🐾 Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 24, 2026

Pawstamp ("we," "our," "us") is a camera-first app that helps you identify, track and care for animals — pets you own, community animals you look after, and wildlife you encounter. This page explains what we collect, why, and how you stay in control of it.

1. What We Collect

Account information — username, email address, and a securely hashed password (we never store your password in plain text).
Photos you take or upload — of animals, used to identify species/breed and recognize individual animals across scans.
Location data — your device's GPS coordinates at the moment you scan or post, used to place sightings on the map and find nearby animals. See "Location Privacy" below for how this is protected per animal category.
Messages — text you send in in-app message rooms with other users.
Usage & device data — basic technical information (app version, device type, crash logs) used to keep the app working reliably.
Donation payments — if you donate to a Vet Wallet, payment is processed directly by Stripe; we never see or store your card details.

2. How We Use It

To identify an animal's species and breed, and to match a new photo against previously scanned individual animals, using AI image analysis.
To show you nearby animals, build your personal "My Scans" and "My Species" history, and power the community feed.
To award points/badges for scans and shares, and to support the pet-care reminders (feeding, medication, vaccinations) you set up.
To keep the service secure and prevent abuse.

We do not sell your personal data to third parties, and we do not use your photos or location to build advertising profiles.

3. Location Privacy — By Design

Owned pets: your home location is never shown to anyone — it's geofenced and stripped entirely from any public post made near it.

Community animals (street cats, TNR colonies, etc.): shown only as an approximate area (blurred to roughly 100 m), never an exact point.

Endangered wildlife: location is fully suppressed from any public view, to protect the animal from poaching or harassment.

4. Who We Share It With

We use a small number of trusted service providers to run Pawstamp — none of them are permitted to use your data for their own purposes:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) — hosting, database, and photo storage (South Korea region), and AI-powered image analysis (Amazon Bedrock).
Qdrant — vector similarity search used to recognize individual animals from photos.
Stripe — payment processing, only for optional Vet Wallet donations.

Other users can see content you choose to share publicly (posts, comments, your username) — never your account email or exact home location.

5. Your Choices & Rights

Scans are private by default — sharing to the public feed is always a separate, deliberate action, and you can unshare a post at any time.
You can edit or delete any post or animal profile you created, at any time, from within the app.
You can permanently delete your account at any time directly in the app — go to Profile → Settings → Delete Account. This immediately and permanently removes your owned pets and their photos, and anonymizes any content you shared elsewhere. It cannot be undone.
For a full data export, or any request our in-app deletion doesn't cover, email hello@pawstamp.app — we'll act on it within 30 days.

6. Children's Privacy

Pawstamp is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under that age. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll remove it.

7. Data Security

All data in transit is encrypted (HTTPS/TLS). Passwords are hashed, never stored or transmitted in plain text. Access to our production database and infrastructure is restricted to authorized systems only.

8. Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we'll update the effective date above and, where appropriate, notify you in the app.

9. Contact Us

Questions about this policy or your data? Reach us at hello@pawstamp.app.