Privacy Policy

We collect information you provide directly: your email address, the name and handle on your account, the name you give your penguin, your quiz result, the people you add to your colony (the names you give them, how you know them, and an email address if you invite someone by email), what you write in the Diary, the passages you save to The Nest, support messages, and anything else you choose to send us. If you joined our waitlist in the past, we also have the email address you gave it.

If you add your birth details, we store your birth date and, if you give them, the time you were born, your sex at birth, the calendar you used, and the time zone you were born in. We use them to read the chart you were born with: for your birth-chart overview, what the Diary knows about your day, and any reading you bought. They are never shown to anyone else as raw details, and you can change or delete them at any time in Settings. Changing or deleting them softens any Deep Pair Reading that was built on them.

If you add a birth date for someone in your colony, we keep it with your account only. It is used only for what you see about them, is never shown to them or to anyone else, and you can remove it at any time.

If you try the birth-chart overview at mypengs.com/pengprint without signing in, the birthday you type is used to draw your chart and is not saved.

We also collect basic technical information when you use MyPengs, such as IP address, device and browser information, pages viewed, referral information, timestamps, and interactions with the site.

When you play Penguin World, the game inside MyPengs, we keep your world so it is there next time: your penguin and the characters in your world, how you dressed your penguin (its look, what it wears, its hair and colours) and whether it is a boy or a girl, your home and the furniture you own, your bonds (hearts) with the characters, your Shinies balance and what you spent Shinies on, what is in My box, the chests you opened, the food you cooked or ate, the fish you caught, the gifts you gave or got, and the Scenes you made.

When you make a Scene, the characters you cast and anything you type in "What happens?" are sent to OpenAI, our AI provider, to write it. The characters go by their names in your world, so your penguin goes by the name you gave it (or your own name, if you haven't named it) and a friend's penguin by the name you gave that friend, and the last few things that happened in your world go with them, as do your earlier Scenes at that place and the Scenes you starred or marked Less like this. We keep the Scene, with what you typed for it, so you can watch it again. The characters in Scenes are AI characters, not people.

If what you type for a Scene reads like someone may be thinking about suicide or self-harm, we don't make the Scene and don't send your words to the AI. We show you how to reach crisis support instead, and we keep only a count that it happened, without your name or your words. If what the AI writes reads that way, the Scene is not shown and what it cost you is given back. That Scene request is kept as usual, with what you typed for it and the AI's draft, marked as stopped and never shown, along with a count that it happened. The Safety Protocol at mypengs.com/safety explains how this works.

If you save a clip or photo from a Scene, it is uploaded to a private storage area kept by our hosting provider, and you reach it through a link that only you are given. The link works for about ten minutes, long enough to save it to your phone, and the file is deleted after that, at the latest within a day.

Your friends appear in your world as characters, under the names you gave them, and if you're in a friend's colony, you appear in their world under the name they gave you. Each of you keeps your own world: a meal together or a Scene with a friend's penguin in your world is part of your world, and what happens with your penguin in a friend's world is part of theirs. Two things cross from your world into a bonded friend's. One is how you dressed your penguin (its look, what it wears, its hair and colours), so it looks the same everywhere. The other is a gift you give a friend who is a member and has you in their colony: it goes to their own world, with any colour you chose for it and your penguin's name as the giver. A gift to anyone else stays in your world.

When you delete your account, we delete your world: your penguin, your home, your bonds, your Shinies (earned and bought) and the record of the packs you bought, My box, your chests, and your saved Scenes. Your friends keep their own worlds, so your penguin stays in a friend's world as part of their history with you, together with the Scenes they made with it and the gifts you gave them, which then say they came from "A friend". Shinies you buy are paid for through Stripe, as described under Payments and delivery, and Stripe keeps its own record of each payment.

In Penguin World you can chat live with Pola, who makes the pizza, and with Soori, once you have the sea chart. They are AI characters, not people, and OpenAI, our AI provider, writes their replies. To write each one, we send OpenAI what you just typed, the last few things you and that character said to each other, the notes the character keeps about you, your penguin's name (or your own name, if you haven't named it), how many times you have talked with that character, whether your penguin looks ill, cold, hungry or giggly right now, and the suggestions the chat has already shown you. For Soori we also send your browser's language, so he can answer in it. The chat never sends OpenAI your Diary, your birth details or anything about the people in your colony.

