Privacy

What we store, why we store it, and how to get rid of it. In plain English, because a policy nobody reads protects nobody.

Who we are

LCD Wizard is operated by lcdwizard.com, of 77 Forrestal Street, Edzell Woods, Scotland, DD9 7XG. It runs lcdwizard.com and app.lcdwizard.com, and is the data controller for the personal data described here.

Contact us about anything in this policy at admin@lcdwizard.com. That address reaches a person, not a queue, and it is also the address to use for any of the rights set out below.

This policy was last updated on 22 October 2026.

What we collect, and why

If you use the designer without an account

You can open the designer, build a design and generate code a handful of times without registering. To meter that we create a guest record holding:

• a generated handle, such as copper-quarry-7145, which is what the activity log shows instead of a name;
• how many generations you have used;
• your IP address. IPv4 is stored in full. IPv6 is truncated to its /64 prefix, because the rest of an IPv6 address is yours to change at will and would make the record meaningless;
• when the record was created and last used.

We store the address because the guest allowance is a lifetime one and is counted against the connection rather than the browser. Without it, clearing your cookies would reset the allowance, which would make it no allowance at all. It is used for that and for spotting automated abuse - nothing else. We do not attempt to identify you from it and we do not combine it with anything else.

If you create an account

• Email address. Required: it identifies the account, confirms it, and is how a password reset reaches you. Addresses at temporary inbox services cannot be used to register, because we would have no lasting way to reach you; we check the address's domain against a public list and store nothing about a refused address.
• The browsers you are signed in on. An account can be signed in on two at a time. For each one we keep a random identifier (also held in a cookie in that browser), a short description worked out from your browser when you sign in, such as "Chrome on Windows", when you signed in there and when it was last used, and, once it is signed out, when and how (by you, from another of your devices, to make room for a new one, or by us). We do not keep your IP address, your browser's full user-agent string or anything worked out from your address. You can see the list, and sign any of them out, under Edit profile in the designer. Our admins can see the same list, and are shown when an account has changed devices unusually often, so that they can look at whether it is being shared or sold on, which our terms do not allow. Nothing is decided automatically from it.
• Password. Stored only as a bcrypt hash. We cannot read it, and neither can anyone who obtains the database.
• Display name and avatar, if you set them. Both appear next to anything you publish, comment on or write in the forum. If you set no display name, the first part of your email address (before the @) is shown instead. An avatar is made small in your browser before it is uploaded: 256 px from the designer, 128 px from the forum.
• A Google account identifier, if you choose to sign in with Google, so the same account is found next time.
• A Discord account identifier and the name Discord shows for it, if you link your Discord account by typing /link in our Discord server. Nothing else comes from Discord. Our bot there is told, for each linked account, that identifier and two yes-or-no answers - whether the account is Pro and whether it has supported us - so it can give the Pro role and the Supporter badge. Unlinking, from Edit profile or with /unlink, removes both.
• The day a support through Buy Me a Coffee was first tied to your account, if one was, which is what the Supporter badge goes by.
• Whose link you came through, if you registered through somebody's link. A creator can see who signs up through their referral link or one of their tracking links, so that they can tell what each video or post brings in. They see your display name, the day you joined and which of their links you used. They never see your email address. If you have set no display name, they see none. Whether you go on to confirm your address or buy anything goes into the link's totals, and is not shown beside your name.
• Plan, credit balance and usage counters - how many generations you have used in the current period, and a lifetime total.
• A Stripe customer reference, once you have opened a checkout, and a record of each checkout: what it was for, the amount, when it was opened and whether it was paid, with Stripe's reference for the payment. A checkout that was never paid is deleted after 180 days. See below.

