privacy

When you open the site, it makes a guest account for you with a random id, so you can watch a room. A guest account has no name and no email address.

To make and bring your own cat, you sign in with your email address. The site emails you a 6-digit code; there is no password. Your email address is added to your account and stored by Supabase, which runs the sign-in. The code is sent from hello@paws.garden through Resend. Your email address is used only to sign you in, and is never shown to other visitors or used for anything else.

Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person, not a bot, is using the site before a guest account is made or a sign-in code is sent. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.

When you save your cat, the site stores its look (coat, pattern, size, ears, tail and so on) and its voice settings, linked to your account, with the times it was made and last changed. Cats have no names, and the meows are recordings that come with the site; nothing is recorded from your microphone.

While you are in a room, your browser joins a live channel so visitors can see each other. Everyone else in the room receives:

• your account id
• your cat's look and voice, if you brought it
• where your finger or pointer is, and when you press
• paw prints, toys and sounds you make
• what you type in the chat

This live data passes through Supabase Realtime. Chat lines are not stored. For each line, the site keeps only which room you sent it in and when, to limit how often one person writes; your lines older than an hour are deleted the next time you send one. It also keeps which room you are in until you leave, or soon after if your tab closes, and when you joined a room; your joins older than ten minutes are deleted the next time you join.

• your sign-in session, in local storage
• the email address you asked a code for and which kind of code it was, in session storage, until you close the tab
• the paws-locale cookie, which remembers the language you pick for one year
• the Mastodon server you last shared a photo to

There are no advertising cookies. To remove these, clear the site data for paws.garden in your browser.

The site never asks for your device's location. Vercel, which hosts the site, estimates a location from your IP address, and the site uses it only to draw the sky over the room. It is not sent to other visitors or stored.

The camera takes its photos of the room in your browser. Saving or copying a photo keeps it on your device. Sharing hands the photo, a short text and a link to the app or site you pick. The site does not upload your photos.

An invite link holds the room and your cat's look. Its preview picture is drawn from the link alone.

Vercel Web Analytics counts page views: the page, where you came from, your browser, device type and country. It uses no cookies. Vercel also keeps short-lived request logs that include IP addresses. See Vercel's privacy policy.

• Vercel: hosting, IP location, page view counts
• Supabase: accounts, email codes, saved cats and the live rooms, and sign-in logs that include IP addresses (privacy policy)
• Cloudflare: the Turnstile bot check
• Resend: your email address, to send the sign-in code (privacy policy)

I do not sell your data or use it for ads.

Your account and your cat are kept until you ask me to delete them. Email me@liyuxuan.dev from the address you sign in with to ask what is stored about you, or to have your account deleted. Deleting your account also deletes your cat and your room records.

Signing in is not meant for children under 13. If you think a child has signed in, email me and I will delete the account.

If this policy changes, I will update this page and its effective date.