Petico Privacy Policy
Effective date: 22 October 2026
This policy explains what personal data the Petico app and its server collect, why, who else handles it, how long we keep it and what you can do about it. We have tried to keep it short and plain.
We publish this policy in English, Ukrainian and Polish. If the versions differ, the English version prevails.
1. Who we are
Petico is provided by Oleksandr Barchuk, Andrzeja Zauchy 6, 31-235 Kraków, Poland ("we", "us"). We are the controller of your personal data under the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Contact for anything in this policy: [email protected].
2. The short version
- We collect what the app needs to work: your account, your pets, the care you record, and the files you add.
- No analytics, no advertising, no crash-reporting tools, no tracking. We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising.
- People you share a pet with see your name, avatar and what you do in the app.
- Map spots and reviews are public to all map users, with your first name and avatar.
- Your location is used only while the app is open, only when you use a feature that needs it, and it is not stored in our database.
- Subscriptions are bought and managed through Apple. Deleting your Petico account does not cancel an Apple subscription.
3. What we collect
Your account
- Sign-in details. You sign in with Sign in with Apple, Google Sign-In, or a link sent to your email. Sign-in runs on our authentication provider. With Sign in with Apple we ask Apple for your name and email address. If you sign in by email link, your phone keeps the email address until you open the link.
- Profile. Email address, first and last name, sex (so the app can address you correctly in languages that need it), avatar, and your notification settings.
- Your device. For each installation of the app: a random installation ID, push notification tokens, platform, operating system version, app version and build, device model, time zone, language, whether notifications are allowed, and when the app last connected. Your account can be active on one installation at a time, so every request carries the installation ID.
Your pets and their care
- Pet profiles: name, species (dog or cat), breed, sex, birth date, weight, neutered or not, colour, whether walks are tracked, microchip details (whether the pet is microchipped, the chip number and the chipping date), time zone and photo.
- Care records: feeding schedules and a log (what was given, how many grams, who marked it and when), walk schedules and a log (start, finish, who walked, and the step count), weights, health reminders (including any note you write), vet visits (clinic, doctor, address, diagnosis, notes) and their documents, foods and stock, and expenses (amounts and currency for visits and food).
- Activity feed: a record of who did what for each pet. An entry may name a person.
- Files: pet photos, avatars and visit documents are stored with our cloud storage provider. The app opens them through signed links that expire (7 days for avatars, 1 hour for documents).
Sharing with family and pet sitters
When you share a pet, we store the members and pet sitters, their roles, the categories and duties they have, and the dates of access. Invitations are one-time codes valid for 24 hours; we never ask for the invitee's email.
The map of walking zones
Parks come from OpenStreetMap. What you add is yours: spots (name, position), reviews (stars, text), reports about spots or reviews, and the people you block. Each is stored with you as its author. Your own position is used only on your phone to centre the map; it is not sent to us for the map.
Location
Location is used to suggest vet clinics:
- The app sends the text you type and, if available, your coordinates to our server. Our server passes them to our places search provider so results are near you. The paid "Near you" search always sends coordinates.
- The coordinates come from your phone's last known position (only with the "while using the app" permission; we never ask for background location). Otherwise, they come from an approximate location our network provider derives from your IP address. If neither gives a location, only the country of your pet's time zone is used, with no coordinates. Your phone's built-in geocoding service (Apple on iPhone, Google on Android) is used for converting between coordinates and place names, such as the name of your city.
- We do not store your coordinates or search text in our database. "Near you" results are cached for 24 hours under a roughly 1 km map square, with no link to you. Our server traces replace the search text and coordinates with "REDACTED"; they keep only the country and language of the search.
Some location features are available only in certain countries.