What you make

• Saved projects. Stored on the server so you can open them from another machine. Private to your account unless you publish them. The pictures and fonts in them, in their earlier versions and in your gallery copies are stored once for your account, with our storage provider Backblaze, in the EU.
• Earlier versions of saved projects. On Pro, each save also keeps a copy of the project as it was, with the time and the name of whoever saved it, so that you can go back to it. Private to your account, like the project.
• Published designs. Publishing to the gallery takes a copy of the design and makes it, its previews, its title and its description public, with your display name and avatar against it. You can unpublish at any time.
• Comments and likes. Public, with your display name and avatar.
• Forum threads and posts. What you write in the forum, as plain text, with the time, your display name, your avatar and any badge your account has (Admin, Creator, Pro, Supporter). The forum is not public, but every signed-in member can read it. We also keep how far you have read each thread, so the site can show what is new and count replies to you. If you report a post, the report goes to our team as a message in your inbox, with a link to the post and its opening words.
• Pictures and clips you put on a forum thread or tutorial. Before a picture leaves your browser it is drawn again and saved as a new file, and a clip is played and recorded again, at most ten seconds long. That leaves behind what a phone or a camera writes into a file: where it was taken (GPS), the camera's make and settings, the date, comments and thumbnails. Our server then takes every file apart again and removes anything of that kind that is still there, whatever sent it. The files are kept with our storage provider Backblaze, in the EU, count towards your account's storage, and are handed only to signed-in members, through our server, at addresses that stop working after a few hours. A picture can still show something about where it was taken - a street, a house, a face - so look at it before you post it.
  Every picture and clip is checked for explicit content before it is kept. The check is an open model that runs on our own server; nothing is sent to anybody else for it, and nobody looks at your picture to do it. One the check takes for pornographic, explicit or sexual content is refused with a sentence saying so, and nothing of it is kept - not the file, and not a record of what it showed. The check can be wrong, in either direction: if it refuses something it should not have, write to admin@lcdwizard.com and say what the picture shows.
• Swearing and slurs in what you write. What you write in the forum is kept as you wrote it. When it is shown to other members, swear words on our own list are shown with every letter but the first starred out; you see your own words as you wrote them, with a note that some are masked for others. A post, reply, title, tutorial or picture description with a slur aimed at people in it is not sent, and you are told which word to change; nothing of it is kept. This is done by our server, from a word list of our own, and nothing you write is sent anywhere for it.
• Wiring copied from one of your projects. In the tutorial builder you can copy the hardware of one of your own saved projects into a tutorial: the board, chip, display and the pins of each part. That copy is stored on the post, where every member can read it, and nothing else of the project is copied - not its screens, its settings, its network details or any key in it. Changing or deleting the project later does not change the post.
• Likes, dislikes and faces on forum posts, and your reputation. Which posts you reacted to and how, with your display name shown to any member who asks who reacted. Your reputation is worked out from the likes and dislikes on your posts, less a point for each like or dislike of yours that an admin undid as mischief, and is shown beside your name. Admins are shown members whose likes or dislikes look like mischief, and posts disliked a lot, so they can look at them; nothing happens to anybody by itself.

If you report a problem

Reporting a fault from the designer creates a report that only you and we can read. It holds:

• What you wrote - the title, the description and anything you add to the conversation afterwards - with your display name and email address, so that we can answer.
• What you were working on: the board, chip, display, touch controller and pins, the export type and its options, and the problems the designer was listing at the time.
• A copy of the design, unless you untick the box that attaches it. The dialog says what will be sent before you send it. An API key held in a widget's settings is removed from the copy before it is stored. The copy is deleted 60 days after the report is closed.
• Your browser's identifying string, the size of your window and the designer's own console log. This is the one place a browser string is kept against an account, because a fault that only happens in one browser cannot be found without it.

A report is used to find and fix the fault and to reply to you, in the designer and by email. It is not public, and it is not used for anything else.

If you tell us whether your screen lit up

If you answer the designer's question "Did your screen light up?", we keep the answer, the board, the export and the time, with your account only so that each account is counted once and no name or address at all, and if you delete your account the answer stays with nothing that links it to you.

