Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your information

Chortleshell LLC, a Texas limited liability company, operates Funny Memes, chortleshell.com, and our related apps and APIs (the Service). We are responsible for the personal information we process for these services and act as its controller where that term applies. This policy covers visitors, members, people who contact us, and authorized account operators.

You can contact Chortleshell LLC without an account. Begin your message with “Privacy request” or “Privacy question” so we can identify its purpose. This policy does not govern independent websites, app stores, or other services you choose to use; their own privacy notices also matter.

2. Information we collect

• Account and authentication information. Username, email address, a password hash, confirmation that you are at least 13, verification and account timestamps, account status, avatar, preferences, and session records. We do not ask for an exact birth date during ordinary signup.
• Content and community activity. Images and animated images you submit, profile images, titles, descriptions, tags, source URLs for URL submissions, comments and edits, votes, favorites, follows, blocks, achievements, and account activity and read status.
• Safety and moderation information. Reports, appeals, relevant content snapshots, review results and scores, reasons, restrictions, reviewer actions, processing records, and other evidence needed to handle abuse or disputes.
• Messages to us. Contact-form name, email address, message, submission identifier, and source IP address; in-app feedback; and information you provide in subsequent correspondence or rights requests.
• Technical and security information. IP address, request time, requested resource or search query, browser or app information sent with a request, response and error information, session activity, and abuse-prevention records. Signup security records include the email domain, outcome, and relevant account identifier, rather than a copy of your signup form.
• Purchase and Premium information. Store product and transaction identifiers, purchase receipts or tokens, verification and restoration results, and Premium status used to activate ad removal and premium features. Apple or Google handle payment-card details.
• Administration information. Role, profile, API-credential, and audit information for authorized operators.

We collect information from you and your device, from your interactions with the Service, and from others who submit content or reports involving you. Store verification and moderation providers may return transaction or review results. We do not require access to your contacts, precise device location, microphone, or entire photo library to browse. Selecting an image for upload gives us that selected image, not permission to collect unrelated photos.

Images and text can themselves reveal personal or sensitive information. Avoid submitting addresses, credentials, medical details, or other information you do not want reviewed or made public. Removing embedded image metadata does not remove information visible in the image or written in its caption.

3. What other people can see

Published images, titles, tags, comments, usernames, approved avatars, public profile details, achievements, and community scores are visible to other users and visitors. Profiles can show join dates, upload totals, and follower and following counts. Memes you upvote can appear on your public profile. Content administrators can see your username and vote direction in their activity notifications. Voting is therefore not anonymous.

Email addresses, passwords, session credentials, favorites, and block lists are not provided as public profile fields. Reports, appeals, and moderation records are not ordinary public posts, but authorized staff can access them for their work. Relevant moderation information is also available to the affected account holder. We may need to share complaint details with someone involved in a dispute, as explained below.

Public information can be saved, copied, indexed, or reshared by people, search engines, and authorized automated accounts. We cannot recall copies made outside our Service. Pending uploads are not public, but they are processed and reviewed before any publication decision.

4. How and why we use information

• Provide accounts, authentication, feeds, search, profiles, posting, comments, votes, favorites, follows, achievements, and account activity.
• Process images, remove embedded metadata, check supported formats, detect duplicates, categorize content, and conduct moderation and publication review.
• Prevent abuse, fraud, spam, unauthorized access, and repeated violations; apply security limits; and investigate reports or appeals.
• Send verification, password-reset, support, and other service-related messages; respond to requests; verify and restore purchases; and provide ad removal and premium features.
• Deliver and measure ads in the free app, including for guests, and prevent invalid advertising traffic. Google’s handling of advertising information is described below.
• Maintain and troubleshoot the Service, measure operational performance, enforce our Terms, protect legal rights, and meet legal obligations.

Account features need the information necessary to provide them. If you decline required signup information, we cannot create an account, but available guest browsing remains an option. We do not sell personal information for money, rent member lists, or provide member content or community activity to advertisers for targeting. Advertising providers still process device, network, and ad-interaction information as described below. Buying Premium removes in-app ads; you do not have to buy Premium to exercise privacy rights.

