Privacy Policy & Messaging Terms
The Future Turtles are a volunteer-run theme camp at Burning Man. This page explains what personal information we collect, what we do with it, and the terms of our text message program. If you have a question about any of it, email us at info@futureturtles.com.
Text message program
We charter a bus, the Future Turtles Bus, that carries riders between San Francisco or Reno and Black Rock City. If you buy a ticket you may optionally choose to receive text messages from the Future Turtles about your trip: departure reminders, delays, boarding location changes, and other day-of travel information. That is the entire program. We do not send marketing, promotional, or fundraising text messages.
Consent to receive text messages is not a condition of buying a bus ticket or of using any other part of this site. You opt in by ticking a box, which is never pre-selected for you, on the bus ticket form. You can decline and still ride the bus; we will email you instead.
- Message frequency varies; you will typically receive fewer than 10 messages per trip.
- Message and data rates may apply.
- Reply STOP to any message to unsubscribe. You will receive one message confirming that you have been unsubscribed, and nothing after that.
- Reply HELP for help, or email info@futureturtles.com.
- Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.
The Future Turtles will never sell, rent, or share your mobile phone number or your SMS consent with any third party for marketing purposes. Your mobile number and your consent are used only to send you the messages described above. We use a messaging provider to deliver those messages on our behalf; that provider is a service provider acting under our instructions, not a third party we share your information with.
What we collect
When you sign up for camp, buy a bus ticket, register for an event, or fill out one of our forms, we collect the information you type in. Depending on the form, that can include your name, playa name, email address, phone number, mailing address, Discord handle, a profile photo, and your answers to camp questions. We also keep a record of the events you have attended with us.
When you pay us, payment is processed by Stripe. We store the amount, the date, and what it was for. We never see or store your full card number.
If you subscribe to our newsletter, your email address is stored with our email provider, Mailchimp. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link.
We keep an internal audit log of changes made to camp records, which includes the IP address and browser of whoever made the change. This exists so we can answer "who changed this, and when."
What we do with it
We use it to run the camp: to organize the burn, to plan the bus, to assign bikes and camping space, to keep track of dues, and to let campers find each other in our member directory. The member directory is visible only to other campers, and only to people you have actually camped or burned with.
We do not sell your personal information to anyone, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing. We share it only with the service providers we need to operate — our hosting, database, email, messaging, and payment providers — and only so they can do that work for us. We will disclose information if we are legally required to.
Your choices
- Reply STOP to any text message to stop text messages.
- Use the unsubscribe link in any newsletter to stop the newsletter.
- Email info@futureturtles.com to see, correct, or delete the information we hold about you.
We keep your information for as long as you are involved with the camp, and keep records of consent for as long as we are required to. This site is not intended for anyone under 18.