Your inbox

Every account has an inbox in the designer. It holds what our team writes to you, what you write to us, and the announcements and polls we send to everybody. What our team writes appears as from "Admin", and the team can read every conversation. Nobody else can: there is no way for one account to write to another. It holds:

• What you write, and when, as plain text, kept with your account.
• The language your browser says it uses, so that we can write to you in it.
• Your votes in polls. We see how many chose each answer, not who chose what; a vote is kept against your account only so that each account has one.

Nothing in the inbox is emailed to you. To write to you in your own language, or to read what you wrote in English, our team may have a message machine-translated: the text of that message is sent to MyMemory, and nothing else about you is.

What our team writes down

Our team keeps a journal of its own work, a day at a time: each fault report answered, email or message replied to, question passed on from Discord, refund made and so on. Each entry is a short note of what was asked and what was done, and each day has a summary. Automated checks that we run on our support queue write some of the notes. The journal is for the site's admins. A partner we have given read-only access to our dashboard can read it too, but with the display name of every account, and the name on every problem report, taken out.

A note can name the person it is about, by the name they go by: the display name on their account, or the name they wrote to us under. It can also say which report or email it was about. We mask any email address written into a note before we keep it. We keep the journal with no set end. If you delete your account, we take its display name and email address out of every note and summary.

If somebody sends you a link to their design

The owner of a project can give you a private link to it. Opening the link needs no account, sets no cookie and creates no record about you. If the link lets you comment and you do, the comment is stored with the name you typed, the text, the time, and which link it came through. We do not ask for an email address and none is stored. The name is kept in your own browser so you are not asked for it twice. The comment is shown to the project's owner, who is also sent it by email, and to anybody else they gave a link that includes comments. While you have the page open the owner can see that somebody is viewing it, under that name if you have given one. That is held in memory for about a minute and is not written to the database. A link that lets you edit asks you to sign in, and your saves and comments then carry your account's display name.

If you are the owner, we store each link you make with the label you gave it, what it allows, and when it was last opened and how many times. An API key held in a widget's settings is removed from the copy of the design that a link hands out.

Collected automatically

• An activity log of things that happened - an account created, a generation run, a design published - with a reference to the account or guest, a timestamp and a small amount of context such as which board was targeted. It is how the service is monitored and how abuse is spotted.
• Visitor counts for the marketing pages. These use a one-way hash of your IP address and browser string that is re-salted every day, together with the page you landed on and the site that referred you. No cookie is set, no raw address is kept, and yesterday's hash cannot be linked to today's. Obvious crawlers are excluded.
• Web server logs. Our web server records the usual request line for each request, including IP address, for diagnosing faults and attacks. These rotate daily and are deleted after fourteen days.

If you support us

Coffees are bought through Buy Me a Coffee, a separate service with its own privacy policy; we never see your card. If you support us, Buy Me a Coffee sends us a notification and we keep the display name you chose, the number of coffees, the amount, and your message if you did not hide it - that is what the About section shows. The notification also carries your email address, which we do not store. A refund removes the entry.

A monthly membership, or one support of £2 or more, also opens the Supporters gallery in the designer - a membership for as long as it runs, one support for a week - and for that we have to recognise you. We use the address in the notification once, as it arrives, to find an LCD Wizard account with the same confirmed address and to send one message saying the gallery is open. What we keep is a keyed fingerprint (a one-way hash) of that address beside the payment's id and dates: enough to recognise the address when an account with it signs in, or when you type it to claim the support for an account under another address, and not enough to write to you. It is deleted a month after the access it gave ends. The gallery's owner sees your display name and the day you joined, as for any private gallery.

If you support a creator whose gallery is here. A creator can connect their private gallery to their own page on Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi or Patreon, so that supporting them opens it. That service then sends us a notification when you support them, on the creator's instruction, and it carries your email address. We handle it exactly as above: the address is used once, as it arrives, to find an LCD Wizard account with the same confirmed address and to send one message saying where the gallery is, and what we keep is the keyed fingerprint beside the support's id, its dates and the name of its tier. We do not keep your name, your message or the amount from these, and the creator is not shown them by us: they see how many accounts their page has let in, and your display name in their member list once you are in. It is deleted a month after the access it gave ends.