5. AI processing and human moderation

We use locally operated image-safety models and external AI services, including OpenAI, to evaluate submitted images and text. External processing can include image frames, titles, descriptions, tags, comment text, and relevant context such as a parent comment or post title. We do not add your account email, username, IP address, or original filename as separate fields in moderation prompts. Personal information contained in the content itself is still visible to the provider and reviewers.

Providers process submissions under their applicable terms and data-handling arrangements. Sending material for review is a disclosure to the provider; it is not a promise of anonymity, zero retention, or exclusion from every provider’s model-improvement practices. We retain moderation results and relevant evidence to support safety decisions and review.

Authorized people may examine submissions, reports, and associated records. Ordinary blind image reviewers receive limited review information; administrators have broader access for safety, support, and publication duties. New meme uploads require final administrator publication approval.

Some automated safety decisions can reject content, restrict participation, or block an account or exact IP address. Models can make mistakes. Use available in-app review tools or contact us to explain a disputed decision and request human review. Changing a restriction cannot recover media that has already been permanently erased.

6. Who receives information

• Other users and the public: the content and activity described in “What other people can see.”
• Service providers: infrastructure, hosting, storage, email, security, and moderation providers process information needed for their functions. Our administrators and authorized staff receive contact messages and support records. AI processing is described above; Google AdMob advertising is described below.
• App stores: Apple and Google process downloads, purchases, restoration, and related store interactions under their own privacy policies. Where verification is needed, transaction information may pass between our software and the store.
• Legal and safety recipients: we may disclose relevant information when legally required or reasonably necessary to investigate abuse, protect people or the Service, respond to valid legal process, or establish or defend legal claims. A request alone does not give an unrelated person unrestricted access to account data.
• Parties to a complaint: copyright notices and counter-notices, including identifying and contact information, may be forwarded as necessary to resolve a dispute or satisfy legal requirements.
• Business transfers: relevant information may be disclosed to advisers and prospective or actual successors during a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale, subject to appropriate confidentiality protections and applicable law.

We may also disclose information at your direction. If you submit an image URL, our systems request it from its host; that host receives the request and the network information needed to respond. If you follow an external link, that website receives your visit under its own practices.

7. Guest browsing, cookies, and device storage

Our backend does not create a guest account or stable server-side guest identity just because you browse. Guest requests still expose network information such as IP addresses and the requested content. Temporary security counters help control abuse; guest browsing is not anonymous to the network providers that carry your connection. Ads can appear without an account, and Google’s advertising services may use device or app identifiers as described in the next section. Browsing as a guest does not prevent that advertising data processing.

Browser storage is used for authentication when you sign into Operations or use account-deletion authentication. Native apps store sign-in credentials, preferences, search history, and a first-install timestamp on your device. The install timestamp used for promotional eligibility is not sent to our server. Searches you submit do reach the server even though the local history is kept on the device. Clearing local storage or app data may remove settings and sign you out; it does not delete your server account.

The public website does not use third-party behavioral analytics or advertising tracking cookies. We do not change its behavior in response to a browser’s “Do Not Track” signal. That signal differs from legally recognized opt-out preference signals. Our current website does not sell or share information for cross-context behavioral advertising or use it for targeted advertising, so it has no such processing for an opt-out signal to stop. App advertising and the Premium purchase are described in the next section.

8. Optional activity notifications

When you sign in and enable notifications in the Android app and your device settings, we associate a Firebase Cloud Messaging token and an opaque login binding with your account to deliver alerts about new votes, comments and replies. Tokens are encrypted on our server. Google receives the device token and a generic activity signal with opaque delivery identifiers; we do not include usernames, comment text or images in these push messages.

