Aura takes customer privacy seriously and we only collect data that is necessary in order to provide our photo and video sharing services (= Functionality) and to improve our customers' experience (= Analytics).
| Aura will never sell your data |
This FAQ will explain the different permissions that the app may require to offer the full functionality. If you have any remaining concerns or questions, you can visit our full Privacy Policy or contact our Customer Care team directly.
1) Agreeing to Aura's Privacy Policy
As part of the app installation, we ask you to read and agree to our Privacy Policy. You can find a concise summary in this article or the full version on https://auraframes.com/privacy
| Note: Your photos, videos and photo library are never shared with anyone else or uploaded, except those individual photos that you add to a frame which are visible to all other invited members of the frame. |
2) Photo Access
Aura will never see your photo library even if you grant our app full access. Full access simply means that our app can present your photos so you can select them for the actual frame upload.
However, you can install and access the Aura Frames Android and iOS app without granting it any access rights to your photos or videos. This will still allow you to set up and control the frame via the app, but the app won't be able to upload any photos or videos from your device photo library unless you grant it the required photo permissions.
The first time you use the Aura app's "add photos" option, you will be asked to select one of the following photo/video access options (the exact terminology may differ from device to device):
1) Allow access to all photos
The easiest option and recommended by Aura. At any time, you can simply use the Aura app's "Add Photos" option to see and select any of your device's photos and albums. Your photo library still remains private since neither Aura nor any invited frame members can see it.
2) Allow access to select photos (iOS 14+ only)
This is a native iOS device feature so it is not available on Android or Google Photos. If you use the app on an iOS device, you can pre-select the photos and videos in your device library that the iOS app can see. Note: this means that the Aura app will never see any new videos, photos, or albums unless you have manually pre-selected them first. This option will also prevent the “auto-add” album syncing feature from working.
3) Don't allow access
The Aura app cannot see or upload any photos or videos from your device library. You will have to use "Other Options" to upload them to your frame, which includes:
- Using your smart device's Share Sheet functionality
- Uploading photos / videos via the Google Photos integration
- Sending photos via the email-to-frame feature
- Using Aura's Web Uploader
If you granted the Aura app photo access, but you are getting the following error message, you may be using a work phone with restricted configuration rights or other parental control settings that prevent these access rights. Please use the “Other Options” to upload your files.
3) Changing your Photo Access Settings
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You can change your Aura app photo permissions at any time by accessing your iOS or Android device's Settings menu (not in the app), tapping on the Aura app, and changing the "Photos" permissions.
Below is the iOS example, Android will slightly differ since it only offers two options (All Photos vs None): |
4) Optional: Smart Suggestions
During the initial app setup, you will also be able to select whether or not you wish to use the optional “Smart Suggestions” feature:
'Smart Suggestions' helps you find the best and most relevant photos in your photo library to display on your frame. In order to offer these recommendations, the Aura app will access your device's photo library and collect metadata, including facial recognition data, and upload this data to the cloud. This metadata is not shared or sold, and your photos themselves will never be uploaded without your permission. If you turn off Smart Suggestions, Aura will still have access to metadata about the photos you have uploaded, but Aura will not upload data about photos you have not shared with your frame(s).
How to turn off Smart Suggestions:
If you haven't toggled the 'Smart Suggestions' switch to OFF during the initial setup, you can do this at any time by following these steps:
- Tap on the "A" icon on your Aura Frames app home screen
- Tap on "View Account"
- Select "Smart Suggestions" and turn it to OFF
5) Google Photos Integration
This FAQ explains our Google Photos integration that allows you to easily send your photos from Google Photos to your frame.
In order to use this integration, users will have to grant the Aura app access to their Google Photos account so that the app can present the photos for you to select and upload. Only selected photos are then uploaded to our secure servers to be displayed on the frame.
6) Storage
Any photos or videos that you upload to your frame - via a smart device, the web uploader or Google Photos - are stored securely on your device and on Aura's cloud servers. Your frame will sync with our cloud database regularly to ensure photos and videos you add or remove from your frame in the app are removed or added to the frame.
A certain number of files will also be temporarily stored (= cached) on your Aura frame so that it can continue to display a very limited number of photos for a brief period of time during temporary WiFi connection loss.
The files are never shared with any third parties, or with other Aura users without your permission.
Additional security due to encryption
All data, including photos, are encrypted in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS) v1.2 at minimum as per Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recommendations.
Aura uploads and stores your photos and videos in a secure cloud database, protected and powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) with industry-standard two-factor authentication. In addition, data stored on Aura’s servers is encrypted at rest using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) to protect your files from unauthorized access. Each of these encrypted objects uses a unique and regularly rotated key.
If you would like to delete your Aura account and data, please do this from within your Aura App ("View Account" > "Account Data") or contact Aura Customer Care.
| Note: although any uploaded photos and videos are stored in our secure cloud database, we recommend that you also back up your photos separately. Aura does not specifically offer a backup service so we can't accept any responsibility for lost photos. |
7) Summary: permissions and reasons we may ask for
In addition to the above described photo and video access permissions (which are also listed in this table), the Aura app may use the following permissions in certain situations:
| PERMISSION | CONTEXT |
| Bluetooth | Required for the initial frame setup (to establish the WiFi connection). |
| Location | Android requires this app permission in order to offer Bluetooth support. |
| Camera | Used for adding your profile photos, scanning the Gift Setup Code, and using the Photo Scanner feature. |
| Photo Library | As described in this article. |
| Notifications | Used for the 'reactions' and 'comment' feature, Family Sharing, the app's 'Activity' stream, and Smart Suggestions. |
| Contacts (Android App) | Used for Family Sharing (we will never upload all your contacts to our servers). |