Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

Dogs Out is operated by Moritz Davinghausen and Lea Mutschler, c/o Moritz Davinghausen, Wallisellerstrasse 124, 8152 Opfikon, Switzerland. They are jointly responsible for the processing described here.

For any question about your data, or to exercise any of the rights in section 10, write to help@dogsout.app.

2. What we collect, and why

Your account

Email address, name, date of birth, and — unless you sign in with Google or Apple — a password, which is stored only as a cryptographic hash and cannot be read back. If you sign in with Apple, the identifier Apple gives us for your account. Also when you accepted the Terms, and, for a short time, the codes we send to confirm your email or reset your password.

We need this to give you an account. Your date of birth is used to make sure you are at least 18 and to show your age; other users never see the date itself.

Your profile and your dogs

Photos, a short bio, interests and personality tags, and, if you choose to add it, your relationship status. For each dog: name, breed, date of birth, photos, a description, and details such as energy level, how it gets on with other dogs and with children, and whether it can be off the leash.

Before a photo is stored, we remove its metadata, including any GPS position the camera recorded.

Where you are

The location you save in the app, as coordinates. You set it from your device's location or by searching for your town or postcode, and it changes only when you change it; the app does not track you in the background. We use it to show people, playdates, sitters and lost-dog alerts near you, and to show how far away someone is. Your saved location is never shown to another user; only a distance is.

A place is shared with others only where you choose to share it:

• the meeting point of a playdate or walk you create;
• the place you add to a status — only for "out walking" and "on vacation", and only if you add one;
• the place where your dog went missing, in an SOS alert;
• your address, in the handover details for a sitter you have accepted.

What you do in the app

Who you said yes or no to, your matches, the messages you send — in chats, in playdate group chats and in walk invites — the playdates you create or join, your status (with an optional photo and the friends who are out with you), and your settings, such as your Discover filters.

Dogsitting

Whether you offer or look for dogsitting, the days and times you are free, your experience and the tags you choose. The jobs you post, the offers you make or accept, cancellations, and reviews — the stars, tags and comment, and who wrote them.

For an accepted sitting, the owner can add an address, an emergency phone number and a to-do list. We store these so the accepted sitter can see them.

Lost-dog alerts

The dog, the place it went missing, the note you add, and when the alert was raised and closed.

Safety

The people you block. When you report someone, we keep the names, user IDs and email addresses of both of you, the reason you chose, your message, and what was reported: for a report from a chat, the conversation between you; for a profile, what the profile showed, with links to its photos; for a review, the review. We also note what we did about it. Reports are stored in our database and we are notified by email. When you send feedback from the app, we receive it by email with your name and email address.

Technical

A device token if you allow notifications, and whether you have switched them off. When you last used the app, on which days you used it, whether you use it on iPhone or Android, and which app version — so we can see how many people use Dogs Out, on which devices, and which versions we still need to support. Whether you have the app open at the moment, while you do. Our server keeps short-lived technical logs to keep the service running and to find errors.

Advertising

Dogs Out shows occasional ads between profiles in Discover, provided by Google AdMob. To show and measure ads, the AdMob software in the app sends Google:

• your device's advertising identifier — on iPhone only if you allow tracking;
• your IP address, from which Google derives an approximate location;
• information about your device and the app;
• which ads you see and how you interact with them;
• crash and performance data from the ad software.

Dogs Out gives Google none of the content of your profile, your dogs, your messages or your saved location. We do not use any analytics or tracking software of our own.

3. On what legal basis

• To perform the contract with you: your account, profiles, matching, chats, playdates, statuses, dogsitting, alerts.
• Your consent: notifications, personalised ads and, on iPhone, tracking, and the optional details you choose to share, such as your relationship status or a place in a status. You can withdraw consent at any time, in the app or in your device settings.
• Our legitimate interest: keeping people safe on the platform — moderation, reports, blocks, the automatic check for offensive language, the limits on cancellations and alerts — showing non-personalised ads so Dogs Out can stay free, understanding how much and on which devices the app is used, and defending legal claims.
• Legal obligation: where the law requires us to keep or disclose data.

4. Your choices about ads

The first time you swipe, Google asks for your consent where the law requires it, including in Switzerland and the EU. If you agree, Google may personalise ads; if you do not, you see non-personalised or limited ads. You can change your choice at any time in Settings → Ad privacy choices.

On iPhone, Dogs Out then asks whether it may track you. If you decline, the advertising identifier is not shared. You can change this in the iOS Settings under Privacy & Security → Tracking. On Android, you can reset or delete your advertising ID in the system settings.

