Privacy Policy

Shelldon's website is operated by Shelldon's caregivers as a personal hobby project. If you need to reach us about your data, use the email at the bottom of this page.

• Newsletter (Tortoise Digest): your email and optional name, used only to send the digest. You can unsubscribe any time from the link in every email or at /unsubscribe.
• Account data (caregivers only): if you sign in, we store your email, display name, and the tortoise records you create.
• Fan submissions: letters and art you choose to send to Shelldon. Only items you mark public appear on the site.
• Anti-abuse signals: a one-way hash of your IP address is stored briefly with public submissions and feeding-game events to rate-limit spam. The raw IP is never written to our database.

We don't use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. The site relies on a few small pieces of browser storage:

• Essential: sign-in session, shopping cart contents, and your cookie-notice choice. Required for the site to work.
• Preferences: remembering small things you've done (e.g. stickers earned in the kids' area). Stored only in your browser.

Choosing "Essential only" in the cookie banner skips the preference storage. You can clear everything at any time from your browser settings.

We use a small number of service providers to run the site (hosting, database, email delivery, payment processing for merch). They only process the data needed for their job and don't get to use it for anything else.

Newsletter records stay until you unsubscribe. Order data is kept as long as tax rules require. Public submissions stay up unless you ask us to remove them. Rate-limit hashes are purged regularly.

You can ask us to show you, correct, or delete any personal data we hold about you. Email us using the address below and we'll respond within a reasonable time.

The kids' area is designed to be safe to use without an account. We don't ask children for personal information and we don't track them.

If anything material changes we'll update the date at the top and, where it matters, mention it in the next digest.

Questions? Write to hello@shelldonturtle.com.