Privacy

• We collect what you post and what it takes to sign you in. Nothing more.
• Your photos lose their hidden location data before anyone else sees them.
• We never sell your information. There are no ads and no trackers here.
• To learn what actually scares people, we count a few moments of each visit, anonymously: no cookies, and nothing that identifies you or your device.

• To sign in: your email address and a password. Your password is stored in a form no one can read back, including us.
• Your profile: a handle we create for you when you join.
• What you post: sightings (a photo, plus any caption and where-and-when note you add), the tales you write, the creep factors you react with, and any reports you send us.

• Before a photo is stored, everything hidden inside the file is removed, including the location your camera may have recorded. Usually that happens on your own phone, before the photo is even sent, and we remove it again when it arrives, to be sure.
• We never add a location. The where-and-when note is only ever what you type.
• What’s in the picture can still give a place away: a street sign, a house number, a face. Please look before you post.

• Your handle, and everything you post: your sightings, their captions and notes, and your tales.
• Your reactions: anyone can see which creep factors your account gave to which sightings and tales.
• Never public: your email address, your password and your reports.

• Every photo and tale is checked by an automated safety service as it’s posted. It receives the photo or the tale and its caption, nothing about you. Anything that might break the rules is hidden until a person reviews it.
• Reports you send go to the people who run ShortScares.
• When we remove a photo, it’s taken out of public view and kept privately for as long as we need it to handle the case or meet the law, for example to report child abuse material to the authorities.

• During a visit we note a few moments: whether the opening scene’s dare appeared, was taken or was skipped, which sightings were viewed, and how long things took. Alongside them: a rough screen size (phone, tablet or desktop), whether you’ve asked your device for less motion, which version of the site you saw, and whether the visit was automated (so robots don’t count).
• Each visit gets a random number that lives only in that open page. There are no cookies, nothing stored on your device, no IP address, nothing that identifies your browser or device, and no link to your account.
• If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we record nothing at all.
• These records are deleted after about 13 months.

• We use cookies only to keep you signed in, and the pages’ own scripts can’t read them. No advertising or tracking cookies, ever.
• Your browser keeps one small note that you’ve already seen the opening scene, so it can skip ahead next time. It stays on your device; we never collect it.

If the site hits an error, a report goes to the service we use to fix bugs: what went wrong, on which page, and the type of browser. It never includes your IP address, your account or anything you typed. For some page loads it also records how long the page took.

• Trusted providers host the site, store the photos and the database, run the safety checks and collect error reports. They handle your information only to provide those services to us.
• We never sell or rent your information, and we don’t share it with advertisers.
• We’ll disclose information only when the law requires it, or to protect someone from serious harm.

Email hello@shortscares.com from the address on your account and we’ll delete it: your account, your profile, your sightings and their photos, and your reactions.

Tales you wrote stay, credited to “someone who left”, because they belong to other people’s sightings. If you want those gone too, say so and we’ll delete them.

You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Write to hello@shortscares.com and we’ll answer within 30 days. Depending on where you live you may have other rights as well, and we’ll honour them.

ShortScares is for people 13 and older, or older still if your country sets a higher age. If you’re younger, please don’t join. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 13, we’ll delete it.

If this policy changes, we’ll update this page and the date at the top. For a significant change, we’ll email members before it takes effect.

hello@shortscares.com