How Whiskr handles your data

Last updated September 2026.

This page covers the free cat photo contest, voting, custom print orders, and reviews on whiskr.lol. It doesn't repeat the official contest rules — see Official contest rules for eligibility, photo licensing, and how winners are picked.

What we collect

Entering the contest: your name, your email address, your phone number (used only to reach you about your entry, such as if your cat wins — never for marketing texts), your cat's name, the photo you submit, and your confirmation that you own the photo or have permission to submit it.
If your cat wins: the name and mailing address you give us when you claim the prize, used only to ship your painting.
Voting: a small identity cookie (whiskr_voter) so the same browser can't vote for the same cat twice, and a one-way, salted hash of your IP address — never your raw IP itself — used only to enforce vote limits and catch obvious abuse.
Ordering a print: your email, the photo you upload, your cat's name, your shipping address, and payment details. Your card number never touches our servers — Stripe handles payment directly and we only ever see that a charge succeeded.
Leaving a review: your review text and an optional display name, tied to the specific order it's about.
If you arrive from an ad: an optional cookie (whiskr_utm_campaign) recording which campaign link you followed, so we can tell which ads are working. It doesn't contain anything personally identifying, just a campaign label.
Ad measurement: when we're running ads, Meta's tracking pixel runs on every page (it sets its own _fbp/_fbc cookies) and we tell Meta, in a one-way hashed form it can't reverse, the email address behind a contest entry, an order started, or a completed purchase. This is purely so Meta can measure whether its own ads are working and show them to people likely to be interested — we don't use it to track you anywhere else, and Meta's own policies govern what it does with that signal on its side.
Marketing signup: if you check the "email me about new contests and promos" box on the entry form, or sign up separately in the footer, we keep your email on a list for occasional non-transactional emails — new contests opening, promos, live painting sessions. This is always opt-in, always separate from any contest entry or order, and every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link.

What we use it for

Running the contest (picking and notifying the winner), showing entries on the site and on Whiskr's own social accounts to promote the contest, fulfilling print orders (sending your photo and shipping address to our printing partner), sending the emails you'd expect (entry confirmation, your vote result, order status, a review request), preventing fraud and abuse, and — if your cat wins — having artist Cody Carlson paint your cat's portrait from the winning photo.

We don't sell products made from contest entry photos, and we don't use an entry photo to promote anything other than the contest. Photo rights in the official rules lists exactly what you're permitting, and you keep ownership either way.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your data, and we don't share it with anyone for their own marketing. The businesses below process it on our behalf, only for the reasons listed:

Stripe — processes payment for print orders. Handles your card details directly; we never see or store them.
Printful — our print-on-demand partner. Receives your photo, quantity, and shipping address to print and ship your order.
Zoho Mail — sends the transactional emails this site relies on (entry confirmation, contest results, order updates).
Vercel — hosts the site, stores uploaded photos, and provides basic, aggregate visit analytics.
Meta (Facebook/Instagram) — only while we're running ads there, and only the hashed-email ad-measurement signal described above.

Cookies

The functional cookies described above, plus Meta's own _fbp/_fbc cookies while its ad-measurement pixel is active. We don't sell your browsing history to anyone, and there's no cookie banner because we currently only target ads at US visitors, where one isn't required. Vercel's analytics is separately aggregate and doesn't use a tracking cookie to follow you across other sites.

How long we keep it, and how to delete it

Entries, orders, and photos are kept as part of our normal operating and contest records. There's no fully automated self-service deletion tool yet — email us (see Contact below) and we'll delete what we hold digitally. The one thing we can't undo is a photo already used in a shipped print or an already-painted portrait; we can still remove it from our own systems going forward.

Your rights

Contact us anytime to see what we have on file, correct it, or ask us to delete it. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link — transactional emails you'd expect from an order you placed or a contest you entered aren't marketing and can't be turned off the same way, but you're always welcome to ask us to delete your data outright.

We'll honor a request to access, correct, or delete your data from anyone, anywhere, whether or not the law where you live requires it.

Children

Whiskr isn't directed at children. Contest entry requires being 18 or older — see the official rules.

Changes to this policy

If anything material changes about what we collect or how we use it, we'll update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Email us at contest@whiskr.lol.