Terms of Service
1. Agreement & Eligibility
These Terms are a binding agreement between you and SharktoothifyUS ("we," "us"). By using Sharktoothify you accept them and the Privacy Policy. You must be at least 13 to use the app on your own; younger explorers may use it only with a parent or guardian, who accepts these Terms on their behalf. Purchases require an adult (18+) or a parent/guardian.
2. Educational Use — No Professional Advice
Sharktoothify is provided strictly for educational and entertainment purposes. All identifications are expert-assisted estimates and are not guaranteed to be accurate. Nothing in this application constitutes professional scientific, paleontological, appraisal, legal, medical, financial, or other licensed advice. Consult a qualified expert for any formal assessment.
3. Assumption of Risk & Your Responsibilities
You use Sharktoothify voluntarily, at your own discretion and entirely at your own risk. Beaches, rivers, cliffs, and fossil sites involve inherent hazards; you are solely responsible for your safety, for supervising minors in your care, for verifying real-world conditions independently, and for complying with all collecting laws, permits, park rules, and property rights. You assume all risk arising from decisions made using the app.
4. Automated Analysis
Expert analyses may be inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated, and may vary between runs. They are provided "as is," you should not rely on them for any consequential decision, and you are responsible for independently verifying results that matter to you.
5. Tide & Weather Data
Tide and weather information comes from NOAA and the U.S. National Weather Service and is provided "as is," with no guarantee of accuracy, timeliness, or availability. It is not intended for navigation, boating, or safety-of-life decisions — always verify conditions with official sources before entering the water.
6. Intellectual Property; License to You
Sharktoothify™ — including all source code, architecture, interface, visual design, text, graphics, badge artwork, the species-reference compilation, the hunt-scoring system, and the "Sharktoothify" name, DB maker's mark, and tooth-badge logo — is an original work. Copyright © 2025–2026 SharktoothifyUS. All Rights Reserved. Protected by U.S. copyright law (Title 17) and international treaties. "Sharktoothify"™ and "Sharktoothify"™ are trademarks of SharktoothifyUS. You receive a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license for non-commercial use. Without written consent you may not copy, publish, or distribute any portion; modify or create derivative works; reverse-engineer, decompile, extract, or scrape code, prompts, data sets, scoring logic, or design; sell, sublicense, embed, frame, or mirror the app; remove notices; or use automated systems to access or harvest it. Violations terminate this license immediately and may create liability under 17 U.S.C. §§ 501–506 and the DMCA. DMCA notices & permissions: use Contact Us (button at the bottom of this page).
7. Acceptable Use
You agree to use Sharktoothify only lawfully and to submit only appropriate, lawful images relevant to shark tooth identification. You will not upload content that is illegal, obscene, sexually explicit, violent, threatening, defamatory, infringing, or that depicts identifiable people without consent; you will not probe, overload, or interfere with the service, evade rate limits or the free-analysis window, misuse purchase flows, or attempt unauthorized access. We may suspend or permanently revoke access for violations, at our sole discretion and without prior notice.
8. Your Content
You keep ownership of photos and notes you submit. You grant us a limited, worldwide, royalty-free license to transmit and process that content solely to deliver the result you requested, and you represent that you have all necessary rights to it. We may remove or refuse content that violates these Terms.
9. Accounts, Lookups & Purchases
You must be 13 or older to have a Sharktoothify account. Children under 13 may take part only as a "guest hunter" added by a parent or guardian who holds an account and is responsible for them; they have no account of their own. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in private and for everything done through your account. Each verified account receives one complimentary Expert ID every 30 days. Additional lookups are sold in packs (currently 1 for $1.00, 5 for $3.99, 10 for $7.49 and 500 for $249.99, plus any applicable tax), and are 25% cheaper while you hold an active Sharktoothify Plus plan. Pack lookups are tied to your account, can be used on any device where you sign in, and do not expire while the service operates. A lookup is used each time a report is returned, whatever the report says (including a low-confidence answer, a finding that the object is not a shark tooth, or a request for a clearer photo). If a lookup fails and no report is returned, it goes back to your balance automatically. Prices may change for future purchases. Except where required by law, purchases are final once lookups are delivered; contact us if something went wrong and we will make it right. Lookups have no cash value and cannot be transferred or resold. Deleting your account deletes any unused lookups. The manual identifier is free.
9A. Plans, Vacation Pass, Free Trial & Automatic Renewal
Sharktoothify Plus costs $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year (plus any applicable tax). It adds 25 lookups at the start of each month it covers, removes advertising while it is active, and unused lookups roll over. Sharktoothify Keep costs $1.99 a month; it keeps your account, finds, crews and credits safe, advertising stays on, and it adds no monthly lookups. A free trial of Plus lasts 10 days, includes one lookup, is limited to one per account, and needs a card; it renews into a paid Plus plan unless you cancel before it ends. Plans renew automatically at the then-current price until canceled. You can cancel, change your card or pause from the billing portal (Settings, Manage plan) at any time; cancelling takes effect at the end of the period you already paid for, and we do not refund partial periods except where the law requires. A Plus plan can be paused once every 180 days for up to 90 days; no lookups are added and advertising returns during a pause, and the lookups you already hold stay yours. The Vacation Pass costs $19.99 once, does not renew, adds 25 lookups, removes advertising for 14 days, and includes a downloadable trip keepsake (a memory reel and a PDF book) built on your device from the finds, notes and photos you chose to include; lookups that go unused are kept as ordinary credits after the pass period. Payments are processed by Stripe; we never see your card number. We may limit or refuse accounts or devices that we reasonably believe are being used to avoid these limits; one device may be used with at most three accounts, and a device used with more than three accounts may lose access to Expert IDs.