You can turn notifications off in Settings or your device settings. Logging out stops the app from displaying account alerts. We attempt to remove the registration when you log out or opt out; offline registrations expire after 30 days without refresh. Queued alerts expire after 24 hours. Account deletion removes registrations and queued alerts. Google handles its service records under its own privacy policy.

9. Advertising and the one-time Premium purchase

Ads are enabled by default for guests and free accounts, including when you browse without signing in. Ads are provided by Google AdMob. The Remove Ads button opens the one-time in-app Premium purchase, which removes ads and unlocks the premium features described before checkout. Premium is not a subscription and does not renew automatically. Premium accounts never receive in-app ads.

When the app requests or displays an ad, Google’s services may receive your IP address, device and app information, app-scoped identifiers, ad impressions and interactions, and diagnostic information. These are used to deliver ads, limit repetition, measure performance, and detect fraud or invalid traffic. An IP address can indicate approximate location. We use nonpersonalized ads. Nonpersonalized ads still involve data processing. We do not send your Funny Memes username, account email, uploaded content, searches, or precise device location to Google for ad targeting. See Google’s Privacy Policy and its Mobile Ads SDK data disclosures for its handling of information.

Apple or Google process the Premium payment through the app store. We use purchase receipts or tokens, product and transaction identifiers, verification results, and Premium status to activate benefits, restore eligible purchases, resolve purchase problems, and prevent fraud. Features associated with a Funny Memes account also use that account’s Premium status. We do not receive full payment-card numbers. Restore an eligible purchase using the same app-store account used to buy it; transfer between Apple and Google stores is not guaranteed.

Once Premium is active, the app does not request or display ads for the Premium account. Purchasing Premium does not erase advertising information previously received by Google, or stop the account, security, moderation, and purchase processing needed to provide the Service. Advertising-provider and store records are retained under their respective policies and applicable legal requirements.

10. How long information remains

Retention depends on the purpose, account status, safety needs, and legal obligations. The periods below describe active application cleanup; scheduled cleanup and storage retries can take additional time. They do not mean every copy held by an email provider, backup system, or independent recipient expires on the same schedule.

Original upload files are held privately for processing and removed after successful conversion. Published image versions remain while content is available. Removal or rejection hides content and initiates permanent media erasure; failed storage deletions are retried. Processing, rejection, and moderation records are distinct from the image bytes and can remain after erasure.

Restricted backups or recovery snapshots may contain earlier records until those copies are replaced or deleted. We do not represent active-system deletion as immediate erasure from every backup. Information needed for a legal obligation or dispute may be retained for that purpose. You can contact us about the retention of particular information.

11. Deleting your account or content

Use the account-deletion option in the app or our Delete account page. If you cannot sign in, submit a privacy request through our Contact Us page, by emailing contact@chortleshell.com, or by calling +1 (844) 246-7853. We may verify that you control the account before acting. Uninstalling the app, signing out, or deleting a store account does not itself delete your Funny Memes account.

Account deletion revokes sign-in access, clears the account’s email address, password hash, and avatar, replaces the username with a deleted-account alias, removes comments and their private review snapshots, votes, favorites, follows, and blocks, and removes public access to uploads while queuing media erasure. Achievement records are also cleared. Storage cleanup is asynchronous and retries if a storage service is unavailable.

Deletion does not erase every database record. A restricted account identifier, upload records such as titles, descriptions, source URLs and moderation metadata, reports, security and audit records, and session records can remain for the purposes and periods described above. Some retained records may still contain personal information. Contact correspondence is handled separately and is not automatically found and deleted when an account is closed. Permanent IP safety blocks are not automatically removed by account deletion.

If the account has an account ban or ban history, we retain a keyed HMAC-SHA-256 of its canonicalized email address (lowercase, with a plus-tag suffix removed) with the ban restrictions, account-ban history, and unexpired participation marks. The key is held separately from account data; the retained value is designed to prevent recovery of the email from the stored hash. If you create another account using an email that canonicalizes to the same value, the prior ban restrictions and history will be applied to it. This limited record is kept to prevent account deletion and recreation from bypassing enforcement.

