Valentina Fernández Salmerón (“we”, “us”, or “our”) operates the Especia mobile app, the Especia Pro mobile app, the Especia Pro web platform, and the especia.app websites. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our services.
1. Information We Collect
Account Information: Name, email address, username, and password when you register.
Profile Information: Photos, videos, physical measurements (height, build), age, ethnicity, location, bio, and agency affiliation that you choose to provide. Ethnicity is optional.
Identity Verification Information: For the paid verified model subscription, Stripe collects a government ID, matching live selfie, legal identity details, and date of birth. Especia stores the result, verified age, private date of birth, and one-way anti-duplication fingerprints. We do not store ID images, selfies, or raw document numbers.
Content You Create: Portfolio photos, videos, posts, captions, comments, and messages you post or send through the platform.
Communities & Reviews: Communities you create or join, community messages, join requests, and reviews you write or receive after a completed job, including whether a review was posted anonymously.
Agency Data: Agency name, profile, roster information, job postings, casting calls, and application records (Especia for Agencies).
AI Assistant: If you use the AI assistant on the Especia Pro web platform, we store your conversations and process any images or PDFs you attach.
Payment Data: Subscription plan, purchase identifiers, delivery records, and billing status. Apple processes Verified Model payments and Especia Pro purchases made through the App Store; Stripe processes Especia Pro purchases made on the web. We do not store complete payment-card numbers.
Device Permissions: With your permission, the apps use your camera, microphone, and photo library to capture and upload content. If you turn on calendar sync, confirmed jobs are added to your device calendar. Your device location is used on your device to show nearby models and castings and is not sent to our servers; the location on your profile is the city you choose.
Usage & Device Data: How you use the platform, the videos you watch and for how long, likes and comments, device type, operating system, push-notification tokens, and crash reports via Firebase Crashlytics.
2. How We Use Your Information
- Provide and maintain the Especia platform
- Display profiles to agencies and other users
- Process job applications and connect models with opportunities
- Facilitate messaging between users
- Manage subscriptions, apply agency roster limits, and activate verified subscriber benefits after identity and age eligibility checks
- Send notifications about jobs, applications, and account activity
- Screen uploaded content for safety before and after it is published
- Count video views and understand what kinds of videos you watch
- Answer requests you make to the AI assistant on the Especia Pro web platform
- Improve the platform through analytics and crash reporting
- Enforce our Terms of Service and protect against misuse
3. Legal Bases for Processing
Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we rely on the following legal bases:
- Contract: to provide your account, profile, messaging, job applications, subscriptions, and the other features you use.
- Legitimate interests: to keep the platform safe (content moderation, fraud and duplicate-identity prevention), understand viewing activity, and improve the service through analytics and crash reports. You can object to this processing at any time.
- Consent: for device permissions, calendar sync, push notifications, optional search-engine indexing of your public portfolio, and optional sharing with Apple for refund reviews. You can withdraw consent at any time in the app or in your device settings.
- Legal obligation: where we must keep or disclose data to comply with the law.
Ethnicity is a special category of personal data. We process it only if you choose to add it to your profile, which you do with your explicit consent, and you can remove it at any time in your profile settings. We do not use ethnicity to rank or recommend content.
4. Automated Processing & AI
Content moderation: Uploaded photos, videos, and text are screened automatically using Google services (the Gemini API, Cloud Video Intelligence, Cloud Vision, and Cloud Natural Language). Content that passes every check can be published automatically. Flagged content is held or hidden until a person reviews it; automated screening never removes your content permanently on its own.
Viewing activity: When you watch a video, we record how long you watched it, whether you liked or commented on it, and the creator's agency, build, height, and age. We use this to count views and to build a summary of the kinds of videos you watch, which we may use in the future to order your feed. Your feed is currently shown in chronological order.
AI assistant: Requests to the Especia Pro AI assistant, together with the agency data it needs and any files you attach, are sent to Google's Gemini API to generate a reply. The assistant never sends messages, invitations, or posts without your confirmation.
You can ask for a person to review any automated moderation decision by contacting us. founder@especia.app
5. How We Share Your Information
With Agencies: When you apply to a job or casting call, the posting agency can see your profile, portfolio, and application details.
With Models: Agency profiles and job postings are visible to models on the platform. When an agency accepts an application, the model can see relevant job details.
With Other Users: Other signed-in users can see your public profile, your posts, your messages in communities you join, and reviews about you. Anonymous reviews do not show the author's name or the job.
Publicly: If your profile is public, anyone with the link can view your portfolio page on the Especia website. It appears in search engines only if you turn on search-engine indexing. Community invite links show basic details such as the community's name and image.
Service Providers: We use Firebase and Google Cloud (Google) for authentication, database, storage, analytics, push notifications, and content moderation, and Google's Gemini API for content moderation and the AI assistant. Apple delivers iOS push notifications and processes Verified Model payments and Especia Pro App Store purchases. Stripe processes Especia Pro web payments and, through Stripe Identity, government IDs and matching selfies under its Data Processing Agreement (stripe.com/legal/dpa). Resend delivers transactional emails. Vercel hosts our websites and measures website traffic. Maps on the Especia Pro web platform load map images from OpenStreetMap, which receives your IP address. These providers process data on our behalf under contractual obligations. With your optional consent, Especia Pro shares purchase-linked subscription delivery status and whether plan information was provided before purchase with Apple to help review refund requests. You can withdraw consent in the app to stop future sharing, and request a refund without sharing. To request access to or deletion of data already shared with Apple, visit privacy.apple.com.
We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
6. Cookies & Analytics
The Especia websites use essential cookies and local storage for sign-in and session management. We use Firebase Analytics in the apps and on the Especia Pro web platform, and Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights on our websites, which measure visits and page performance without cookies. We do not use advertising cookies or trackers.
7. Data Retention
We retain personal data while your account is active. Stripe Identity data is automatically submitted for redaction after Especia records the result; redaction may take up to four days. Especia retains the private verification result, verified date of birth, and one-way anti-duplication fingerprints while needed for eligibility and fraud prevention. AI assistant conversations are kept until you delete them. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, content, messages, viewing activity, and related records, except data we must keep by law or to prevent abuse. Reviews you wrote on behalf of an organization stay on the reviewed profile without your name.
8. Your Rights
Depending on your location, you may have the following rights:
- Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- Rectification: Correct inaccurate or incomplete personal data
- Erasure: Request deletion of your personal data
- Data Portability: Request your data in a structured, machine-readable format
- Restriction: Request that we limit processing of your data
- Objection: Object to processing of your data for certain purposes
- Withdrawal of Consent: Where processing is based on consent, withdraw it at any time
To exercise these rights, contact us at founder@especia.app. We will respond within 30 days.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, such as the Spanish Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (aepd.es).
9. International Data Transfers
Your data is processed using Google, Apple, Stripe, Resend, and Vercel infrastructure, which may involve transfers to servers outside your country of residence. Where data is transferred outside the European Economic Area, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place (e.g., Standard Contractual Clauses).
10. Children's Privacy
Especia is intended for users aged 18 and over. For the Verified Model subscription, Stripe Identity checks age. If a check shows that someone is under 18, verified subscriber benefits are not activated and provider data is submitted for redaction. If you believe someone under 18 has provided us with personal data, contact us.
11. Data Security
We implement industry-standard security measures including encryption in transit (TLS), secure authentication via Firebase Auth, and access controls. No method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
12. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy and updating the “Last updated” date. Your continued use of the platform after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.
13. Contact Us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your rights:
Valentina Fernández Salmerón
Email: founder@especia.app