Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 24, 2026

This policy explains what personal information HamsterTribe collects, why, and what you can do about it. It covers both the community and the Shop.

1. Who is responsible

HamsterTribe runs https://hamstertribe.com and is responsible for the personal information described here.

2. What we collect

Things you give us

• Account details: username, email address, and password. The password is stored only as a one-way hash — we cannot read it, and neither can anyone who obtains a copy of the database.
• Profile details you choose to add: nickname, avatar, gender, birthday, bio, location, and links.
• Content you publish: posts, comments, images and files.
• Shop details: orders, delivery name, phone number and address, and your support tickets. Guest checkout collects only what is needed to fulfil the order.
• Security settings for account recovery. The answers to your security questions are stored hashed, exactly like a password; the recovery code generated when you set them up is shown once and stored only as a hash.

Things created by using the site

• Technical and security logs: IP address, browser and device information, and sign-in times. IP addresses are stored only as a keyed hash (HMAC-SHA256), never in readable form. They are used to count visits and detect abuse, and cannot be turned back into an IP address.
• Cookies and similar storage — see the Cookie Policy.

Things that come from payment

We do not receive your card or bank details. Payment is handled by PayPal, which tells us only what is needed to confirm and reconcile the payment: the transaction identifier, its status, and the payer's email address.

3. Why we use it

• To create and secure your account, and to let you sign in.
• To publish your content and show it to other users.
• To take Shop orders, receive payment for them, ship them, and support them afterwards.
• To keep the site safe — detecting spam, fraud and abuse.
• To send service messages: order and shipping notices, and security alerts.
• To measure traffic and understand which parts of the site are used, using hashed and aggregated data.

We do not sell your personal information, and this site carries no advertising networks and no third-party trackers.

4. Who we share it with

• PayPal, to process payments.
• Shipping carriers and postal services, which receive the name, phone number and address needed to deliver your parcel. Your phone number may have to appear on the customs declaration.
• Hosting and infrastructure providers who run the servers on our behalf.
• Authorities, where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to protect someone's safety.

5. International transfers

Our servers, and our payment and shipping providers, may be located outside your country, including outside the EEA. Where the law requires it, we rely on appropriate safeguards for the transfer, such as standard contractual clauses.

6. How long we keep it

• Account and profile data: for as long as your account exists.
• Orders, payments and tax records: kept after the order, because accounting and tax law requires it.
• Hashed IP log data: kept for a limited period, then deleted or overwritten.
• Support tickets: kept while the issue is live and for a reasonable period afterwards.

7. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see the personal information we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to receive it in a portable form, to object to certain processing, and to withdraw consent. To use any of these, contact us using the details in section 9. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.

Most of your own data you can edit directly in your account settings, and you can close your account at any time — see the Account Deletion Notice for exactly what that does and does not remove.

8. Security

Passwords, security-question answers and recovery codes are stored hashed. IP addresses are stored hashed. Traffic is served over HTTPS. No system is perfect, so we cannot promise absolute security; if a breach ever affects you, we will tell you as the law requires.

9. Contact

By email at [email protected], or through the support ticket form at https://hamstertribe.com/shop/tickets.

Cookie Policy

Last updated: September 24, 2026

HamsterTribe uses a small number of first-party cookies. There are no advertising cookies, no third-party analytics, and no tracking pixels on this site: every cookie listed below is set by HamsterTribe itself, and every one of them is needed to run the site.

1. What a cookie is

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store and send back with later requests. Cookies cannot run programs and cannot read other files on your device.

2. Cookies we set

Strictly necessary — the site cannot work without them

• fresns_session — identifies your browsing session, so the site can keep you signed in and remember what you typed between pages. HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax, expires after 2 hours of not being used.
• XSRF-TOKEN — a random value proving that a form submission came from this site rather than from another one. Secure, SameSite=Lax, expires after 2 hours. It holds no personal information.

Sign-in state (only if you sign in)

• fresns_aid and fresns_uid — the numbers of the account and the user you are signed in as.
• fresns_aid_token and fresns_uid_token — the tokens proving that sign-in. These are what let you stay signed in between visits.

Preferences

• fresns_timezone — the timezone you picked, so times are shown in your local time.
• fresns_redirect_url — where to send you back to after you sign in.
• fresns_post_message_key — a one-time value that stops the same post being submitted twice by a double click.