Steps
During a walk, your phone counts steps using its motion sensor (the "Motion & Fitness" permission on iPhone, "Physical activity" on Android). Only the final number is sent and stored, as part of that walk's record.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions are bought through Apple In-App Purchase. We never see your card or payment details. We store the Apple original transaction ID, the product and plan, the expiry date, whether it renews, whether it was refunded or revoked, and whether it was a test or real purchase. At purchase the app tells Apple your Petico user ID so the subscription is tied to your account. Apple sends us updates about your subscription, and our server checks its status with Apple once a day. If we give you a plan ourselves, we store that grant too.
Push notifications
Notifications can show pet names, the name of a feeding, walk or reminder, the first name of the family member who acted, and technical IDs. They are delivered by Apple (on iPhone) and by the Android push notification service (on Android), and may appear on your lock screen.
Sign-in emails are sent through our email delivery provider. Email you send to a petico.pet address is received by our email provider, on servers in the EU.
Device permissions
- iPhone: location while using the app, Motion & Fitness (steps), camera, photos, notifications (including time-sensitive ones).
- Android: precise and approximate location, physical activity (steps), notifications. The app also declares the Google Play billing permission, which it does not use yet.
Every permission is optional. You can turn any of them off in your phone's settings; the feature that needs it then stops working.
4. What we do not do
- No analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDKs are in the app.
- No tracking across other companies' apps or websites.
- No selling of personal data, and no sharing for advertising.
- No automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects.
5. Who can see your data
- You, on your active device.
- People you share a pet with (co-owners and pet sitters) see your first and last name, sex, avatar and role, and what you did for that pet: who fed, who walked, who marked a reminder, and so on. Their notifications show your first name.
- Someone holding an invitation code sees, before accepting, the inviter's name and avatar and the pet it is for.
- All map users see the spots and reviews you add, with your first name and avatar.
- Our service providers (section 7), only to run the service for us.
- Authorities, only when the law requires it.
6. Why we use your data, and our legal bases (GDPR)
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Creating and running your account, syncing your pets and care records across the family, reminders and notifications, clinic search, the map, steps | Performance of our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Handling your subscription and restoring purchases | Performance of the contract |
| Keeping the service secure: one active device, rate limits, server logs, backups | Our legitimate interest in a secure and reliable service (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Moderating the map: reports, automatic hiding, blocks | Our and other users' legitimate interest in a trustworthy map |
| Keeping map reviews visible after you delete your account, without your name | Other users' legitimate interest in the map staying useful |
| Answering lawful requests from authorities | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
Device permissions (location, motion, camera, photos, notifications) are your choice in the phone's settings, and you can withdraw them at any time.
Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object (section 11).
7. Service providers (processors)
| Provider | What it does for us | Data involved | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authentication provider | Sign-in (email link, Google and Apple sign-in); deleting your sign-in account | Email, name, sign-in identifiers | United States |
| Android push notification service | Push notifications on Android | Push token, notification content | Global infrastructure |
| Places search provider | Clinic search, called by our server | Search text, coordinates, country, language | Global infrastructure |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, In-App Purchase, push notifications on iPhone, Apple Maps, converting between coordinates and place names on iPhone | Sign-in identifiers, subscription data, push token and notification content, coordinates, place names | Apple |
| Google (Android maps and geocoding) | Showing the map on Android, and converting between coordinates and place names on Android (through Google Play services) | Coordinates, place names, the map area shown | |
| Push token service | Creating push tokens | Push token | United States |
| Network and storage provider | Network proxy in front of our API (it sees all API traffic, including your IP address), file storage and database backups | All data sent to our API, files, backups | Network: global, nearest location to you; storage: Eastern Europe |
| Hosting provider | Servers that run our API, database and cache | All service data | Poland |
| Monitoring provider | Server logs, traces (a sample of about half of requests) and metrics | User IDs, installation IDs, technical request data | Germany |
| Email delivery provider | Sending sign-in emails | Email address, sign-in link | Sending: Ireland; account data and logs: United States |
| Email provider | Receiving email sent to petico.pet addresses | Your email address and what you write to us | EU |
Apple Maps, Google Maps and OpenStreetMap content shown in the app is subject to their own terms.
