TurtleStitch Privacy Policy

Your privacy and safety online are very important to us. To protect your privacy, we limit what we collect and what we publish on the website.

We follow industry standards to maintain the security of our web server. However, we cannot absolutely guarantee that malicious third parties will be unable to break into our database. This privacy policy explains how our authorised staff and contractors will use your information. Our servers are located in the European Union.

Using our software

You can program in TurtleStitch without providing us with any personally identifiable information at all. We do not record any information about the programs you write unless you save projects on our cloud server. (You can instead save projects only on your own computer.) You can also, without providing any information, download our example projects, libraries, and other public media.

Creating a TurtleStitch account

If you wish to save the projects you create on our cloud server, then you must create an account on this site. When you create an account, we collect your email address. We use your address for five purposes:

- When you sign up for an account, we immediately send you a confirmation email with a verification link.
- If you forget your password, we use your address to send you a password-reset email.
- If you opt in to receive notifications by selecting the 'Notify me on comments' or 'Notify me on likes' options in your profile settings, we will send you email notifications related to these activities. You can adjust your notification preferences or opt out at any time by updating your profile settings.
- If your account is suspended for violation of our Terms of Service, we will notify you by email.
- If you ask for instant deletion of your account under the GDPR, we will send you an email asking for confirmation.


We do not use your address for any other purpose. You will never receive marketing emails of any kind through this site, neither from us nor from third parties.

We do not share your address with anyone else, except for companies contracted with us to provide services to us (see below, "for further questions"). Any such companies agree to obey this privacy policy. The only exception is that we might be compelled by legal subpoena to provide information to police agencies or courts.

Information in your projects

By saving projects in the TurtleStitch cloud, you confirm that they will be shared publicly with other users. You can change the visibility of your projects at any time by selecting the 'Unshare' option in your project listing settings. We strongly urge you not to include any personally identifying information in your shared projects. For example, sharing information like 'today is my birthday' reveals sensitive data, such as your date of birth. If we receive a notification that your shared project contains copyrighted material, we are legally required to investigate and may revoke the shared status of the project.

For teachers and trainers

TurtleStitch provides a feature allowing registered users, who have requested and been granted teacher status, to create and manage student logins. Teacher status is granted upon providing information about the school or institution with which you are affiliated. This feature enables the creation of student logins without the collection of any personal information from students. As a teacher or trainer, you are responsible for managing the student accounts and groups you create, including the ability to reset passwords and delete accounts or entire groups. By using this feature, you agree to ensure that student data is managed responsibly and in accordance with relevant privacy regulations.

Communications that you initiate

If you contact us by email, we save your email address and whatever other information you include in your message long enough to respond to you, which might take some time if your message is a bug report.

Server logging

Our web server collects the following information: Internet Protocol (IP) address of computer being used; web pages requested; referring web page; browser used; date and time; and statistics identifying particular IP addresses from which our websites are accessed. We do not associate this data to individual user identities.
This information is used to improve the technical quality of the site, and may be used for investigation of deliberate attempts to deny the use of our site to others. We do not log personally identifiable information, except that your IP address may indicate your Internet service provider and your general geographic area.

Statistics

We use Umami, a privacy-focused, open-source analytics platform, to collect non-personalized usage statistics on our website. Umami does not use cookies or track personal data, ensuring your privacy while helping us better understand how our platform is used. The information collected is fully anonymized and cannot be used to identify individual users. We use this data solely for improving the functionality and performance of the TurtleStitch platform. No personal information is shared with third parties, and we comply with all relevant data protection regulations, including the GDPR.

How to remove your information

If you delete your account on our site, we will delete all the information associated with that account, including your email and your saved projects.

For further questions

The TurtleStitch site is maintained by

Verein Oseda.org
ZVR-Zahl 1455876130
Andrea Mayr-Stalder
Kirchstetterngasse 43/2/24,
1160 Vienna, Austria