Privacy & file retention
What ANVIL3D keeps, how long, and what we never store at all.
This page describes how the service actually behaves — the retention periods below are the ones the software enforces, not intentions. If anything here disagrees with what you see in your account, the behaviour is the bug and we want to hear about it.
Your model files
Three different things happen to an uploaded model, depending on what you do next.
You got a quote and didn't order
The file is deleted 7 days after upload. Both the file itself and our record of it go — there is nothing left to reprint from and nothing left to look at.
You ordered, and didn't ask us to keep it
We keep it while we make your parts, and for 30 days after the order is finished, cancelled or refunded — a grace period in case something needs reprinting. Then it is deleted. This is the default: you have to tick a box for anything else.
You asked us to keep it
At checkout you can tick “keep my files so I can order this again”, or save the print to your account. Then we keep the file until you tell us otherwise. You can delete it yourself at any time — from the track-order page, or from Saved prints in your account.
One model can sit behind several orders. When it does, we only delete it once every order using it is finished and none of them asked us to keep it. Deleting it earlier would break a reorder somebody else is still entitled to.
What deleting actually means
When a model file is deleted, the file is removed from our server and cannot be recovered by us. What survives is the record of the order: what it was called, what it was printed in, what it cost. We need that for invoices, warranty questions and our own accounting, and deleting a file never deletes it.
So a saved print you remove leaves a card that says the model is gone, rather than disappearing from your order history as though the order never happened.
Backups
We take a copy of the database every night and keep 14 days of them, after which each one is deleted automatically. The backups hold the database — orders, addresses, messages, account records — and not your model files, which live on disk and are not part of the dump.
This means a database record you delete today can still exist inside a backup for up to 14 days. We are not going to claim instant erasure from every copy, because it would not be true. Backups are used to restore the site after a failure and for nothing else.
Photographs
We photograph finished plates as we work — it is how we check a print before it goes out, and how we can show you what we made. Those photos are kept with the order and are not on the automatic deletion schedule above. If you would rather we removed the ones from your order, ask and we will.
Photos you send us — a colour to match, the part that broke — are kept with the order in the same way.
Payment
We never see or store your card number, expiry or CVC. Those go directly to Stripe or PayPal, who take the payment; the card form is theirs, not ours.
If you save a card to your account, it is saved at Stripe. We store an identifier that lets us ask Stripe to show you your own cards, and nothing else — the brand and last four digits you see on the payment page are read from Stripe each time and never copied into our database. Removing a card removes it at Stripe.
For each order we also store what the payment provider told us: their reference for the payment, the amount, and the fee they charged us.
Accounts and business accounts
There is no password on an ANVIL3D account. Signing in sends a single-use link to your email address, so there is nothing to leak or reuse. We store your name, the email addresses you have added, an optional phone number, and which of those addresses you have verified.
A business account is a shared workspace. Members with the right role can see and use the business’s orders, saved prints, projects and delivery addresses — that is the point of it. Your personal orders stay personal and are never visible to a business you belong to.
Sharing a file with colleagues through a business account is about access, not ownership. Uploading a design to us does not transfer any intellectual property in it, to us or to anybody else on the account. Whether you have the right to have a design printed is covered in the terms.
Closing your account
Three separate things, deliberately kept apart:
Your sign-in
We retire it, and every session on every device ends.
Your files
Any model we still hold for you is deleted.
Your orders and invoices
These stay. They are the record of a commercial transaction and we are required to keep them. Closing an account does not un-buy anything.
Email orders@anvil3d.com.au and we will do it.
Cookies
We use four cookies and none of them track you. There is no analytics script on this site, no advertising pixel, and no third party watching you browse it.
Signed in
Keeps you signed in to your account. Removing it, or signing out, ends the session immediately at our end too.
Order access
Set when you look up an order with its number and the email address it was sent to. It is what lets you see that order without doing it again.
Reordering
A short-lived pass, so a reorder can load your previous order without your email address ending up in a web address.
Shop sign-in
Only ever set for us, on the admin side of the site.
We send order emails through Resend. Messages between you and us — both directions — are stored against your order, so anybody here picking up a question can see what was already agreed.
Where it all lives
The site, the database and your files are on a server we rent, and the printers are here in Australia. Payments are handled by Stripe and PayPal, email by Resend, and postage labels by Interparcel. We do not sell or share your information with anybody else.
Asking us about your information
Ask us what we hold about you, ask for a copy, or ask us to correct or delete it, at orders@anvil3d.com.au. If we cannot delete something — an invoice, say — we will tell you which and why rather than quietly keeping it.
ANVIL3D is an Australian business and this page is written in plain terms rather than legal ones. It describes what our software does; it is not legal advice, and it does not claim compliance with any particular scheme on your behalf.