Privacy Policy
This policy is currently written in English.
The short version: PopsicleBoat collects as little as possible, shows no ads, uses no tracking, and never sells or shares anything about you. This page describes everything the site stores and every outside service it uses.
What we store
- Your account: username, email address, an optional display name and profile picture, your language and appearance preferences, and a securely hashed password (we never store or see the password itself).
- What you make: posts, replies, likes, uploaded images and videos, the interests you follow, and your friendships.
- Private messages: stored so your conversations work, and visible only to the people in them. They are never used for anything else — even our own admin tools show only the fact that a message was sent, never its content.
- Activity facts: small records like "posted", "followed an interest", or "accepted a friend request", which power features such as the onboarding checklist and the weekly digest.
- Invitations: if someone invited you, we remember who, so you start out connected to them.
Public and private
- Public posts and public profiles are visible to anyone, including people without accounts, and may appear in link previews when shared elsewhere.
- Posts marked private are visible only to you and your accepted friends.
- Accounts marked private limit who can see the profile at all.
Cookies and your browser
- A session cookie keeps you signed in for up to 60 days and remembers who invited you if you arrived through an invite link. It exists so the site works, not to track you.
- A small cookie and your browser's local storage remember interface choices like your light/dark preference and which conversation you kept open.
- There are no advertising or third-party tracking cookies. None.
Measurements and diagnostics
- Page counts: we count visits per page per day — the date, the page, and a number. No IP addresses, no visitor identifiers, nothing that could describe a person.
- Crash reports: when something breaks, a technical report goes to Sentry (our error-tracking service) so we can fix it. Reports contain stack traces and technical request details, which can include your IP address and browser type. They are used only for fixing bugs and expire on Sentry's standard retention schedule (about 90 days).
- Server logs: our hosting provider keeps short-lived operational logs of web requests, as essentially all hosting does.
Video calls
Calls run directly between the two browsers using encrypted WebRTC. Nothing about a call — video, audio, or text — is ever recorded or stored. When a direct connection isn't possible, the encrypted traffic is relayed through Cloudflare's relay service, which cannot read it.
We send email only when there is a reason you'd expect: confirming your address, resetting your password, an invitation someone sent you, and — only if you turn them on — reply notifications and the weekly digest. Email is delivered through Mailgun. Every optional email can be turned off in your settings.
Services we rely on
Running the site means some data passes through infrastructure providers: Fly.io (hosting and database), Amazon S3 (uploaded images and videos), Mailgun (email delivery), Sentry (crash reports), and Cloudflare (call relay). Each processes data only to provide its service to us. We do not sell, rent, or share your information with anyone else, for any reason.
Your controls
- Edit or delete your posts and profile whenever you like.
- Turn every optional email on or off in settings.
- Mark posts private, or your whole account private.
- Delete your account from your settings page.
- Questions or requests? Email jakeva [at] gmail [dot] com — a real person reads it.
If this policy changes, the changes will be described here. In effect since July 8, 2026.