The number of Pro purchases is shown as a count only - never who.

What we do not collect

No advertising or analytics networks are loaded on this site. There are no third-party tracking scripts, no fingerprinting, no cross-site profile. We do not ask for a postal address, a phone number or a date of birth. We never see your card details - see Stripe, below.

Cookies

Four, all strictly necessary for the service to function, which is why you are not asked to consent to them. There are no analytics or advertising cookies to decline.

The designer also uses your browser's own localStorage to autosave the project you are working on, so closing the tab does not lose it. That never leaves your machine unless you save the project to your account.

Our lawful bases

We do not send marketing email. If that ever changes it will be opt-in, and asked for separately.

Who else processes it

Only the providers the service genuinely runs on. Each acts on our instructions.

• Stripe - payments. Card details are entered on Stripe's own checkout page and never reach our server; we hold only a customer reference and, for each checkout, what it was for, the amount, the date, whether it was paid and Stripe's reference for it. Stripe is a controller in its own right for its fraud and compliance purposes.
• MyMemory (Translated srl, Italy) - machine translation, used only by our team, and only for the text of an inbox message being translated, without your name or address.
• Trustpilot (Trustpilot A/S, Denmark) - reviews. When we answer a problem you reported, and after a purchase, the email we send you is copied to Trustpilot, which then invites you to review us. Trustpilot receives your email address and name from that email, and nothing else of ours. It is a controller in its own right for the invitation and any review you write, under its own privacy policy, and each invitation lets you decline future ones. Every email we send also ends with a line asking for a review, with a link to our Trustpilot page; that line passes Trustpilot nothing unless you follow it. And the foot of every page of this site shows Trustpilot's "Review us on Trustpilot" button, which your browser fetches from Trustpilot's own servers, so Trustpilot sees your IP address and which of our pages it is on, as any site you load something from does. When we checked, on 17 October 2026, it set no cookies.
• Anthropic (Anthropic, PBC, United States) - the AI assistant, Claude, that our team works with, including the automated checks of our support queue that write some of our team's journal. When it helps answer you, it reads what you sent us: a problem report and the design attached to it, an email, or a message passed on from Discord, with the name you wrote under. A reply it drafts is sent only once a person has read it.
• Google - optional sign-in. Only used if you choose "Continue with Google", and then only to confirm the address and identifier.
• Gmail / Google Workspace - the mail server that sends confirmation and password-reset email.
• Our hosting provider - a virtual private server located in Germany, where the application and its database run.
• Backblaze (Backblaze, Inc.) - storage in its EU Central region, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It holds the pictures and fonts in saved designs, their versions and gallery copies, the pictures and clips posted on the forum, and the nightly backups of the database. Backups are encrypted on our server before they leave it, with a key Backblaze does not have, so Backblaze cannot read them.

Personal data is stored in the EU. Stripe and Google may process some of it outside the EEA under their own standard contractual clauses, and Anthropic processes what it reads in the United States; Backblaze stores what it holds for us in the EU, under its data processing terms. We do not sell data, and we do not share it with anybody for their own marketing.

How long we keep it

Your rights

If you are in the UK or the EEA you have the right to ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. You can also withdraw consent where we relied on it.

Some of this you can do yourself and immediately:

• Change your display name, avatar or password in the designer under your account menu.
• Delete any project, or unpublish anything in the gallery.
• Delete your account, from Edit profile in your account menu. What that removes and what it keeps is set out below.

For anything else, email admin@lcdwizard.com and we will respond within one month. If you are unhappy with the response you can complain to your data protection authority - in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office, ico.org.uk.

What deleting your account does

It happens at once and cannot be undone. You confirm it with your password, or by typing your email address if you sign in with Google. The designer lists what will go, counted for your account, before you confirm.

