ShellPal is built so that we know as little about you as possible. There’s no account, your turtles and photos stay in your own iCloud, and we don’t show ads or sell data.
This policy explains what data the ShellPal iPhone app and this website handle, where it goes, and what you can do about it. ShellPal is published by The ShellPal team (“we”, “us”). If you have a question, email hello@shellpal.app.
The short version
- You don’t create an account, and we never ask for your name, email or phone number.
- Your turtles, care logs, check-ins, photos and settings are stored on your device and synced through your private iCloud account. We can’t see them.
- If you use the AI assistant, the question and the turtle details it needs are sent to answer it, and not stored on our servers.
- Purchases are handled by Apple. We never see your payment details.
- No ads, no data sales, and no tracking across other companies’ apps or websites.
Data you keep in the app
Everything you add in the app stays on your device and in your iCloud account: turtle profiles (name, species, age, sex, size, avatar or photo), care activities and logs, reminder settings, monthly check-ins, your photo gallery, and assistant conversations.
This data is stored with Apple’s SwiftData and synced with CloudKit to the private database of the Apple Account you’re signed in with. We have no access to it. Apple’s handling of iCloud data is covered by Apple’s Privacy Policy. If you’re not signed in to iCloud, the data stays on your device only.
Deleting your data: delete a turtle in the app to remove it and everything logged for it from all your devices. To remove all of the app’s data, delete the app, then go to Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage (or Manage Storage) → ShellPal, and delete its data.
Photos and camera
The app only sees the photos you choose in the photo picker, and only uses the camera when you tap to take a photo. Photos are downscaled on your device and saved with your other app data in your iCloud.
Reminders
Reminders are local notifications scheduled on your iPhone. We don’t run a notification server and don’t receive anything when a reminder fires.
Subscriptions and purchases
Purchases are made through the App Store and processed by Apple. We never receive your name, Apple Account or payment details.
We use RevenueCat to manage subscriptions. The RevenueCat SDK creates a random, anonymous app user ID for your installation and sends it, along with your purchase history and basic device information (such as the app version, OS version and country or region of your App Store account), to RevenueCat so it can tell the app which features you’ve unlocked. Our server learns your subscription status from RevenueCat using that same anonymous ID. See RevenueCat’s Privacy Policy.
The AI assistant (Premium)
The assistant is optional, and the app asks for your permission before your first question. When you ask a question, the app sends the following to our server, which forwards it to our AI provider to write the answer:
- your question, and a photo if you attach one (downscaled on your device);
- that turtle’s details: name, species, age, size and weight, its care activities and when they were last done, its care status, care logs from the last 30 days, and recent check-in values;
- the earlier messages in that conversation;
- today’s date, your time zone and your preferred units.
Our server doesn’t store or log the question, the turtle details, the photo or the answer. It keeps only what it needs to run the service: your anonymous subscriber ID, how many questions you’ve used this billing period, and technical metadata about each request (such as the size of the request, how long it took, the model used and any error code).
Our AI provider processes the request only to generate the answer. We only use providers that don’t use this data to train their models. The provider’s name and terms will be listed here before the assistant launches.
Your conversations are saved in the app with the rest of your data, in your iCloud, and are never kept on our servers.
App integrity
To stop others from misusing the assistant, the app uses Apple’s App Attest and DeviceCheck services to prove that requests come from the genuine app on a real device. This creates a device key that we link to your anonymous subscriber ID. It doesn’t identify you personally.
Things we don’t do
- We don’t use advertising or advertising identifiers.
- We don’t sell or rent data to anyone.
- We don’t track you across other companies’ apps or websites.
- We don’t use analytics SDKs in the app.
This website
This website is a set of static pages. It doesn’t use cookies, analytics or trackers. If you pick Light or Dark appearance, that choice is saved in your browser’s local storage and never sent to us. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes technical data such as your IP address to deliver the pages and protect them from abuse. See Cloudflare’s Privacy Policy.
How long we keep data
Subscription status and question counts are kept while your subscription is active and for a short time afterwards, so renewals and restores work. Request metadata is kept only as long as we need it to monitor costs and prevent abuse. Your app data stays in your iCloud until you delete it.
Children
The app doesn’t ask anyone, including children, for personal information. Purchases and the AI assistant go through the App Store, where Family Sharing and Ask to Buy let parents approve them.
Your rights
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR in the EU and UK, or state privacy laws in the US), you may have the right to access, correct or delete personal data about you, or to object to how it’s used. Most of your data is in your own iCloud, where you control it directly. For anything we hold, such as subscription status linked to your anonymous ID, email hello@shellpal.app and we’ll help. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.
Changes
If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. If a change affects how your data is used, we’ll also tell you in the app.
Contact
The ShellPal team · hello@shellpal.app