Privacy Policy

The Media-Research Team builds and maintains Imizer, a set of free browser-based media tools. We are software developers, not a data business. We do not sell advertising audiences, we do not broker personal information, and we have no commercial interest in knowing who you are or what you are working on.

That is reflected in how the site is built rather than only in what this page promises. There is no user account system, no login, and no database of visitors or their files. Nothing you process is added to a library, a history or a training set. The tools were deliberately designed to run on your own hardware so that, for most of what the site does, there is simply no copy of your work for anyone to hold.

Tools that never upload anything

The following run completely in your browser using WebAssembly, Web Workers and the canvas APIs your browser already provides. No image data leaves your device, and these tools keep working if you disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded:

• PNG to WebP, and the WebP, PNG and JPEG converters
• Crop and resize
• Background removal: transparent, solid colour and blur

Tools that send your image to our server

AVIF and ICO cannot be produced by a browser, so those two tools work differently. Your browser prepares a lossless PNG of your image and sends it to our own encoder over an encrypted connection. The encoder converts it, returns the result, and the image exists only in the server's memory for the duration of that single request. We do not write it to disk, we do not log its contents, and we do not retain it afterwards. For the ICO generator only the small 16, 32 and 48 pixel renders are sent, never your full-size original.

Background removal model files

The background tools run an AI segmentation model on your device. The first time you use one, your browser downloads that model from this site, not from anywhere else. The model is open source and published by IMG.LY, but we host a copy of it ourselves precisely so that using these tools does not disclose your IP address to a third party. No request leaves this domain, and your image is not part of any download in the first place. Once your browser has the model it keeps it, so the download happens only once.

Information you give us

If you use the contact form, we receive the name, email address, subject and message you type into it. That is the only form on the site, and the only situation in which you deliberately give us personal information.

Information collected automatically

• IP address, for abuse prevention. When you use the AVIF converter, the ICO generator or the contact form, your IP address is held temporarily in the server's memory so we can enforce rate limits and stop the service being abused. It is not written to a database and is discarded when the time window passes or the server restarts.
• Standard server and hosting logs. Like almost every website, our hosting provider may record ordinary request information such as IP address, date and time, page requested, referrer and user agent, for security and reliability purposes.
• Aggregate page view counts. We use Ahrefs Web Analytics to see which pages are visited and how often. Ahrefs states that it is cookieless and does not build a profile of individual visitors. Loading their script does reveal your IP address and browser details to Ahrefs, as any third-party request would. We use it only to understand which tools people find useful.
• Google Analytics. We also run Google Analytics 4, which records page views, rough session information and device and browser details, and sets cookies holding a random identifier. Google states that GA4 does not log or store IP addresses. We never send it your name, your email or anything about the images you process.

What we do not collect or store

To be specific about what does not exist:

• No user accounts, logins, passwords or profiles. There is nothing to sign up for.
• No database of visitors, and no record connecting anyone to the files they processed.
• No stored copies of your images. Nothing you convert, crop, resize or cut out is saved by us, in any tool, at any point.
• No fingerprinting, and no cookies set by the image tools themselves. Analytics cookies are described in the cookies section below.
• No behavioural or advertising profiles built by us.
• No sale of personal information, and no sharing of it with third parties for their own marketing.
• No use of your images to train models. The background removal model is pre-trained, ships as a fixed file, and learns nothing from what you feed it.

For every tool other than AVIF and ICO, we never receive your image in the first place, so there is nothing for us to store, leak or hand over.

We use the limited information described above only to:

• Provide the conversion, editing and background removal tools you ask for.
• Encode AVIF and ICO files on request and return them to you.
• Read and reply to messages you send through the contact form.
• Apply rate limits and protect the service from abuse, spam and automated misuse.
• Keep the site secure, diagnose faults and understand and fix errors.
• Comply with legal obligations where they apply to us.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

The image tools themselves set no cookies: nothing you convert, crop or cut out causes anything to be stored in your browser. Analytics is the exception. Google Analytics sets first-party cookies, normally named _ga and _ga_<id>, which hold a randomly generated identifier so repeat visits can be counted as one visitor rather than several. They contain no name, email or anything you typed. Our other analytics tool, Ahrefs, is cookieless. Blocking or clearing these cookies does not affect any tool on the site.