For personalised advertising, Google decides itself how it uses the data and is responsible for that use. How Google does this is explained at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

5. Who else sees your data

Other users see only what the app shows them:

• Discover: people within the distance they have set see your name, age, photos, bio, tags, relationship status if you added it, your dogs, and how far away you are.
• Your matches see your messages to them and your status, including its photo, place and companions if you added them.
• Playdates: a public playdate is visible to users within their distance, with its meeting point, host and attendees; others only to the people it is meant for.
• Dogsitting: owners looking for a sitter see the sitters, and sitters see the owners looking — each only if they have that role switched on. A review is shown on the sitter's profile with the name of its author.
• Handover details are shown only to the sitter the owner accepted, for that sitting.
• An SOS alert goes to everyone within 100 km of the place, with your dog's name and photos, the place, your note, and your name and photo.

We do not sell personal data.

Service providers acting on our instructions

• Railway (USA) — hosting, database and stored photos; servers in the western United States.
• Resend (USA), which sends through Amazon Web Services — the emails we send you.
• Expo (USA) — delivery of push notifications, through Apple and Google.
• Google — sign-in if you use it, maps on Android, and the place search — for parks when you create a playdate, and for your town or postcode when you set your location by hand (what you type and the map area are sent to Google).
• Apple — sign-in if you use it, and maps on iPhone.
• Gmail (Google) — the mailbox in which we receive reports, feedback and your emails to us.

Google also receives the advertising data described in section 2, partly as an independent controller (section 4).

Photos are delivered to the app through a link; anyone who has the link can open the photo. Treat a photo you upload as visible to everyone who can see your profile.

Transfers abroad

Our database and photos are stored in the United States, and several of the providers above are based there. Where a provider is certified under the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the transfer rests on that framework; otherwise it rests on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, as recognised in Switzerland, or an equivalent safeguard.

6. How long we keep it

• Account, profile and dogs: while your account exists.
• Chats: until either of you ends the match or deletes their account; the messages are then deleted for both.
• Playdates and their group chats: until the host deletes their account. When you delete yours, your messages in other people's playdates go with it.
• Status: it stops being shown when it expires. Its photo is deleted when you replace it or delete your account.
• Lost-dog alerts: while your account exists, closed or not.
• Dogsitting jobs and reviews: while the accounts involved exist. A late cancellation counts against a sitter for twelve months.
• Confirmation and reset codes: until used or expired.
• Usage information (last use, days used, device type, app version): while your account exists.
• Reports: in our database and mailbox for as long as needed to act on repeat behaviour, also after an account involved is deleted.
• Feedback: in our mailbox for as long as needed to answer you.
• Technical logs: a short time.

7. Deleting your account

You can delete your account from Settings → Delete account. It takes effect immediately and cannot be undone.

Your account, profile, photos and dogs are deleted, along with your matches and the history of who you swiped on, your chats — for the people you spoke with as well — the playdates you host, your messages in other playdates, your status, your lost-dog alerts, your blocks, your notification token, your usage information, the dogsitting jobs you posted, the reviews you wrote or received, and your cancellation record.

A dogsitting job you had taken stays with its owner, since it is their record: one that is still to come is opened again for other sitters, and the owner is told; a past one no longer names you.

Deleted data can remain in routine encrypted backups of our database until they age out and are overwritten; backups are never used to restore an individual account. Reports you made or that concern you are kept, because they are how we recognise repeat behaviour; emails already in our mailbox are not deleted automatically. Ask us if you want either reviewed or removed. If you can no longer sign in, see Delete your account.

8. Adults only

Dogs Out is for adults. You must be at least 18 to create an account, and an account with a date of birth under 18 cannot be created. See Child safety.

Please do not upload photos in which children can be recognised.

9. Keeping it safe

Traffic between the app and our server is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as hashes. Photo metadata, including camera GPS, is removed before a photo is stored.

Access to production data is limited to the two operators named in section 1.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever put your rights at serious risk, we will tell you and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner.

10. Your rights

Under the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection, and the GDPR where it applies to you, you may:

• ask what we hold about you and get a copy;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data deleted;
• object to processing based on our legitimate interest;
• ask for your data in a portable form;
• withdraw a consent you gave, without affecting what was done before.

Write to help@dogsout.app. We will answer within 30 days.

You may also complain to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (edoeb.admin.ch), or to your local supervisory authority in the EU.

11. Changes

If we change how we handle your data in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. The version of this policy is shown at the top.