PetPat Privacy Policy
Effective date: 22 September 2026
PetPat is an app for looking after your dog: weights, meals and walks, shared with the people who care for the dog with you. This policy explains what PetPat collects, why, who can see it, and what you can do about it. We have tried to write it in plain words.
1. Who we are
PetPat is published by Chun Kit Tang, an individual in Hong Kong (“PetPat”, “we”, “us”). We are the data user responsible for your personal data under Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) (個人資料（私隱）條例).
Contact: privacy@petpat.io
2. The short version
- Your household sees your dog’s records. Weights, meals, walks, routes and photos are shared with the people in your household, and no one else.
- Weights are compared anonymously. Your dog’s weight can be compared with other dogs of the same breed and sex. Other owners only ever see a position, such as “heavier than 60% of male Poodles”, never your dog’s records.
- Walk routes are stored in full. A route runs from where you tap Start to where you tap Stop, which for most walks is your front door. Only your household can see it.
- Photos keep their location. If a photo you add has location data in it, we keep it. Only your household can see it. Share cards you make never contain it.
- No selling. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it to show you ads.
- You can take your data or delete your account at any time in Settings.
3. What we collect
What you give us
| Data | Examples | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Account | Email address; your name if you give one or your Apple or Google account shares it; preferred language | To sign you in, show your name to your household, and use your language |
| Your dogs | Name, breed or mix, sex, birth date, neutered or not, size, profile photo | To keep each dog’s records and to compare weights by breed and sex |
| Weights | Weight, date, and how you weighed (e.g. vet scale, home scale) | Weight history and the breed comparison |
| Food | Foods and meals you save, portions, times fed, optional nutrition details, ingredients, photos | Your dog’s feeding diary |
| Walks | Start and end times, distance, the route (see below), pee and poo markers with their locations, notes, photos | Your dog’s walk history, maps and share cards |
| Photos | The photo, and data stored in it by your phone: when and where it was taken and the phone model | To show the photo to your household; we keep the location and time so they can be shown with the photo |
| Household | Who is in your household, invites you create or accept | To share dogs between the people who care for them |
Walk routes. While a walk is running, PetPat records your phone’s location, including when the app is in the background or the screen is locked, so the walk is not lost. It records nothing before you tap Start or after you tap Stop. Each point has its time and accuracy. We store the whole route as recorded, without cutting off the start or end.
What we collect automatically
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| What you do in the app, such as “logged a weight” or “started a walk”, with the time, the app version and whether you use iPhone or Android | To understand how PetPat is used and improve it |
| Crash reports: what went wrong in the app, the phone model, operating system and app version, and an anonymous PetPat ID (not your name or email) | To find and fix bugs |
| Advertising measurement: that the app was installed, opened, or an account created, and how you signed up | To learn whether our ads work (section 6) |
We do not collect your contacts, your location outside a walk, or anything from other apps.
4. Who can see your data
- Your household. Everyone in a dog’s household sees all of that dog’s records, including routes and photos, and who logged each one. If you invite someone, they will see these. If you leave a household, the records you logged for its dogs stay with it.
- Other PetPat owners never see your records. When the breed comparison is available, they see only anonymous figures for a group of at least 20 dogs.
- Share cards are images you choose to create and share. They show what the card shows (for example, a walk’s distance, the route’s shape and a photo you chose) and nothing else: no location data, no map.
- Service providers who run parts of PetPat for us (section 5).
- Anyone the law requires, such as a court order or the police, where we must.
Anonymised statistics. We may use or publish statistics built from many dogs, such as the typical weight of Shiba Inus in Hong Kong. They cannot identify you or your dog.
5. Service providers and where your data is stored
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase (on Amazon Web Services) | Stores your account, your dogs’ records, routes and photos | Singapore |
| Apple, Google | Sign in with Apple and Google, if you use them. Apple may give us a private relay email if you choose “Hide My Email” | Their own services |
| Resend | Sends the sign-in codes we email you | United States |
| Sentry (Functional Software, Inc.) | Receives crash reports | European Union (Germany) |
| Meta Platforms | Receives advertising measurement events (section 6) | United States and other countries |
| Apple Maps (iPhone), Google Maps (Android) | Show maps of your walks; the map service receives the area being shown | Their own services |
Your data may therefore be stored or processed outside Hong Kong. We choose providers that protect it, and they may use it only to provide their service to us.
6. Advertising measurement
We advertise PetPat on Instagram and Facebook. To learn whether those ads lead to people using PetPat, the app tells Meta when it is installed, when it is opened, and when an account is created (with the sign-up method: Apple, Google or email). As with any internet connection, Meta also receives technical details such as the phone model, operating system and IP address.
We do not send Meta your name, email, dogs, weights, routes or photos, or any PetPat ID. PetPat does not ask to track you across other companies’ apps and websites, and does not collect your phone’s advertising identifier. On iPhone, Meta reports results to us only as totals. Meta handles what it receives under its own privacy policy.
7. How long we keep your data
We keep your data for as long as your account exists, so your dog’s history stays complete. There is no fixed time limit.
- Crash reports are kept by Sentry for up to 90 days.
- Backups of the database are kept for a short period, usually no more than 7 days, and then overwritten.
- After you delete your account, see section 8.
8. Deleting your account
You can delete your account in Settings → Delete account. When you do:
- Deleted: your sign-in account, email address, name, and your link to every household. Invites you created stop working.
- If others remain in your household, the dogs and everything logged for them stay with the household, including routes and photos, because they are the household’s records too. Your entries will no longer show your name.
- If you were the last person in the household, we delete the dogs’ names and photos, every photo and its location, and every walk route, marker location and note.
- What we keep, without anything that identifies you or your dog: weights, meals, walk times and distances, and the dog’s breed, sex, birth date and neutered status. We keep these as anonymous records to improve PetPat and its breed figures. A record of what the app was used for, linked only to an anonymous ID, is also kept.
9. Your rights
Under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance you may ask for a copy of your personal data and ask us to correct it.
- Export my data in Settings gives you a file with your profile, households, dogs, weights, food, walks with routes, and links to your photos, at any time and for free.
- For anything else, including a copy of the in-app activity we record, email privacy@petpat.io. We will reply within 40 days. We do not charge for this.
- You can correct most details yourself in the app.
10. Security
Your data is sent over encrypted connections. Access to each household’s records is enforced by the database itself, so the app can only read a household’s data for its members, and photos are stored privately. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data as the law and good practice require.
11. Direct marketing
We do not use your personal data for direct marketing, and we do not give it to anyone else for their marketing. If this ever changes, we will ask for your consent first, as the law requires.
12. Children
PetPat is not meant for children under 13. If you are under 18, please use PetPat with a parent or guardian’s permission.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the effective date above. If the change is important, such as collecting a new kind of data, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
14. Language
This policy is available in English and Traditional Chinese. If the two differ, the English version applies.