Legal

Privacy Notice

Last updated: 15 October 2026

1. Who we are

Keystone is operated by Organisation for the Collection of Physical Artwork Royalties Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under number 16577019.

In this notice, “Keystone”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that company. We are responsible for the personal information described in this notice.

For any question or request about your personal information, email privacy@ocpar.org.

This notice covers the Keystone app, the public pages at keystone.art, and the emails and secure links that Keystone sends.

2. Your account

To create an account in the Keystone app you give us your full name, your email address, a password and your account type (for example artist, collector or gallery). You can also choose to give us a username, an institution or company name, a phone number and a postal address. If you are an artist, you can also make declarations about artist’s resale right and collecting societies, such as your nationality and a DACS membership number.

Sign-in is provided by Google Firebase Authentication. Your password is handled by Firebase: Keystone never receives or stores it.

We also record when your account was created, and which version of our terms and privacy information you accepted in the app, and when. Firebase records whether your email address has been verified, and Keystone checks that status when needed.

Keystone is for people aged 18 or over. You confirm this when you accept our terms in the app. We do not ask for your date of birth.

3. Usernames and what is public

Your username is public. If you choose one, Keystone shows a public page at keystone.art/@username with your name (or your username) and your institution, together with any public artworks attributed to you as the artist. Your username cannot currently be changed in the app.

Public artwork pages do not name an artwork’s owner: they show the owner as “Private collection”.

4. Artworks and documents you register

When you register an artwork we store the information you enter (for example the title, artist name, year, medium, dimensions, description and price), the images you upload and any documents you attach.

If you make an artwork public, its details and images are shown on its public page and in the app. Its asking price is shown only if you choose to list it publicly. Draft artworks are not public.

Supporting documents you attach to an artwork can be seen only by the artwork’s current owner, the account that registered it, and people the owner has given full access to the artwork’s record. Other Keystone users cannot see them.

5. Ownership, provenance, transfers and certificates

Keystone keeps a record of each artwork’s registration and of the ownership changes recorded through Keystone: who the parties were, the date, whether it was a sale or a gift and, for a sale, the price and currency the parties recorded. We also keep the confirmations, declarations and reports made during a transfer, such as a seller’s statement that payment was settled outside Keystone, an invoice reference, or a report that a record is wrong.

Each public artwork page shows a provenance list without names: when the artwork was registered and when its ownership was transferred, by sale or by gift.

When a transfer is completed, Keystone issues a signed certificate and emails it to the parties. Anyone with the certificate can check it on keystone.art. The verification page shows the certificate’s details and whether the ownership it records is still current. It does not show who the owner is.

These records describe what has been registered and confirmed through Keystone. They are not, on their own, proof of legal ownership, authorship or authenticity.

If you use the app’s offer feature and give delivery details, we store your delivery name and address. Keystone does not currently process payments.

6. People who do not have a Keystone account

A Keystone user can record a sale or a gift to someone who does not have a Keystone account by entering that person’s name and email address. Someone who holds an edition without an account can pass it on in the same way.

When that happens we store the name and email address we were given, and we email that person a secure link, and one-time codes, so that they can review the record and accept, decline or report it. We record what they do. We do not publish their name or email address: certificates, and other users’ views of the record, describe them only as a private buyer or as recorded privately. The person who entered their details can see what they entered.

If you received a Keystone email about a record you do not recognise, you can decline or report it from the link, or email privacy@ocpar.org.

7. Messages, email and support

Keystone users can send each other messages in the app about artworks, for example enquiries and offers. If you reply by email to a Keystone message notification, your reply is added to the conversation.

We send account and transaction emails, such as verification emails, transfer and gift notifications, one-time codes and certificates. Keystone does not currently send marketing email.

If you email us, for example at contact@keystone.art (including from a “Request access” or “Email Keystone” link on our website) or at privacy@ocpar.org, we receive your email address and your message in our mailbox. Reports made in the app or from a secure link are sent to the same support mailbox.

8. NFC tags and authentication

An artwork can carry a Keystone NFC tag. For each tag we store its identifier, the keys needed to authenticate it, its authentication counter, and when it last authenticated successfully.

When someone taps a tag, we record the date and time, the result, the tag and artwork concerned, and the IP address and browser or app information of the device used. These records are not linked to a Keystone account. The public page of a tagged artwork shows when its tag last authenticated successfully.

We do not collect precise location data, and we do not use authentication records to track the location of artworks or people.

9. IP addresses, security records and logs

We record IP addresses and browser or app information (the “user agent”) with security-relevant events, such as account creation and sign-in, artwork registration and changes, transfers and NFC authentication. Our servers also keep operational logs of requests, errors and account identifiers so that we can run and secure the service. Our rate limiting holds IP addresses in memory for a short time to protect the service from abuse.