Your browser does store the background removal model in its ordinary HTTP cache after first use, so the tool starts faster next time. That is a cached file rather than a cookie, it contains nothing about you, and clearing your browser cache removes it.

Third parties that serve advertising on this site do set cookies and use similar technologies. Those are described in the next section, and are controlled by the advertising companies rather than by us.

This site is supported by advertising. We use Google AdSense, and Google may work with other advertising vendors to fill the ad slots on our pages.

• Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites.
• Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
• Third-party vendors and ad networks may also use cookies, web beacons and similar technologies to measure the performance of ads and to limit how often you see the same ad.

How to control the ads you see

• You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google My Ad Center or Google Ads Settings.
• You can opt out of a third-party vendor's use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices, or for European visitors at www.youronlinechoices.eu.
• You can read how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
• You can also block or delete cookies through your browser settings, though this may affect how other websites work.

Opting out of personalised advertising does not remove ads. It means the ads you see are less likely to be based on your browsing history.

Advertisements are supplied by third parties and are not reviewed or endorsed by us. We do not control what an advertiser does with information collected through its own cookies, and their privacy policies apply to that activity rather than ours.

A small number of outside services are involved in running this site. Each has its own privacy policy governing what it does with data it receives:

• Our hosting provider, which serves the site and runs the AVIF and ICO encoders.
• Google Fonts, self-hosted at build time by our framework so that no request is made to Google when you load a page.
• Ahrefs Web Analytics, which counts page views and receives your IP address and browser details when its script loads.
• Google Analytics, which measures page views and sets the cookies described above.
• Our email provider, which delivers messages you send through the contact form.
• Google AdSense and its advertising partners, as described above.

If the UK or EU General Data Protection Regulation applies to you, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract or steps at your request — processing an image you submit to the AVIF or ICO tool, because you asked us to.
• Legitimate interests — keeping the service secure and available, enforcing rate limits, and replying to messages you send us.
• Consent — where required, for advertising cookies and personalised advertising. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we must retain or disclose information to comply with the law.

• Images sent to the AVIF or ICO encoder: held in memory for the length of the request only, then discarded. Not stored.
• IP addresses used for rate limiting: held in memory for the length of the rate limit window, then discarded.
• Contact form messages: kept in our email account for as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and to keep a record of the correspondence.
• Hosting and security logs: kept for the period set by our hosting provider.

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights over personal information we hold about you:

• To ask what personal information we hold and get a copy of it.
• To have inaccurate information corrected.
• To ask us to delete information we hold about you.
• To object to, or ask us to restrict, certain processing.
• To receive information you gave us in a portable format.
• To withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent.
• To complain to your local data protection authority.

In practice we hold very little about anyone. Unless you have used the contact form, we almost certainly hold nothing that identifies you. To exercise any of these rights, get in touch using the details in the final section.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, advertising and other non-essential cookies are only used where you have given consent, and you can change or withdraw that choice at any time.

Where we serve advertising to visitors in those regions, we do so in line with Google's EU User Consent Policy, which requires that consent be obtained for the use of cookies and for the collection and use of personal data for personalised advertising.

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA, California residents have the right to know what personal information is collected, to request its deletion or correction, to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights.

We do not sell personal information for money. The use of advertising cookies by third parties may be treated as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising under that law, and you can opt out using the advertising controls listed above or through a browser-based opt-out preference signal such as Global Privacy Control, which we honour where it is transmitted.

This site is a general-audience tool and is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal information through the contact form, tell us and we will delete it. Where local law sets a higher age of digital consent, that higher age applies.

Our hosting, email and advertising providers may process information in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where information is transferred out of the UK or EEA, we rely on the safeguards offered by those providers, such as standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision.

The site is served over an encrypted connection, and images sent to the AVIF and ICO encoders are transmitted over that same encrypted connection. Uploaded data is validated by checking the actual bytes of the file rather than trusting its name, is processed in memory and is never stored. The most meaningful security measure we can offer, though, is structural: for most tools nothing is transmitted at all, so there is no copy of your image anywhere for anyone to obtain.

No method of transmission or processing is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We may update this policy as the site changes. When we do, we will revise the date at the top of the page. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will make that clear on the site. Continuing to use Imizer after a change means you accept the updated policy.

For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights described above, use the Contact the developer form in the footer of any page, or the Something's Broken? button in the header. You can also email [email protected].

This site is operated by The Media-Research Team. See also our Terms of Service.