Privacy policy

Who’s responsible for the data

Owner of the Shkola project. Operator details will be provided before paid features launch. For any questions about data, including access or deletion requests, email egor.fermin@gmail.com. We reply within 30 days.

Sign-in with Telegram

We store your numeric Telegram ID and username (or first name if you don’t have one). This is needed so you can have an account and your museum stays the same in the bot and on the site. Telegram doesn’t share your phone number or contacts with us. Legal basis: performance of a contract (the Terms of Use).

Profile and settings

Username, bio, social links, language, currency, notification settings, goals, wishlist, visibility of new cards, and birth year. The birth year is only used to verify you’re 13+ and enable protections until age 16.

Your username is visible to others next to your public cards (in the feed, in the public museum, and via link) and approved photos. In the public museum, your bio, social links (only from age 16), and follower and like counts are also visible. Hidden cards aren’t visible to anyone but you.

Photo when adding an item

You send one or two photos of the item. The server processes them in memory: a reduced copy is sent to Anthropic’s (Claude) recognition service, and we don’t store the original photos.

We save the result: an image of the item with the background removed for the card, and the recognized details (model, serial number, condition, completeness, country of manufacture). Only you can see the serial number - it’s not on the public card.

Photo for the item gallery

Photos you submit to the gallery are seen only by an admin before moderation. Once approved, a photo is published with your username; rejected photos are deleted right away. When uploading, we re-encode photos, so EXIF metadata and geotags aren’t kept.

Catalog corrections

The correction text, source, your id, and username - so we can review the correction and reply to you. Accepted corrections become part of the public catalog.

Likes and follows

We store which cards and catalog exhibits you’ve liked and who you follow, along with the date. Others only see the total number of likes and followers, not who left them. Likes and follows are deleted along with your account; likes on a deleted card are deleted along with it.

Notifications

The bot sends moderation replies and updates on your wishlist. We keep a log of sent messages (to whom, what type, when) so we don’t send the same one twice. You can turn off notifications in Settings.

What’s stored in your browser

To sign in on the site, we use a 30-day session token. It also stores your settings and drafts so the site loads faster. These aren’t ad cookies. You can sign out and delete the token anytime with the “Sign out” button.

Analytics

Google Analytics turns on only after you agree (“Allow” in the banner at the bottom of the site). Then Google counts visits and actions (opened the catalog, generated a card) using the _ga cookie, without your username, Telegram id, or photos. Data is stored for 14 months. Advertising features are off.

Without consent, analytics cookies aren’t set: Google only gets anonymized signals without identifiers. Changed your mind? Clear the site data in your browser, and the banner will show up again.

Technical logs

The web server logs the IP address, time, and request URL. This is needed for security and to prevent abuse. Logs are kept for 14 days. For photo recognition, we keep a log without photos or your id: what was recognized and how much it cost.

Where data is stored and who processes it

Server: Hetzner Online GmbH, data center in Finland (EU). Accounts, cards, and photos are stored there. A backup is made every night and kept for 14 days.

Anthropic PBC (US) - photo recognition. Under its commercial API terms, data isn’t used to train models.

Telegram - sign-in and bot messages.

Google - analytics (only with consent). Also, your browser loads a font from Google Fonts servers, and game covers from RAWG servers, so they see your IP address.

Data transfers to the US follow these companies’ standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

Account and cards - until you delete them.

A deleted card disappears everywhere right away, and after 30 days it’s permanently erased along with its images.

A deleted account is erased immediately.

Data stays in nightly backups for up to 14 days, then the backups are deleted automatically.

Account deletion

Settings → “Delete account”. This immediately erases your profile and settings, all cards and their images, your photos in galleries and in moderation, corrections still under review, likes, follows and followers, sign-in sessions, and the notification log. Accepted corrections stay in the catalog without your name, since they’re facts about items.

Your rights

You can get a copy of your data, correct or delete it, limit its processing, object to it, and withdraw consent to analytics. To do this, email egor.fermin@gmail.com.

If you think we’re violating your rights, you can file a complaint with a supervisory authority: in the EU, your country’s data protection authority; in Ukraine, the Ombudsman of the Verkhovna Rada.

Kids

The service is for people 13 and older. In some EU countries, parental consent is required under 16. If we find out an account belongs to a child under 13, we’ll delete it.

Security

The connection is protected with HTTPS. Sessions are signed with a server key. Photos in moderation are only accessible to the admin. Only the project owner has access to the server.

Changes

We publish new versions here with the update date. We’ll notify you in the app in advance about major changes.