8. International transfers
Some providers above may process data outside the EU/EEA and the UK. Where that happens we rely on an adequacy decision (for example the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, where the provider is certified) or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, with the UK Addendum for UK users. Our hosting and email providers keep the data in the EU. You can ask us for a copy of the safeguards at [email protected].
9. How long we keep data
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Activity: the activity feed, feeding and walk logs, archived foods | 365 days, then deleted on a rolling basis. On the free plan you see the last 14 days, but the full year is kept for everyone. |
| Care marks not yet confirmed | 2 days |
| Weights, vet visits, expenses, reminders, pet and account profiles, schedules | Until you delete the pet or your account |
| Files no longer attached to anything | Deleted after 15 minutes |
| Database backups | 30 days |
| Server logs and traces | 14 days |
If a subscription ends, nothing is deleted. Items above the free limits are frozen until you subscribe again.
10. Deleting your account
You can delete your account in the app: Settings → Delete account. It cannot be undone.
What happens:
- Your account with our authentication provider is deleted.
- Pets you own that have a co-owner pass to a co-owner, with their history. Pets without a co-owner are deleted together with everything recorded for them.
- Foods you added are handed over or copied where another owner still uses them, and deleted otherwise.
- Your name, email address, avatar and active device are removed from your account record.
- Your access to other people's pets, your pending invitations, your devices (including push tokens) and your feeding assignments are deleted.
- Your name is removed from activity feed entries.
- Your subscription records, and any plan we gave you ourselves, are deleted from our servers. Apple keeps its own purchase records.
- If you used Sign in with Apple, Petico's access to your Apple ID is revoked.
What stays, without your name, email or avatar:
- A de-identified account record, which still holds your sex setting and notification settings, so that records other people rely on stay consistent.
- On pets that passed to a co-owner: the entries you made (for example who fed or walked), your walk assignments and the record that you created them, linked to the de-identified record rather than to your name.
- Your map spots and reviews stay visible to map users, with their text and stars, but without your name or avatar. Reports you made and people you blocked also stay.
- Technical rate-limit records.
- Copies in database backups, until the backups expire after 30 days.
What only you can do:
- Cancel your subscription in Apple's settings. Deleting your Petico account does not cancel it, and Apple will keep charging until you do. It cannot be moved to a new Petico account afterwards; ask Apple for a refund if you want one.
- If Petico still appears in the Sign in with Apple list in your Apple ID settings, you can remove it there.
11. Your rights
If the GDPR applies to you (EU/EEA or UK), you have the right to:
- access your data and get a copy;
- correct it (most of it you can edit in the app);
- delete it (section 10);
- restrict how we use it;
- receive it in a portable format;
- object to uses based on legitimate interests;
- withdraw any permission or consent at any time.
To use these rights, email [email protected]. We answer within one month. We may need to confirm the request comes from the account holder.
Complaints. You can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work, or where you think the problem happened. In Poland that is the President of the Personal Data Protection Office (Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Danych Osobowych, uodo.gov.pl), and in the UK the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). We would appreciate the chance to fix things first.
12. US privacy rights
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information to infer characteristics about you. Depending on your state, you may have the right to know what we collect, to access, correct or delete it, and not to be treated differently for using these rights. Email [email protected] to make a request.
13. Children
Petico is not meant for children under 13, and you must be at least 13 to use it. Where local law sets a higher age for consenting to online services (up to 16 in the EU/EEA), a person below that age needs a parent's or guardian's consent. The app does not check age. If you believe a child is using Petico without the required consent, contact us at [email protected] and we will delete the account.
14. Security
We limit access to your data to the people you share with and the providers listed above. Files are opened through signed links that expire. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
15. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we update the effective date above. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
16. Contact
Oleksandr Barchuk, Andrzeja Zauchy 6, 31-235 Kraków, Poland [email protected]