Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2026-07-28
This Privacy Policy explains what information Pawnect ("we", "our", "the App") collects when you use the Pawnect mobile application, how we use it, and the choices you have. Pawnect helps dog and cat owners track their pet's wellbeing and chat with an AI assistant for general pet-care guidance.
What Pawnect is. Pawnect is a pet-care information service, not a veterinary practice. We are not veterinarians, and nothing in the App — the assistant, the care tips, the courses, the weight ranges — is veterinary advice or a diagnosis. It is general information about looking after a pet. For anything medical, see a vet. This matters here because it explains why we hold the information described below: to tailor general care content to your pet, not to assess its health.
Who is responsible for your data
Pawnect is published by Angelina Mikhaylovna Davydyan, an individual developer based in Vancouver, Washington, United States. For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation, that is the data controller for the information described here.
You can reach us at any time at pawlypets2026@gmail.com. We answer privacy requests at the same address.
1. Information We Collect
1.1 Account information
- Email address
- Authentication provider (Apple, Google, or email/password — via passwordless email link or password)
- Display name and profile photo, if provided by Google or Apple sign-in
- Platform (iOS/Android), locale, and timezone
1.2 Pet profile information
For each pet you add, we store: name, species (dog/cat), sex, birthday or approximate age, breed, care goals, lifestyle details you select, a cached healthy-weight reference range, and an optional profile photo.
1.3 Diary entries
Daily notes you choose to log about your pet — behavior, medicine, grooming, activity, and weight — plus an optional photo attached to that day's entry. Photos are stored in Firebase Storage.
1.4 AI chat messages
When you use the in-app AI assistant, your message is sent to our backend (a Firebase Cloud Function), which forwards it to OpenAI for processing and returns the AI's reply. Message content is subject to OpenAI's own data-handling practices while it is being processed on their infrastructure.
We store the most recent part of each conversation — currently the last 20 messages per pet — so that the chat is still there when you reopen the app or sign in on another device. Older messages fall out of that window and are not kept. We also keep a daily message-count record to enforce usage limits. If you report an assistant reply as harmful or inappropriate, we store that reply together with your report so we can review it.
Deleting your account deletes the stored conversations along with everything else.
1.5 Subscription status
We use RevenueCat to manage and verify in-app subscriptions purchased through the Apple App Store or Google Play. We store your subscription status, plan, and renewal dates as reported by RevenueCat. We never see or store your payment card details — those are handled entirely by Apple or Google.
1.6 Analytics
We use Firebase Analytics to understand which features people use — screens opened, courses started, whether a purchase succeeded or failed. The events we send carry no free text: no pet names, no chat messages, no diary notes, no email addresses. Every event parameter is either an identifier for a piece of our own content or a fixed label from a short list.
We also do not attach your account to analytics. Firebase offers a way to tag events with a user ID, and we deliberately do not use it, so analytics events are attributed to an installation of the app rather than to you as a person.
Firebase Analytics can read the Android Advertising ID, and the permission that allows this is present in the app. We use it only for the analytics described above. We do not show advertising in Pawnect, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.
1.7 Crash diagnostics
We use Firebase Crashlytics to find out when the App crashes or hits an error it cannot recover from. A report contains the stack trace of the failure and technical details about the device it happened on — model, operating system version, language, available memory, and whether the App was in the foreground — together with an identifier Crashlytics generates for the installation.
Reports carry no content you entered: no pet names, no diary notes, no chat messages, no email address. As with analytics, we deliberately do not tag crash reports with your account, so a report identifies an installation of the App and not you as a person.
1.8 What we do not collect
We do not collect your location, your contacts, your calendar, or your device's files beyond the photos you deliberately attach. We do not collect health information about you — weight and care records in Pawnect describe your pet, not any person. We do not receive your payment card details; those go to Apple or Google and never reach us.
2. How We Use Your Information
- To provide and operate the App's core features (pet profiles, diary, AI chat)
- To personalize AI responses and content based on your pet's profile
- To manage your subscription and unlock premium features
- To enforce fair-use limits on AI chat (e.g., free-tier daily message caps)
- To improve the App through aggregated usage analytics
- To communicate with you about your account or respond to support requests
- To review replies you report as harmful or inappropriate, and to improve the safety of the assistant
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not use your pet's data or your conversations to train anyone's AI models.