It deletes:

• your saved projects, and the pictures and fonts they used, from our storage provider too;
• the designs you published, with every like and comment on them;
• your likes and comments on other people's designs;
• your inbox: what our team wrote to you, what you wrote to us, and your poll votes;
• the record of how far you had read each forum thread;
• the pictures and clips you put on the forum, from our storage provider too. The posts and tutorial steps they were in keep their words, without them;
• your likes, dislikes and faces on forum posts, which leave the reputations of the people you gave them to, and the record of any undone as mischief;
• your email address, password, display name, avatar and Google account identifier;
• your linked Discord account's identifier and name. The roles our bot gave you on the Discord server are taken off within a few minutes;
• your plan, your credit balance and your usage counters. Pro and unused credits belong to the account and cannot be moved to another one;
• your referral code and the links you submitted. The PayPal address held with it is deleted too, unless commission is still owed to you, as set out below.

It keeps:

• Problem reports you sent, so the history of each fault stays readable. Your display name and email address are removed from them, including where either appears in the conversation, and the attached design is deleted. What stays is what you wrote and what we answered, the board and export settings, the name of the design, the problems the designer was listing, your browser's identifying string, the size of your window and the designer's console log. Ask and we will delete the reports as well.
• Payment records. Stripe keeps its record of anything you bought, with the name and email address your account had when you first paid. We keep our own record of each payment - what was bought, the amount, the date and Stripe's reference - with nothing in it that says which account it was. Checkouts you opened and did not pay for are deleted. If you were paid referral commission we keep the amount, the date, the payment reference and the PayPal address it went to.
• Referral commission you are still owed. Deleting your account does not give it up. It is paid on its due date, which is the end of its 28-day hold, to the PayPal address on your record. So we keep that PayPal address, with the amount, the date it falls due and your discount code, until the commission has been paid. After that the address stays with the record of the payment, as above. A payout you had already asked for is kept as it is and paid in the same way. If a sale is refunded before its commission is paid, that commission is cancelled as it would have been anyway, and if nothing is left to pay the address is deleted. If there is no PayPal address on your record there is nowhere to send what you are owed, and we keep the amount against your discount code so that we can pay it when you write to us. The designer tells you all of this, with the figures, before you confirm.
• The activity log, without you in it. Its rows stay so that our usage figures do not change. The reference to your account is removed from them, with anything that names you, your designs or your referral code.
• Our team's journal (what our team writes down), without your display name or email address in it.
• The guest record from before you registered, if there is one. It holds an IP address. From then on it is an ordinary guest record again. It counts against the free allowance of that connection, and is kept or deleted as any other is.
• Copies other people took of a design you published. Each copy belongs to the person who took it, and keeps the title you gave the design.
• What you wrote in the forum, threads and posts, word for word, tutorials included with any wiring table in them. Your name and picture come off them and they are shown as by "Deleted user". The pictures and clips in them do not stay (see above). If you do not want something you wrote to stay, delete it before you delete your account: a deleted post keeps its place and reads "Deleted by user".
• Backups. The nightly backups made before you deleted your account still hold it, encrypted, until they expire - at most 12 months later. They are used only to recover the service after a loss, and if one ever is, every account deleted after it was made is deleted again. That is why we keep a record that your account was deleted: its internal number and the date, nothing that names you, for 400 days.

The design open in your browser is stored by your browser and is not touched. We send one last email to the address to say the account has gone. The same address can register again, and gets a new, empty account.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS only. Passwords are bcrypt hashed with a work factor of 12. Sign-in tokens are short-lived and the refresh cookie is HTTP-only, so a script injected into a page cannot read it. Avatars are re-checked on the server and SVG is refused, because an SVG can carry script. Gallery previews are rendered by our own code from the design rather than accepted as markup from a client. Access to the server is by key only. The nightly backups are encrypted on the server before they are uploaded, with a key that is kept off the server, and the storage they go to will not let anything delete or change one for 30 days.

No system is perfect. If you find a security problem, please tell us at admin@lcdwizard.com before telling anyone else, and we will credit you if you would like us to.

Children

The service is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and, for anything that affects how your data is used, tell account holders by email. The previous wording is in the project's version history.