Terms of Use

Welcome to Penguinstones! These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) govern your use of https://penguinstones.com (the “Site”) and your participation in the Penguinstones project — requesting, hiding, finding, re-hiding, adding to the map, marking as found, and reporting as lost the hand-painted penguin stones, and, if you choose to open one, a Penguinstones account (together, the “Services”). The Site is operated by Filip Ponik, Bratislava, Slovakia (“Penguinstones”, “we”, “us”, or “our”).

By using the Site, submitting a stone, or otherwise taking part in the project, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal information.

The Project

Penguinstones is a non-commercial community project. We hand-paint penguin stones, send them to participants, and together we hide them around the world for others to discover. The Site publishes a map and pages of stones based on locations and photos submitted by the community. Participation is voluntary. We never sell penguin stones; when we post a starter pack, we only ask for a contribution towards shipping and packaging.

Hide Responsibly

The heart of this project is leaving small moments of joy behind — never damage, litter, or trouble. When you hide a penguin stone, you agree to do so responsibly:

• Follow local laws and rules. You are responsible for making sure that hiding a stone is allowed where you are. Rules differ from place to place — some national parks, nature reserves, and protected or heritage sites prohibit leaving any objects behind (for example, many national parks operate strict “leave no trace” rules). If in doubt, check the rules of the place, or choose a different spot.
• Respect private property. Do not hide stones on private property without the owner’s permission, and never enter anywhere you are not allowed to be.
• Respect nature. Keep stones out of water and above the tide or flood line, where waves or rising water cannot carry them away (a beach path or a lakeside viewpoint is fine); do not disturb plants, animals, or their habitats, do not bury stones or move natural features to hide them, and do not deface or attach anything to trees, rocks, monuments, or buildings.
• Keep it safe. Do not hide stones in places that would tempt someone into danger — cliff edges, roadsides, railways, construction sites, or similar.
• Traveling with stones. If you carry stones across borders, be aware that some countries (for example Australia and New Zealand) have biosecurity rules about natural materials — make sure stones are clean and declare them where required.

We provide the painted stones and the map — where and how you hide or search for a stone is entirely your own decision and your own responsibility.

Participation Is at Your Own Risk

Hunting for and hiding stones is a real-world outdoor activity. You take part at your own risk, and you are responsible for your own safety and for complying with local laws while doing so. Stone locations shown on the Site are submitted by community members: they may be inaccurate, out of date, or describe a stone that has since been moved, taken, or lost. We do not verify locations in person and make no promises that a stone is still where the map says it is, or that any location is safe or lawful to access.

Children

Families and kids are a wonderful part of this project, and children are welcome to hunt for and hide stones together with a parent or guardian. However, submitting information through the Site (such as your name, email address, or social media handle) requires you to be at least 16 years old. If you are under 16, please ask a parent or guardian to submit the stone for you using their own details. The same applies to a Penguinstones account: a parent or guardian may set one up for their child, using their own email address.

Your Submissions

When you add a stone to the map, you agree that:

• Your content is yours. You only submit photos, videos and text that you created yourself or have the right to share.
• No identifiable people. Your photos and videos do not show identifiable people unless every identifiable person (or their parent/guardian, for children) has agreed to it being published on the Site.
• No private locations. You do not submit a location you are not comfortable sharing publicly (such as a private home) — submitted locations, photos, and attribution are published publicly on the Site and on the map.
• Honest information. The location and details you submit are accurate to the best of your knowledge.
• Nothing unlawful. Your submission contains nothing unlawful, offensive, misleading, or infringing on anyone else’s rights.

Videos. With an account you can add a video to a stone you hid. The same rules apply to it as to your photos, and so does the license below. Before we publish it we remove its sound and keep at most its first 60 seconds; we may decline it without giving a reason, and you can remove it at any time on your account page. We may put a music track under it: free music (released into the public domain by its author) that is not part of what you license to us.

License. You keep full ownership of the photographs and other content you submit. By submitting, you grant Penguinstones a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to host, store, resize, and publicly display that content on the Site and to promote the Site. The license lasts only while your content remains published; you may withdraw it at any time by asking us to remove your submission (see “Removal and Complaints” below).

Moderation. Every submission is reviewed by us before it appears on the Site. We may edit, decline, or remove any submission at any time, at our discretion — for example if it breaks these Terms, looks inaccurate, or doesn’t fit the spirit of the project.