Deleting an individual upload does not delete your entire account or all moderation evidence about it. Removing an account or upload cannot erase copies another person downloaded or posted elsewhere. Account deletion does not erase your app-store purchase history or itself request a refund for Premium. Restoring an eligible purchase does not restore deleted account content.

12. Your choices and privacy rights

You can browse available content as a guest, choose what to post, use available account and device settings, purchase Premium to remove ads, and request account deletion. Depending on where you live and which laws apply, you may also have rights to:

• Confirm whether we process your information and obtain access or a portable copy.
• Correct inaccurate information or request deletion.
• Object to or restrict certain processing, or withdraw consent where processing relies on consent. Withdrawal does not change earlier lawful processing.
• Opt out of legally defined sales, sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising, targeted advertising, or certain profiling, if those activities apply.
• Seek human review of an automated decision where the law provides that right.
• Use an authorized agent, appeal a denied request, or complain to a privacy regulator.

Submit a Privacy request with the right you want to exercise, your country or state, and enough information to identify relevant records. No account is required to submit a request. Do not send your password, API keys, payment-card details, or identity documents in the initial message. We may ask for proportionate verification or evidence of an agent’s authority to prevent disclosure or deletion of someone else’s information.

We respond within the period required by applicable law and explain any permitted extension or refusal. Rights are subject to legal exceptions, including necessary security and legal records. Where an appeal is available, send “Privacy appeal” through the same form with our response and the reason for your appeal. We will provide the outcome and any further complaint route required by law. You may contact your state attorney general or relevant data-protection authority directly. We will not unlawfully discriminate or retaliate against you for exercising privacy rights. Some features cannot function without their necessary data.

13. Legal bases and international processing

We operate from the United States. Our providers may process information in the United States and other countries whose laws differ from those where you live. Using the Service is not, by itself, consent to waive your local privacy protections or to a transfer that requires separate safeguards.

Where laws such as European or UK data-protection law apply, our legal bases depend on the purpose: performing our agreement for requested account and community features; legitimate interests in operating, securing, moderating, and improving the Service and resolving disputes, balanced against your rights; legal obligations where processing is required; and consent where required for an optional activity. We do not treat every activity as necessary to a contract. Where a transfer requires legal safeguards, we must satisfy those requirements. Contact us for information about the basis and safeguards relevant to your data or to exercise the rights described above, including the right to complain to your local supervisory authority.

14. Children and younger users

The Service is not intended for children under 13, and they may not use it. We do not knowingly collect their personal information. Signup requires a confirmation of age eligibility, rather than an exact birth date. Where local law requires a higher minimum age or parental authorization for a minor’s use or particular processing, those requirements also apply. Parent permission does not allow a child under 13 to use this Service.

If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, contact us with “Child privacy” and enough information to locate the account or content. We will investigate and take appropriate steps to remove the information and disable an ineligible account, subject to any legally required preservation. Teenagers should avoid posting identifying or sensitive information and should understand that profiles, posts, and some voting activity are public.

15. Security

We use safeguards appropriate to the Service, including encrypted connections, password hashing, access controls, private upload processing, and restricted administrative access. No system or transmission is completely secure. Choose a unique password, protect your device and credentials, and contact us promptly about suspected unauthorized access. We will provide legally required notices if a security incident affects your information.

16. Policy changes and contacting us

We will update this policy when our practices change and show its effective date above. For material changes, we will provide additional notice through the Service or another appropriate channel. If a change requires consent or another choice under applicable law, we will obtain it before applying that change. A new policy does not by itself authorize materially different use of information already collected.

Send questions and requests to Chortleshell LLC through our Contact Us page, by emailing contact@chortleshell.com, or by calling +1 (844) 246-7853. If you use the form, it sends your name, email, message, and observed IP address to our administrators through our email service for handling and abuse prevention. We use the supplied email to reply. You do not need to register. See the copyright complaint and intimate-image removal instructions for those requests.