9B. Crews, Shared Reports & Community Content
Crews let you invite signed-in friends and add guest hunters you name yourself. A crew owner decides whether a friend's posted find counts, and may accept, edit or decline it; a record of those decisions is kept. Only accepted finds count toward crew and leaderboard totals. The public leaderboard is optional and shows only the nickname you choose, never your real name or email. A shared report is a web page with a private link: anyone who has the link can read it and add a comment, so share it only with people you are happy for it to reach, and treat anything you post to it as public. The person who made a report, or the crew owner, can turn its link off at any time, which stops new views but cannot recall copies others have already saved. You are responsible for what you post, including comments, notes, nicknames and place suggestions, and you must have the right to share it. Do not post anything unlawful, hateful, harassing, private about another person, or that reveals the location of private property. We may remove content or suspend access without notice. You keep ownership of your content and give us a limited license to host, display and transmit it for the features you use. Place suggestions are reviewed by a person before they appear and may be edited or declined.
9C. Collecting, Locations & Safety
Fossil, shell and artifact collecting is regulated in many places, and rules differ between countries, states, parks, beaches and private land, and they change. The places list, the planner, tide, sun and weather information and any go score are general information only. They are not permission to enter or collect anywhere, they may be wrong or out of date, and many entries have not yet been checked against the managing agency. You alone decide whether to go, where to go, what to collect, and whether conditions are safe. Beaches, tides, surf, cliffs, rivers, weather, wildlife, heat and other people can seriously injure or kill. Never dig in or climb cliffs, never turn your back on the water, and never rely on this app for safety. You accept those risks, and you agree to follow all laws, closures and landowner rules. Where the app shows a place, it also shows where its rule summary came from and the date we read it, or says that no official rule was found. Those summaries are our reading of another party's page at that moment, not legal advice, and they may be out of date, incomplete or wrong. Always confirm with the managing agency or landowner. We are not responsible for trespass, fines, injury, loss or damage connected to your outing.
10. Third-Party Services & External Links
The app relies on third parties, including Stripe (payments), our photo-analysis provider, Google (optional sign-in, and advertising shown to users who have not purchased lookups), Resend (account email), Cloudflare (hosting), NOAA/NWS (data) and OpenStreetMap-based geocoding, each governed by its own terms and policies. External links are provided for convenience; we do not control and are not responsible for third-party sites, services, or content, and no endorsement is implied.
11. Availability, Changes & Force Majeure
We do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation and may modify, suspend, or discontinue any feature at any time. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including outages of third-party services, network failures, acts of nature, labor actions, war, or governmental acts.
12. Disclaimer of Warranties
THE APP AND ALL CONTENT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND UNINTERRUPTED OPERATION, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW.
13. Limitation of Liability
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SHARKTOOTHIFYUS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) FIFTY U.S. DOLLARS OR (B) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID US IN THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations; in those places these limits apply to the maximum extent permitted.
14. Indemnification
You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless SharktoothifyUS from claims, damages, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from your content, your use of the app, or your violation of these Terms or of any law or third-party right.
15. Dispute Resolution — Arbitration & Class Waiver
Please read carefully — this affects your rights. Before filing any claim, you agree to send us a written notice through Contact Us (button at the bottom of this page) and give us 30 days to resolve it informally. Except for small-claims-court matters and actions to protect intellectual property, any dispute will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules. You and SharktoothifyUS each waive any right to a jury trial and to participate in a class, collective, or representative action, to the fullest extent enforceable. You may opt out of this arbitration provision by emailing us within 30 days of first accepting these Terms with the subject "Arbitration Opt-Out." If this Section is found unenforceable, disputes will be resolved exclusively in the courts identified below.
16. Governing Law & Venue
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. For matters not subject to arbitration, exclusive venue lies in the state and federal courts of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and the parties consent to their jurisdiction.
17. Termination & Survival
You may stop using Sharktoothify at any time; we may suspend or terminate your license for violations. Sections that by their nature should survive (including 6, 8, and 12–16) survive termination.
18. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be posted in the app and on the site with a new effective date; continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.
19. Miscellaneous
These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the app and supersede prior understandings. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be limited to the minimum extent necessary and the remainder stays in full effect (severability). Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, sale, or reorganization. Headings are for convenience only.
20. Contact
SharktoothifyUS · use Contact Us (button at the bottom of this page) for legal notices, DMCA, privacy requests, and arbitration opt-outs.
Disclaimers & Data / Open-Source Credits
Results can be wrong. Identifications are expert-assisted estimates for education and fun — verify anything important with a qualified expert before relying on it. You are responsible for your own decisions; no outcome is guaranteed and nothing here is professional advice. Tide & weather data is informational only — never for navigation, boating, or safety-of-life decisions. Fossil hunting has real risks and real rules — your safety, your supervision of minors, and legal compliance are yours alone.
Tide predictions: NOAA CO-OPS. Weather: U.S. National Weather Service (public-domain data; no endorsement implied). Geocoding: Zippopotam.us and Nominatim — © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Built with React (MIT) and MapLibre GL (BSD-3-Clause) where maps appear, with Montserrat and Inter (SIL OFL) hosted on our own site. Payments by Stripe; photo analysis by our analysis provider.