We keep your talk with each character, every message and reply, and up to ten short notes each one keeps about you, such as something you told them you like. You can read both under Memories in My box. We also keep a copy of what the chat showed you on each turn, so a reply lost on the way can be shown again, and delete it the next time you chat once it is three days old. If a message or a reply is flirty, the character answers with a line written ahead of time, and nothing of that turn is added to your talk or their notes. Soori doesn't tell fortunes in chat: if you ask for one, he points you to his fortunes instead, and that turn is kept like any other, though a flirty one changes none of his notes.

You can't delete your talk or a character's notes in the game yet. Deleting your account deletes them with the rest of your world, or you can ask us to erase them by emailing hello@mypengs.com with the subject line Privacy Request.

You get a number of free messages each day (10 now). After that you can buy more talks with Shinies, and we keep a record of each talk pack you buy. We may change the number of free messages, or pause live chat, at any time.

Everything you type to Pola or Soori, and everything the AI writes for them, is checked for signs of crisis first. If what you type reads like someone may be thinking about suicide or self-harm, it isn't saved or sent to the AI, and we show you how to reach crisis support instead. We keep only a count that it happened, without your name or your words. The Safety Protocol at mypengs.com/safety explains how this works.

In the Diary you talk with your own penguin. It is an AI character, not a person. To write each reply, we send OpenAI, our AI provider, what you write, the last few days of your Diary, the mood you picked for today, notes from your shared notebook, a few of the passages you saved to The Nest, your penguin's description, what your chart says about your day if you added your birth details (never the birth details themselves), and the main lines of your own reading if you bought one. People in your colony go to the AI as placeholders, with their penguin and how you know them, never by name.

We keep your Diary and your shared notebook so the Diary can remember you. You can open the notebook and forget any line, or all of them, at any time: a line you forget is never said back to you or sent to the AI again. Deleting your account deletes your Diary and your notebook.

If you buy a fortune from Soori in Penguin World, we send OpenAI up to 40 of the newest lines in your shared notebook so it can write a short summary of what has been on your mind: never a line you told it to forget, and people in your colony only as "someone". We leave out lines that touch topics such as a diagnosis, medication, debt, religion or politics, and the summary is told to leave out health, money and beliefs. Your fortune is written from that summary, never from the lines themselves, with broad reading themes calculated from your birth details and your browser's language. When you provide sex at birth, the calculation also supplies themes for your current and following life chapters. The calculation stays on our server: OpenAI does not receive your birth date, exact time, sex at birth, calendar, time zone or ages. We keep only your latest summary, so other fortunes that day can use it, and the lifetime fortune keeps the summary it was read with. If you forget any line in your notebook, or all of them, both are erased. If Soori needs a birth date or time you haven't added, he asks for it and adds it to your birth details (replacing a time you marked as unknown); nothing else you saved changes. We keep each fortune so you can read it again under Soori's fortunes in your Diary; fortunes are never written into the Diary. Deleting your account deletes them with your world.

Everything you type in the Diary is checked for signs of crisis before it is saved or sent to the AI. The Safety Protocol at mypengs.com/safety explains what happens then and the counts we keep.

Some pages are public by design. Your handle page (mypengs.com/@yourhandle) and your penguin's share page show your name, your handle and your penguin to anyone with the address, so friends can find you and bond with you. If you haven't set a name, your penguin's share page uses the first part of your email address instead. These pages are kept out of search results. A reading or a saved card you share by link can be opened by anyone with the link, and never shows your birth details.

When you're bonded with a friend, they see your name, your penguin and the chemistry between your penguins, and in Penguin World your penguin appears in their world dressed the way you dressed it. They don't see your birth details, your Diary, your Shinies, or how you labeled them.

Card payments for Shinies, the virtual currency sold at Sammy Bank in Penguin World, are processed by Stripe. MyPengs does not store full payment card numbers. We may receive payment status, checkout metadata, receipt details, and related information needed to fulfill your purchase, handle refunds and disputes, and respond to support requests.

