Privacy Policy

1. What data we collect

Account data (name, email and, if you give them, phone, city and date of birth, which is used to confirm the minimum age), your animals' data (name, species, health, which YOU add), and technical data (device model, app usage, to keep it working). We also store the IP address in three cases, and only for security: when you report a problem to us, when someone opens an animal's public card (to throttle repeats) and in your account's security log (signing in, changing the password, closing sessions). That address is never shown to you or to anyone else, and it is deleted after 180 days. The rest of the entry stays. Location only if you allow it: to show you services near you, to measure your walks and, if you choose to share where you are, to send your position to the people you pick, for the time you pick. That position is never stored on the server. If you join the waiting list for shelters, professionals or volunteers, we keep the organisation name, city and contact you give us, only to tell you when sign-up opens. You can leave that list at any time and we delete those details. If you apply for a professional or organisation badge, we collect the documents that prove it: identity document, tax number, professional licence and insurance policy. We only look at them to decide the application.

2. What we use the data for

To give you the service: managing your animal's profile, reminders, searching for professionals, adoption and community. To improve the app and for security. We do not use your data for third-party advertising.

3. Legal basis (GDPR)

We process your data on the basis of performance of the contract (giving you the service), your consent (e.g. location, notifications), and legitimate interest (security, product improvement). You can withdraw consent at any time.

4. Who we share with

Only with those who help us run the app, under contract and a duty of confidentiality. In the European Union: Supabase (database, authentication and files, in Frankfurt), Sentry (error detection) and Open-Meteo (weather). Outside the European Union: Expo (notifications and app updates), Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) and Apple (APNs), which deliver the alerts to your phone, Resend (emails), Netlify (the website), Google Cloud Vision (automatic checks on the images you post to the community), hCaptcha (blocking automated sign-ups), GIPHY (GIF search), MyMemory (translating posts, when you ask), Unsplash (the sample images for places on the map) and Stripe (payments, today only to open a seller account) and RevenueCat (management of purchases made on the App Store or Google Play: it receives your FAUNA account identifier and the subscription status, never payment details). Maps are drawn by Apple, on iPhone, or by Google, on Android: they receive the area of the map you are looking at and the route of a walk when you open it. To turn your position into a place name, your phone sends your coordinates to Apple's or Google's mapping service. The list of places near you comes from OpenStreetMap, through the Overpass servers (overpass-api.de, overpass.kumi.systems, overpass.private.coffee), and those receive a position rounded to about 11 km, never your exact position. The places already stored in FAUNA come from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and from the Overture Maps Foundation, which brings together data from Meta, Microsoft, PinMeTo, Krick, RenderSEO, DAC and BrightQuery (CDLA Permissive 2.0 licence), from AllThePlaces (CC0 1.0) and from Foursquare — Copyright 2024 Foursquare Labs, Inc. All rights reserved, Apache 2.0 licence, data transformed to the Overture schema. We share data with professionals or shelters ONLY when YOU start a contact, booking or application. You can also create a temporary link yourself with an animal's health record, to show a vet who doesn't use FAUNA: whoever holds that link sees a snapshot of the record, with no account needed, and the link stops opening after 24 hours. It only exists if you create it, for an animal that is yours. To build and maintain the app we use AI development tools from Anthropic (Claude): when a bug or a database migration has to be fixed, real data — including your personal data — may be read by those tools, in the United States, and only for that work. Never to train models. FAUNA is owned by Player Two, the company that invests in it: it receives business management information and, as a shareholder, answers for it together with us.

5. International transfers

The database, your files and authentication stay in the European Union (Frankfurt). Some of the services above process data in the United States: in those cases the transfers rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission and on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, with additional safeguards. We don't use services outside these frameworks.

6. How long we keep it

We keep your data for as long as your account is active. Animal health and location data (e.g. Lost animals, walks) are deleted when you remove the record or the account; the location pins of lost-animal cases are removed when the case is closed. When you delete your account, we erase or anonymise your data immediately, except records the law requires us to keep (e.g. Tax invoicing), for the legally required period. The health snapshot behind a temporary vet link stops opening the moment the time is up, and is deleted from the server within the hour. Or as soon as you revoke the link, if you do it sooner. The documents you send for professional or organisation verification are deleted 72 hours after the decision.

7. Your rights

You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict and export your data, and to object to certain processing. Exercise them in the app settings, under “My data (GDPR)”, or contact us. You also have the right to complain to the CNPD (the Portuguese data protection authority).

8. Security

We use encryption in transit and at rest, access control and database-level security rules (each user only reaches their own data). No system is 100% infallible, but we take protecting your information seriously.

9. Minors

FAUNA is intended for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone below that age. If you become aware that this has happened, contact us so we can remove it.

10. Controller and contact

The controller of the data is STEADYDAWN, LDA, NIPC 519618637, Rua dos Álamos, Entrada 22, Apartamento Monte Carlos J, 9000-202 Funchal, Portugal. For any privacy question, or to exercise your rights, write to support@faunasocialcare.com (or use the app settings, under “Contact”). We answer within the legal 30 days.

11. Automated decisions

Two things in this app decide on their own: photos you send to the community go through an automatic content check (Google Cloud Vision), and text goes through a list of forbidden terms. An image with explicit nudity is refused without human intervention; doubtful cases go to a person for review.

This produces no legal effects on you and does not decide about your account on its own: suspending or closing an account is always a person's decision. You have the right to know when a decision was automatic, to ask a person to review it, and to appeal it, by writing to support@faunasocialcare.com.

We do no profiling for advertising.