Privacy Policy私隱政策

Your account.

K9 Puppy has accounts, because your dog's training should follow you to your next iPhone. An account is your email address and a password, which we store only as a hash. Signing in keeps a session token on your iPhone, in its Keychain, and a hash of it on our server for 60 days after its last use.

We email you a link to confirm your address, and a reset link when you ask for one, through Resend, an email service working on our behalf; it receives your address and the link. Each request the app makes tells our server which version of the app sent it and your phone's time zone, so your dog's day is counted where you are.

Your dog's file.

A dog is not a person, but everything about yours is linked to you, so we treat it as your personal data. The file holds the name, breed and age band you entered, the objectives you picked, every drill run with its reps and holds, roll-call days, XP, badges and rank, and for each Patrol its start time, duration, distance and pull count. It is kept for the life of your account, or until you delete the dog, and goes at once when you do.

Sgt. Coach.

Sgt. Coach is an AI, not a vet or a behaviourist. The app says so before you brief it and asks for your OK; nothing goes to the coach without it, and you can take it back at any time from the line under its name. To write a reply, K9 Puppy sends OpenAI your dog's name, breed, age band and objectives, its training history (drills, roll calls and patrols) and the messages you write, through our own AI service, with storage turned off on OpenAI's side. The coach can also look up what other dogs did: those records hold catalogue values and counts only, never a name, an email or anything typed.

Your conversation is kept for 12 months from each message, or less if you delete the dog, with a short summary of older messages so the coach keeps its context. Your thumbs up or down on a reply, and the reason if you give one, are kept with it to find wrong or unsafe answers. Please keep anything sensitive about you or anyone else out of the chat.

Recruit photo.

The recruit photo is drawn by AI from a photo of your dog. Before the first one leaves your iPhone the app tells you what happens and asks you to continue. The photo is re-encoded upright, at most 1536 pixels, with its metadata removed, location included, and sent to OpenAI through our AI service to draw four portraits. We delete the photo as soon as the portraits are drawn, normally within a minute or two; a photo whose portraits are never attached to a dog goes within 7 days. The portraits you keep live with the dog, in a private store in London, and reach the app through links that expire within an hour.

An identifier created when you install the app limits portrait requests per install, so a phone gets one free shot before an account. Photograph your dog, not people.

Patrol and location.

A Patrol uses your location to trace the walk and measure the distance, also while the phone is locked. That trace stays on your iPhone, in memory, while the walk runs, and is never sent to us: our server receives the distance, the duration and how many pulls you marked. The permission the app asks for is While Using the App, never Always. The map is Apple Maps, which sees the area around you as its tiles load, with no account or key of ours in between.

The Pack.

The Pack is a feed for handlers. What you post, reply or react to is visible to every other handler, with your dog's name, breed, age and rank, never your email. We keep your posts, photos, replies, reactions, who you follow and the notifications about your posts for the life of the dog, or until you delete them. Moderators remove what breaks the Pack rules; a report takes the post out of your feed at once, and a block hides every post and reply from that handler, who is not told.

Purchases.

K9 Pro is an auto-renewing subscription sold through Apple's App Store, under Apple's terms. We never see your card or billing details. To know who has paid, and to let you restore a purchase on a new iPhone, the app uses RevenueCat, a purchase-management service working on our behalf in the United States: it receives your account ID, your purchase history and your device's country. Its privacy policy is at revenuecat.com/privacy. You manage or cancel the subscription in your Apple Account settings. Deleting your account does not cancel it.

Reminders and notifications.

The daily reminder is a local notification scheduled on your iPhone at the time you pick; it names your dog, and nothing about it is sent to us. Notifications about the Pack (a reaction or a reply to your post) are kept on your account so the app can show them, and go with the post.

Where it lives.

Our servers, database, photo store, logs and backups run on Amazon Web Services in London. Request logs, which hold the time, the path, the result, your dog's ID and your IP address, are kept for 30 days for security and fault-finding, and never hold your messages. Backups are kept for 30 days, so a deleted account disappears from them within a month. Subscription and payment records are kept for 6 years after the financial year, as accounting law requires. OpenAI and RevenueCat process data in the United States.

Analytics and crash reports.

K9 Puppy ships with no analytics and no third-party crash-reporting software. If your device settings allow it, Apple may share anonymised crash statistics with us through its standard developer tools. If we add either, it will be opt-in, and this policy will be updated first.

Children.

K9 Puppy is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly keep an account for anyone under 13; if you think a child has made one, email us and we will delete it. The Pack rules forbid photos of children's faces.

Your rights.

Under UK and EU data protection law you can ask what we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, take a copy, and object to or restrict its use. The app does the two big ones itself: Settings › Account › Export my data saves everything we hold about you as a file, and Delete account deletes your account, every dog, every message and every photo at once, and removes you from RevenueCat. For anything else, email us and we will answer within a month. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes.

When a future version changes what the app sends off your iPhone, who it goes to or how long we keep it, it will be disclosed in the app and this policy will be updated first, with a new effective date.

Contact.

London Tech Studio · naim@londontechstudio.com