Privacy

Last updated: 28 September 2026

A Stranger's Shelf is operated from the Philippines. For questions about this notice or your data, write to hello@astrangersshelf.com.

The short version

There are no accounts here. We do not ask for your name, your email address or your age. We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and we do not sell or share anything for marketing.

What we hold is what you deliberately typed or uploaded, plus a small number of cookies that make the site work.

What we collect

If you only read, nothing is stored in our database about you. No account, no profile, no analytics identifier, no record of what you were shown.

Our hosting provider (Cloudflare) processes your request in order to deliver the page, and in doing so handles your IP address and browser user-agent at the network level, as any web host must. We do not record either of these in our own database, and we do not build a profile from them. See "Who else is involved" below.

If you leave something, we store the work itself and the fields you filled in:

• The work — text, or an uploaded image or PDF
• Title — optional
• A note to the finder — optional
• Attribution choice — anonymous, a first name, or a pen name, your choice
• Attribution name — only if you chose to give one. It does not have to be real
• Country — optional, and only a country, never a city or address
• File name, size, page count, dimensions — technical facts about the upload
• Timestamps — when it was submitted and when it was reviewed

We do not collect your email address, your telephone number, your date of birth, your location, or any account credentials, because the site has none of these.

Photographs are stripped of embedded metadata before storage. For JPEG, PNG and WEBP uploads, we remove EXIF and similar metadata — which can include GPS coordinates, camera serial numbers, timestamps and editing history — and keep only what the format needs in order to display. The stripped version is what is stored; the original is not retained.

If you report something, we store the reason you selected and any details you typed. We do not store who you are, because we do not know.

Cookies

We use no analytics, advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Every cookie below exists to make the site function, and none is used to profile you.

• `ss_current` — remembers which creation you are currently looking at, so a reload does not replace it. Lasts the browsing session.
• `ss_seen` — remembers which creations you have already been shown, so you are not given the same one repeatedly. Lasts up to one year.
• `ss_draft` — keeps your in-progress submission as you move between steps. Lasts until submitted or expired.
• `ss_submitted` — records that a submission completed, so the confirmation page can be shown. Short-lived.
• `ss_last_token` — lets the confirmation page show your take-back link once. Short-lived.
• `ss_submit_at` — rate-limits submissions to prevent flooding. Lasts 10 minutes.
• `ss_report_at` — rate-limits reports to prevent abuse. Short-lived.

`ss_current` is cryptographically signed so it cannot be altered to select a particular creation. Signing does not identify you.

Because these are strictly necessary for the service you have asked for, they do not require consent under the ePrivacy Directive. We do not show a cookie banner because we do not set anything that would need one.

Why we are allowed to hold this, and on what basis

Under the EU/UK GDPR, where it applies to you:

• Your submission and its fields — Article 6(1)(b), performance of a contract: you asked us to display your work, and we cannot do that without storing it.
• Review and moderation, security, and rate-limiting — Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interests: keeping the site lawful and safe for the strangers who read it. We consider this proportionate because the data involved is minimal and you chose to provide it.
• Reports — Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interests in moderating unlawful or harmful content, and Article 6(1)(c) where a legal obligation applies.

Under the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173), the operator is the Personal Information Controller, and processing is based on your consent given at submission and on legitimate interests under Section 12.

A note on what counts as personal data here: if you submit anonymously or under a pen name, what we hold may not identify you at all. If you choose to give a real first name, or if your work itself identifies you, then it does. That is your choice to make, and the site is built so that choosing anonymity costs you nothing.

Who else is involved

We keep the number of third parties deliberately small.

• Cloudflare, Inc. — hosting, content delivery, database (D1), file storage (R2), bot protection (Turnstile) and administrator access control. Your request necessarily passes through Cloudflare's network, which handles IP addresses and connection metadata to deliver the site and block attacks. Cloudflare acts as our processor. See cloudflare.com/privacypolicy.
• Cloudflare Turnstile — shown on the submission form to distinguish people from automated abuse. It is used in place of a CAPTCHA that profiles you.

There is no Google Analytics, no advertising network, no social media pixel, no email marketing platform, no customer support tool, and no data broker. We do not sell personal information, and we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising as those terms are used in the CCPA/CPRA.

Where data is held

Data is stored on Cloudflare infrastructure. The database is provisioned in the APAC region; files and cached content may be served from Cloudflare's global network, which means copies may be processed outside your country, including outside the EEA/UK. Where that involves a transfer from the EEA or the UK, it relies on Cloudflare's own transfer safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses.

How long we keep things

• An approved creation stays until you take it back, or until we remove it under the Terms, the Submission Guidelines or a valid legal notice. There is no automatic expiry — the point of this place is that a thing stays findable.
• A declined submission is retained only as long as needed to handle duplicate or abusive resubmission, then deleted.
• An unfinished draft is deleted when it expires.
• Take-back links are stored only as a one-way hash, never in a usable form, and are marked used once redeemed.
• Reports are kept while the matter is open and for a reasonable period afterwards, so a repeat pattern can be recognised.

Your rights

Wherever you are, you can ask us to give you a copy of what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests. Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw it.

The practical route for most people is the take-back link, which removes your work yourself, immediately, without contacting anyone.

An honest limitation, stated rather than buried: because there are no accounts, we usually cannot verify that a person asking about a submission is the one who made it. If you submitted anonymously and no longer hold your take-back link, we may be unable to identify your work in order to act on a request — there is nothing linking it to you. This is a direct consequence of collecting so little, and it is a trade we made deliberately. Tell us as much as you can and we will do what we reasonably can.

If you are in the EEA or the UK you may complain to your local supervisory authority. In the Philippines you may complain to the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph). We would rather you told us first.

Children

This site is not intended for children. You must be at least 18 years old to submit. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children; if you believe a child has submitted something, write to us and we will remove it.

Changes

If this notice changes materially we will update the date above. Because we have no email addresses, we cannot notify you individually — another consequence of collecting so little.

Contact

hello@astrangersshelf.com — A Stranger's Shelf, operated from the Philippines.