For each Shinies pack you buy, we keep a record with your account of the pack, the amount, and Stripe's reference for the payment, so the Shinies are added once and can be removed if the payment is refunded or charged back. Deleting your account deletes that record; Stripe keeps its own record of the payment.

Our emails, including any report we sent you, go through Resend, our email provider. If a report is missing from your account, contact hello@mypengs.com.

We use information to operate MyPengs, run the Diary and Penguin World, write the Diary replies, Scenes, live chat replies and fortunes you ask for, deliver your reports, process purchases, provide support, prevent abuse, debug errors, improve the quiz, the world and the reports, measure site performance and our TikTok ads, and send the emails described below.

We email you to sign you in, and when someone asks to bond with you (you can turn those emails off in Settings). If a member invites you by email, we use your address to send that invite, which stops working after 30 days. We also email you when someone you invited joins, when a member adds you to their colony, and when a member shares a reading they bought with you. We no longer send the morning email, and the unsubscribe link in any you received still works. If you joined our waitlist or asked for updates in the past, we may email you about MyPengs news; to opt out, contact hello@mypengs.com.

MyPengs uses cookies and similar technologies to keep you signed in, let you into Penguin World, count visits and taps, measure how fast pages load, and measure our TikTok ads. We use Vercel Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights, our own event log (which keeps a random visitor id in your browser), and TikTok's pixel. If you arrive from a TikTok ad, we keep the ad's click id in a cookie for 90 days.

The companies that help us run MyPengs are Supabase (database and sign-in), Vercel (hosting, file storage and site analytics), Stripe (payments), Resend (email), and OpenAI (writing Diary replies, Scenes, live chat replies, Soori's fortunes and readings). They use your information to provide their service to MyPengs. Penguin World also loads code libraries from jsDelivr, a public code host, and fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser contacts both when the world opens. TikTok is different; see Selling, sharing, and advertising.

We do not sell your personal information for money. We do use TikTok's pixel to learn whether our TikTok ads bring people to MyPengs, and some US state privacy laws count that as sharing personal information for advertising. On most pages, TikTok's code receives the page address, your IP address, your browser and device details, and TikTok's own cookies. When you finish the quiz, or open one of our penguin, chemistry or quiz pages, we also tell TikTok that it happened and which penguin it was about, from your browser and from our server. Our code never sends TikTok your email address, and the pixel never loads on the sign-in page, your Settings, the Diary, the Safety Protocol page, or Penguin World.

You can opt out of this sharing. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, TikTok's pixel does not load and our server sends TikTok nothing. Anyone can also opt out by emailing hello@mypengs.com with the subject line Do Not Share.

MyPengs may use aggregated or de-identified information to understand product performance, but we do not use that information to identify you.

We keep personal information for as long as reasonably needed to provide MyPengs, complete purchases, maintain records, resolve disputes, enforce our terms, comply with legal obligations, and improve the service.

A saved Scene clip is deleted within a day. The cookie that holds a TikTok ad's click id lasts 90 days. An email invite stops working after 30 days. Most other things stay until you delete them or your account.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards, but no internet service can guarantee perfect security. If you believe your information has been exposed or misused, contact hello@mypengs.com.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to request access, correction, deletion, portability, limitation, or objection to certain processing of your personal information. You may also have the right to appeal a decision about your request.

You can do much of this yourself. In Settings you can change your name and handle, change or delete your birth details, choose whether new bonds wait for your OK, turn off bond-request emails, and delete your account. In the Diary's shared notebook you can forget any line, or all of them. To opt out of the sharing with TikTok, turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser or email us, as described under Selling, sharing, and advertising.

Deleting your account in Settings also deletes your profile and handle, your colony, your birth details and any birth dates you added for others or others added for you, your Diary and shared notebook, your Nest saves, and your reports. It takes you off other members' friends lists, though in Penguin World your penguin stays in friends' worlds, as described above. We also remove your account and browser ids from our event log, so what is left there no longer points to you.

To make a privacy request, email hello@mypengs.com with the subject line Privacy Request. We may need to verify your identity before responding.

MyPengs is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 provided personal information, contact hello@mypengs.com so we can review and delete it where appropriate.

We may update this Privacy Policy as MyPengs changes. The effective date above shows when this version took effect.

Questions about privacy can be sent to hello@mypengs.com.