Shellock
Privacy Policy
Effective 13 November 2026
- Shellock stores your collection so you can see it on your devices. That is the only use of your data.
- No advertising, no analytics, no tracking, and your data is never sold or shared for marketing.
- Your location is read only when you ask for it, to record where you found a shell.
- You can export everything, and delete your account and all its data from Settings at any time.
1. Who is responsible
Shellock is made by Michele Martuscelli, United Kingdom, who is the data controller for the personal data described here. For any question or request about your data, write to support@shellock.net.
2. What we collect and why
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Account: your email address and password (stored only as a secure hash). If you use Sign in with Apple or Google, the email and name they share with us; with Apple you may choose to hide your email behind a relay address. | To create your account, sign you in and keep your collection yours. |
| Your collection: everything you enter about your specimens, such as names, sizes, grades, localities and coordinates, dates, prices, values, dealers, notes and custom fields. | To store and show your collection on your devices. This is the service itself. |
| Photos: on the Free plan, photos stay only on your device and are never uploaded. On paid plans, photos are uploaded to our storage, compressed. | To show your photos with your specimens on all your devices. |
| Preferences: currency, display options, saved views, and the collector name you may choose to print on shared images. | To remember how you like to use Shellock. |
| Location: only when you tap "Use where I am now", and the date and place stored in a photo you add, which are read on your device. | To fill in where and when you found a shell. Nothing is read in the background. |
| Technical data: IP address and basic request information, kept in the logs of our hosting and database providers. | To run the service securely and fix problems. |
We do not collect contacts, browsing history, advertising identifiers or any data for tracking. Shellock has no analytics and no advertising.
3. Legal basis
We process your account, collection, photos, preferences and location to provide the service you asked for (performance of a contract, Article 6(1)(b) of the UK GDPR and, for users in the European Union, of the EU GDPR). Technical logs are kept on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and working (Article 6(1)(f) of the same regulations).
4. Who else receives data
We use a small number of providers to run Shellock. They process data only to deliver their service to us:
- Supabase (database, sign-in and photo storage). Your data is stored in the European Union (Ireland).
- Resend (sending account emails, such as password-reset links), from the European Union (Ireland). It receives only your email address and the message itself.
- Vercel (hosting of the web app). It receives technical request data such as your IP address.
- Apple and Google, only if you sign in with them, and, for purchases, the App Store or Google Play, which handle payment. We never see your card details.
- RevenueCat (United States), only if you subscribe: it receives your Shellock account ID and your purchase and subscription status from the App Store or Google Play, so that Shellock knows which plan you have. It does not receive your collection.
Some features look up public reference data. These services receive your IP address and the query, but not your account:
- WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species, Flanders Marine Institute, Belgium): the species names you search for.
- Photon (komoot, Germany), through Shellock's own server: a locality you type, or the coordinates of a find, to turn them into a place name or a point on the map. Photon does not receive your account or your IP address. Shellock keeps the answers, without saying who asked, so the same place is not looked up twice.
- OpenStreetMap tile servers: the map area you are looking at, to draw the map.
Some of these providers are based outside the United Kingdom and the European Union. Where data leaves them, the transfer is covered by an adequacy decision or by standard contractual clauses (with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum).
5. Photos and shared images
Uploaded photos are stored under a long random address that cannot be guessed. Anyone who is given that exact address can open the photo, so do not share photo links you want to keep private.
Images you create with "Share" are drawn on your device. Prices, values, dealers, lot numbers and coordinates are never included, and nothing is sent to us when you share.
6. Data on your device
Shellock keeps a copy of your collection, your session and, on the Free plan, your photos in your device's storage, so it opens quickly and works offline. This is not used for tracking. Signing out removes the copy of your collection but keeps Free-plan photos, which exist nowhere else; deleting your account removes everything.
7. How long we keep data
We keep your data for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account from Settings, your profile, collection, dealers and photos are deleted immediately. Copies may remain in our providers' backups for a short period before they are overwritten. Technical logs are kept for a limited time by our providers.
8. Your rights
You can, at any time:
- see and correct your data directly in the app;
- export your whole collection to Excel or CSV from Settings (data portability);
- delete your account and all its data from Settings → Delete account;
- ask us for access, correction, erasure or restriction, or object to processing, by writing to support@shellock.net.
If you think your data is handled unlawfully, you can complain to a data protection authority. In the United Kingdom this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk); in the European Union you can complain to the authority of the country where you live.
9. Children
Shellock is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
10. Security
Data travels encrypted (HTTPS). Each account can reach only its own data, enforced by the database itself. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep what we collect to the minimum.
11. Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app before the change applies. The date at the top shows the current version.