Marking a Stone as Found, and Reporting One Lost

Two buttons on the Site record something without any account or sign-in:

• “I found this stone” adds one anonymous tap to that stone’s counter. We do not record who you are — only that a find happened, when, and whether it was reported through the QR card that came with the stone. You may optionally add the country and town you found it in, which is shown on the stone’s page as part of its travels; we never ask for your exact position. Please use the button for stones you actually found, and give a place only if it is true — inflating a counter or inventing a location spoils the record for the person who hid it and for everyone following the stone’s journey.
• Reporting a stone as lost tells us a stone has gone missing so we can mark it on the map. We keep the IP address the report came from so that repeated false reports can be recognized — see the Privacy Policy.

Both are open to everyone and rate-limited. Automating either, or submitting reports you know to be untrue, is a misuse of the Site under the section below.

Penguinstones Accounts

A Penguinstones account is optional and free. You can hide, find and add stones to the map, and play the games, without one. What an account keeps and how we use it is described in the Privacy Policy.

• Who can open one. You must be 16 or older, or a parent or guardian setting up an account for your child with your own email address (see “Children”). One account per person, please.
• Keeping it yours. You sign in with codes and links we email you, or with Face ID, a fingerprint or your device’s screen lock. Use an email address that is yours, and keep that inbox and your devices secure: anyone who can open them can sign in as you. If you think someone else has got into your account, use “Sign out everywhere” on your account page and tell us at [email protected].
• Names and pictures. The name you give us is shown only to you. A public name — and any change to it — or a picture of your own appears on the Site only after we have checked it, and the rules for “Your Submissions” above apply to it: it must be yours to use, must not show other identifiable people without their agreement, and must not be offensive, misleading or pretend to be someone else. An Instagram handle or nickname that someone else on the Site already uses cannot be chosen. We may decline or remove any of them. The penguin pictures you can pick from are provided by us for use on the Site.
• Your stones and your profile. If you have added stones with the same email address, your account is linked to your contributor profile and you manage that profile from the account page. Everything you change there is a submission under these Terms.
• Play fair. Scores on the leaderboard must come from actually playing the games in your browser. Sending scores any other way, using scripts or modified games, or using several accounts to climb the leaderboard is a misuse of the Site. The leaderboard is just for fun: there are no prizes.
• Notifications. The emails and phone notifications about your stones are a convenience, not a promise: one may arrive late or not at all. You can turn phone notifications off at any time.
• Ending an account. You can delete your account at any time from your account page: it closes at once and is deleted 30 days later, or sooner when we confirm it; until then you can sign in and keep it. Your stones stay on the map, credited anonymously, unless you ask us to remove them (see “Removal and Complaints”). We may sign an account out everywhere or delete it if it breaks these Terms, and accounts unused for two years are deleted, as the Privacy Policy explains. We may also change the accounts or stop offering them; your stones on the map are not affected by that.

Acceptable Use of the Site

You agree not to misuse the Site — including submitting false or automated entries, attempting to disrupt or gain unauthorized access to the Site, scraping personal data of other participants, or using the Site for any unlawful purpose.

Intellectual Property

The Site’s design, text, logos, and the penguin stone artwork we create are our property (or used with permission). Community-submitted photos belong to their submitters (see “Your Submissions”). You are welcome to share links to the Site; please do not copy or reuse Site content commercially without asking us first.

Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

The Site and the Services are provided without charge (apart from the contribution towards shipping and packaging for a starter pack), “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we are not liable for any loss, damage, or injury arising from your participation in the project — including hiding or searching for stones, relying on locations shown on the map, or the actions of other participants. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, and nothing affects the statutory rights you have as a consumer in your country of residence.

Removal and Complaints

If you want a stone, photo, or any of your details removed from the Site, or if you believe any content on the Site infringes your rights or is otherwise unlawful, contact us at [email protected] (for privacy and personal data requests you can also use [email protected]). Tell us which stone or page you mean, and we will review it and take reasonable steps promptly.

Reporting illegal content (EU Digital Services Act). Every stone page has a “Report this stone” link that opens an email to the address above. A report should say which stone or page you mean (its web address), why you believe the content is illegal or breaks these Terms, your name and email address, and that you believe the report is accurate and complete. We confirm that we received it, decide promptly and tell you what we decided. If we remove or decline someone’s content, we tell them why by email, and they can ask us to look at it again by replying. The same address is our point of contact for users and for authorities; you can write to us in English or Slovak.

Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes to the project or for legal reasons. We will post the revised Terms on this page and update the “Last updated” date. Continuing to use the Services after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Slovak Republic. If you are a consumer in the European Union, you also benefit from any mandatory consumer protection provisions of the law of the country where you live.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Contact Filip Ponik, Bratislava, Slovakia (operating the Penguinstones project) at [email protected].