Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a nice looking product built upon a great screen and with apparent attention to detail. The hand waving gesture interface can be a bit clumsy and the automatic photo cropping can change the composition, but I would have recommended the product on its technical merits overall. However, I was shocked to discover that within an hour of configuring their app and sharing about a dozen photos they had uploaded *every single photo* from my phone to their servers. I don't even have naked photos of myself or others, but I do have plenty of photos that are none of their business. Their support people confirmed the practice, suggested that it was for my convenience with respect to load times (but photos don't take long to transfer), and disclosed that there is no option for their system to function without making themselves copies of every photo on my phone - and by extension copies of every photo on the phones of all the friends and family I invited to share photos with me. In the process of setting up the frame, their app also racked up access to all of my phone contacts and my GPS location data as well. UPDATE: They have responded to this review to state that all their data collection is in the service of user experience with their products and they do not re-sell such data. I have updated this review to acknowledge that. However, the opaque language in their terms of service and privacy policy and lack of clear disclosure of their aggressive capture of personal photos within their app or product materials do not live up to their claimed aspirations to transparency. No reasonable person would expect Aura to copy all the photos off their phone by default and there is no technical reason they would need to do so or could not provide a clear disclosure with the option to opt-out. Their "just trust us" approach to privacy and security does not square with the personal nature of the product they sell. Further, there are situations described in their privacy policy where they reserve the right to share data with third parties, including aggregated data products based on customer data, and they acknowledge that the terms could change if they are acquired. I'm moving from one to two stars because they have been responsive to questions and concerns, but the bottom line is that buyers should know that all their photos will be transferred to Aura's servers automatically upon configuring their app.