Your walks are yours.

In short

• Species recognition runs on your device. Photographs are not uploaded to identify an animal.
• Video frames captured to build a recognition signature are discarded immediately.
• Exact coordinates stay on your phone. Shared records carry a coarse region only.
• We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising.
• You can delete any record, or your whole account, from inside the app at any time.

Who we are

Pawdex is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us atyuvraj@pawdex.funfor any privacy question, including a request to access or delete your data.

What we collect

Account information

If you create an account we store your email address, a display name and handle, and a password that is stored only as an Argon2id hash — we never hold your password itself. You may optionally add a profile photo.

Encounters you choose to contribute

When an encounter is contributed to the shared dex we store the cropped photograph that became your card, the identified species, the creature type, the time of capture, a coarse region, and the numeric recognition signature. Records are linked to your account so your dex follows you across devices and so you are credited for animals you name.

Location

With your permission Pawdex records where an encounter happened. Precise coordinates remain on your device. Only a coarse area — a district, not a doorstep — is attached to a shared record. This also protects the animals: publishing precise locations of rare species is how they get disturbed or taken. You can decline location access and still use every other part of the app.

Motion and fitness

Your dashboard can show steps and distance for the day. This is read from the device's pedometer, is displayed on your phone, and is not uploaded.

Diagnostics

The app uses Apple's own performance reporting to understand crashes and slowness. These reports are aggregated by Apple and do not identify you.

What we never collect

We do not keep video. Catching an animal records a short burst of frames to build a reliable signature; the frames are discarded once that is done. We do not track you across other apps or websites, we do not run advertising, and we do not sell or rent personal information to anyone.

Why we are allowed to hold it

Account data is processed to provide the service you asked for. Contributed encounters are processed with your consent, given when you choose to contribute them. Diagnostics rest on our legitimate interest in keeping the app working. Where we rely on consent you may withdraw it at any time by deleting the records or your account.

Who else sees it

Our servers run on Microsoft Azure infrastructure in India, and Apple delivers the app and its diagnostics. We use no advertising or analytics networks. Other Pawdex users can see contributed encounters — the animal, its coarse area, and its story — and never your precise movements or your email address.

How long it is kept

Contributed records are kept while your account exists so the community dex stays coherent over time. Delete an individual card, an encounter, or a neighbour in the app and the matching server record is deleted with it.

You can delete your whole account from the Profile tab in the app, without writing to us. It takes effect immediately: your email address, password, handle, profile, photo, and the stories you wrote are erased, the dex on that device is cleared, and the email is free to register again. The wildlife records you contributed stay — the photograph, the species, the time, and the coarse area — because they are the material our recognition models are trained and tested on, but they are stripped of anything that points back to you: no account, no device identifier, no handle. If you would rather those encounters were destroyed as well, write toyuvraj@pawdex.funand we will remove them within 30 days.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to our processing it. Write toyuvraj@pawdex.funand we will respond within 30 days. If you are in the UK or EU you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Pawdex is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly create accounts for them. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Corrections stay local

When you teach Pawdex that it named an animal wrongly, that correction is stored on your device and improves identification for you. It is not a training pipeline that quietly harvests your photographs.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes we will update the date at the top of the page, and for anything material we will say so in the app before it takes effect.