Account centre

When you open the account centre, a group of cookies prefixed fresns_account_center_ is set. They carry the connection details needed to operate that section: application, platform, version, device information, interface language, timezone, your account and user identifiers, and their tokens.

3. Cookies we do not set

• No advertising or retargeting cookies.
• No third-party analytics (no Google Analytics or anything similar).
• No social-media tracking pixels.
• No cross-site tracking of any kind.

Because everything we set is strictly necessary or functional, and all of it is first-party, there is nothing optional to consent to and therefore no consent banner. If we ever add a cookie that is not strictly necessary, this policy will be updated and consent will be asked for first.

4. Managing cookies

You can delete or block cookies in your browser's privacy settings, and you can clear them at any time.

Be aware of the consequence: without cookies the site cannot keep you signed in, so you will not be able to log in or place an order. There is no alternative mechanism — this is why they are described as strictly necessary rather than optional.

5. Related documents

• Terms of Service — how the site may be used.
• Privacy Policy — what we collect and how long we keep it.
• Account Deletion Notice — what closing your account removes.

Account Deletion Notice

Last updated: September 24, 2026

This notice explains what happens when you close your HamsterTribe account. It is written to match what the site actually does — including the parts that are not deleted.

1. How to close your account

You can request closure yourself, at any time, from the site. You do not need to write to us:

1. Sign in and open your Account Centre.
2. Find the deletion section and read the notice shown there.
3. Click Apply for deletion and confirm.
4. Enter your current password and solve the arithmetic question shown in the dialog — that is how we check it is really you.

When the request is accepted, your account is marked for deletion and the date it will actually run is shown to you.

If you cannot sign in, see section 6.

2. The waiting period

There is a waiting period of 7 days between your request and the deletion running. During those days:

• You can still sign in. Simply signing in and cancelling the request is how you change your mind.
• Your account shows as pending deletion to you.
• Your posts and comments stay visible as usual.

You can cancel at any time before the deletion runs. Cancelling asks for no password and no other check — open the same section of the account centre and click Cancel deletion. The account returns to normal immediately.

3. What the deletion does

When the waiting period ends (the check runs automatically every few hours), the following happens:

• Your account is closed and you can no longer sign in, on any device.
• Your login identifiers are released: the email address (or phone number) registered to the account becomes free, and can be used to register a new account.
• Links to third-party sign-in providers connected to the account are permanently removed.
• Any user profiles attached to the account are closed as well.

4. What the deletion does NOT do

Being clear about this matters more than sounding thorough:

• Your posts, comments and uploaded images are not deleted. They stay in the database and, once the deletion has run, they no longer appear in the community feeds or listings, because they are no longer associated with a usable account. If you want a specific post or comment gone, delete it yourself before — or during — the waiting period. After the deletion has run, you can no longer sign in to delete it yourself.
• Your username is not released. Usernames are never reused, because they are used in links to content and because a recycled name would let someone else impersonate the previous holder. Once taken, a username stays taken.
• Content other people wrote about you (for example a reply mentioning your username) is not removed. You can ask us to review such content using the contact details in section 6.
• Orders you placed in the Shop are not deleted — see section 5.

5. What we have to keep

A small amount of data survives, because the law requires it or because deleting it would break things for other people:

• Order and payment records. Orders you placed in the Shop are kept for as long as accounting and tax law requires, including the delivery address and the amount paid. They are kept for that purpose only.
• Moderation and security records, for example a record that an account was closed for spam, kept as long as needed to stop the same abuse happening again.
• Backups. Copies of the database exist in encrypted backups and are overwritten on their normal rotation cycle.

Closing your account is not a way out of an unpaid order, an open dispute, or a refund obligation.

6. If you cannot sign in

First try the ordinary recovery routes: password reset, your security questions, or the one-time recovery code you were given when you set them up.

If none of those work, you can ask us to close the account for you. We will need to verify the account is yours — normally by writing from the registered email address, or otherwise proving control of it. Contact us:

By email at [email protected], or through the support ticket form at https://hamstertribe.com/shop/tickets.

7. Before you go

Two things worth doing first:

• Cancel any open Shop order, or wait for it to complete. An in-progress order is not cancelled by closing your account.
• Save anything you want to keep — posts, comments, images, and your order history. None of it is downloadable after the account is closed.

8. Related documents

• Terms of Service — how the site may be used.
• Privacy Policy — what we collect and how long we keep it.
• Cookie Policy — the cookies the site sets.