10. Why we use personal information

• To provide Keystone to account holders: your account, the artworks you register, the transfers you take part in, their certificates, and your messages. We rely on this being necessary to provide the service you have asked for.
• To run Keystone’s public pages: public usernames and profile pages, public artwork pages, certificate checks, and checking a Keystone tag when anyone taps it. We rely on our legitimate interests in operating a public provenance registry.
• To preserve the provenance records made through Keystone for current and future owners of registered artworks, and to contact a person without an account about a transfer or gift that concerns them, so that they can accept, decline or report it. We rely on our legitimate interests in maintaining the registry and completing the transfers that users start.
• To keep Keystone secure and prevent misuse: security records and logs, including the records made when a tag is tapped, and rate limiting. We rely on our legitimate interests in protecting the service and the people who use it.
• To handle support requests and reports. We rely on our legitimate interests in responding to the people who contact us.
• To meet legal obligations that apply to us.

Some optional details you can give when you create an account are not currently used by any Keystone feature. The artist’s resale right and collecting-society declarations were collected for planned features that are not currently active. Your phone number and postal address are kept with your account and shown back only to you in the app.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

11. Who can see your information

Anyone

• Usernames, and the public pages at keystone.art/@username (section 3).
• Public artworks: their details, images, listed prices and provenance lists without names; the owner shown as “Private collection”; whether a work carries a Keystone tag and when it last authenticated.
• Certificate verification pages, which never name the owner.

Other signed-in Keystone users

• If an artwork’s owner chooses to make its ownership visible: the username of the account that registered it, and the owner’s display label. The label is the owner’s name only if the owner has chosen to show their full name in the app.

Parties to a transfer or conversation

• People taking part in a transfer, or in a conversation in the app, can see the other party’s name (for a person without an account, the name that was entered) and what was agreed or said. Each party to a completed transfer receives its certificate. Former owners can still see the transfers they took part in, but not owners they did not deal with.

Registrars

• The account that registered an artwork can see its registration, its supporting documents and its tag-management details. An artwork’s current owner can see who registered it and its supporting documents. People the owner has given access to the artwork’s record can see some of the same details, depending on the access given.

Authorised Keystone staff

• Authorised staff can access information where this is needed to run and support the service, to investigate a report or problem, or to keep Keystone secure, for example to correct the contact details of a person without an account.

Service providers

• The providers listed in section 12, to the extent needed for the service they provide.

12. Service providers

• Clever Cloud hosts the Keystone servers and stores certificate files.
• Scaleway hosts Keystone’s database, and the key-management service that protects NFC tag keys and signs certificates.
• Google (Firebase Authentication) provides sign-in. It holds your email address, your password, your name and, if you use phone verification in the app, your phone number.
• Postmark sends Keystone’s emails and receives email replies to message notifications.
• Zoho Mail hosts our email mailboxes.
• ImageKit stores and delivers artwork images and attached documents.
• Google Fonts: our web pages load fonts from Google, so when you view them your browser sends your IP address and browser information to Google.
• Stripe: Keystone’s software includes an integration with Stripe that is not currently in use. Keystone does not currently process payments, and the app’s payment step is switched off.

13. International processing

Some of these providers are based outside the UK or may process information in other countries, including countries in the European Union and the United States. If you would like more information about where a particular provider processes information, or about the protections that apply, please contact us.

14. How long we keep information

• Provenance and registry records (registrations, transfers, certificates and an artwork’s history) are intended to be long-lived, because current and future owners rely on them.
• Keystone does not currently have an automatic deletion schedule for other information. Account information is kept while your account exists. Keystone does not currently offer self-service account deletion; if you want us to delete or restrict information, contact us (section 16).
• Temporary credentials expire. Secure email links and one-time codes stop working when they expire or have been used, and the cookies used on secure-link pages last at most 30 minutes (see our Cookie Policy).

15. Security

We protect personal information with measures including:

• encryption in transit (HTTPS);
• encryption at rest for contact details, names, delivery addresses, the details of people without an account, and message content;
• NFC tag keys protected by a separate key-management service;
• access controls that limit access to personal information through the service, with administrative access restricted to authorised staff;
• rate limiting to protect the service from abuse.

No system is completely secure. If you think someone else has used your account, tell us straight away at privacy@ocpar.org.

16. Your rights

Depending on where you live and the circumstances, you may have the right to ask for a copy of your personal information, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable format.

Some of these rights have limits. For example, we may need to keep provenance records so that an artwork’s history stays accurate for its owners. If we cannot do what you ask, we will explain why.

To make a request, email privacy@ocpar.org. You can change much of your account information yourself in the app, although some details, such as your username, cannot currently be changed there.

17. Complaints

If you have a concern about how we handle your personal information, please contact us first at privacy@ocpar.org. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk), or to the data protection authority where you live.

18. Cookies

The Keystone website sets only two short-lived cookies, which are used on secure-link pages, and it does not use analytics or advertising cookies. The Keystone app keeps your sign-in session and your preferences on your device. See our Cookie Policy for details.

19. Changes to this notice

We may update this notice as Keystone changes. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.