2.1 Legal bases (EEA and UK users)
Where the GDPR applies, we rely on the following bases: performance of a contract for everything needed to run the App you signed up for — your account, your pets, your diary, the assistant, your subscription; legitimate interests for product analytics, for enforcing fair-use limits, and for reviewing reported replies, balanced against your interest in not being profiled, which is why analytics carries no account identifier and no free text; and legal obligation where we must retain or produce information by law.
2a. About the AI assistant
Replies in Pawnect are generated by a large language model operated by OpenAI. Your message and your pet's profile are sent so the reply can be relevant; the system instructions are built on our server, not by the App. Generated text can be wrong. Pawnect is educational and is not veterinary care — it does not diagnose, treat, or prescribe, and it is not a substitute for a veterinarian.
Messages you send are screened automatically before they reach the model, so the assistant cannot be used to produce abusive content. That check runs on what you write, not on what comes back. If a reply is harmful, inaccurate, or offensive, you can report it from the message itself, and we keep that reply with your report so a person can review it.
3. Third-Party Processors
We share data with the following service providers, each acting under their own privacy terms:
| Provider | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Google Firebase (Auth, Firestore, Storage, Analytics, Crashlytics) | Account authentication, data storage, photo storage, product analytics, crash diagnostics |
| RevenueCat | Subscription and purchase management |
| OpenAI | Processing AI chat messages to generate assistant replies |
| Apple / Google Sign-In | Optional social sign-in authentication |
| Apple App Store / Google Play | Payment processing for subscriptions |
4. Data Retention
- Account, pet, and diary data are retained for as long as your account is active.
- When you delete your account, deletion is immediate and permanent. Your profile, pets, diary entries, photos and subscription record are erased right away, and your sign-in credentials are removed last. There is no grace period and the account cannot be recovered.
- Daily message counters, which exist only to enforce free-tier limits, are kept while your account is active and are deleted with it.
- Reported replies are kept while your account is active so that a reported problem can still be reviewed, and are deleted with your account.
Backups held by our infrastructure providers may retain copies for a short period after deletion, as part of their normal operation, before being overwritten.
5. Your Rights & How to Delete Your Data
You can delete your account and everything in it from inside the App — Profile, then Delete account — without asking us and without waiting. Our Delete Account page explains the steps, including what to do if you can no longer sign in.
You can also write to pawlypets2026@gmail.com to ask for a copy of your data, to have something corrected, or to have your account deleted for you. We answer within 30 days. We will ask you to write from the email address on the account so that we are not acting on someone else's request about you.
5.1 If you are in the EEA or the UK
You have the right to access your personal data, to have inaccurate data corrected, to have your data erased, to restrict or object to certain processing, and to receive your data in a portable form. Where processing rests on legitimate interests, you may object to it. You also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority; in the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office.
5.2 If you are in California
You have the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to request its deletion or correction, and not to be treated differently for exercising those rights. The categories we collect are listed in section 1. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is nothing for you to opt out of. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information beyond what is needed to provide the App.
6. Children's Privacy
Pawnect is intended for adults. It is not directed to children, it is listed for a mature audience, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. Consistent with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to us and we will delete the account and its contents.
7. Data Security
We rely on Firebase's security infrastructure (encryption in transit, access-controlled Firestore rules, server-only writes for sensitive fields such as subscription status) to protect your data. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
8. International Data Transfers
We operate from the United States and our infrastructure — Firestore, Storage, Cloud Functions — runs in U.S. regions. If you use Pawnect from anywhere else, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, a country whose data protection laws may differ from those where you live.
Where data is transferred out of the EEA or the UK, our providers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum to those clauses, together with the safeguards described in their own terms. You can ask us for more detail at the address in section 10.
9. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Last updated" date above.
10. Contact Us
Questions about this Privacy Policy or your data? Contact pawlypets2026@gmail.com or visit our Support page.