Privacy Policy

The short version

PawGuard needs to know roughly where you are so it can show you what is happening nearby. It does not need to know exactly where you are, so it never stores that. Your precise coordinates stay on your phone.

The app may show advertising to support the service. We never sell your personal data.

What we collect

Account details. Your email address, your display name, and a hashed password. We never store a password in a form we can read.

Pet profiles. Whatever you choose to add: name, species, breed, photos, markings, microchip number and health notes.

Your area. A coarse area, not a pin. Coordinates are rounded on your device to roughly 110 metres before anything is sent, and alerts and feeds are ranked from that. A precise location fix is only ever taken when you explicitly ask for it, and it stays in memory on the device. On the public web site, if browser location permission is declined, the nearby-care search may use a coarse network estimate from ipapi.co instead.

Content you post. Posts, photos, comments, missing and found alerts, and messages you send to other users.

Technical data. Device and app version, and diagnostic logs needed to keep the service working and secure.

What we do with it

• Run your account and show you your pets.
• Deliver missing and found alerts to people in the relevant area.
• Match found-pet reports against open missing reports.
• Send transactional email: verification, password reset, and notifications you have opted into.
• Moderate content that is reported to us, and enforce our terms.
• Diagnose faults and protect the service from abuse.

We do not sell or rent your personal data to advertisers. Advertising does not change that.

Who sees what

A missing-pet alert is meant to be seen, that is the whole point, so its photos, description and area are visible to other users nearby. Your email address, your password, your exact location and your account role are never shown to another user.

Third parties we use

We share only what each provider needs to do its job:

• Cloud hosting and storage for the database and uploaded media.
• Email delivery for transactional messages.
• Push notification services operated by Apple and Google, to deliver alerts to your device.
• Map and place data to name your area and find nearby vets and shelters. These lookups are made with a coarse area, never a precise position.
• ipapi.co on the public web site, only as a fallback for a coarse network-based area estimate when browser location permission is declined.

How long we keep it

Account and pet data is kept for as long as your account is open. When you delete your account, your profile and content are removed, apart from copies in backups that age out on a rolling schedule, and anything we are legally required to retain.

Moderation records are kept longer where they are needed to enforce our terms.

Your rights

Depending on where you live you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or object to a particular use. You can delete your account yourself from the app at any time.

To make a request, use our contact form and choose the privacy topic. We will respond within the timeframe the law requires.

Children

PawGuard is not intended for children under 16. If we learn that we hold data belonging to a child under that age, we delete it.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when our practices change, and we will notify you in the app or by email before a material change takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions and data requests go through our contact form.