1. Who we are
CareTail is operated by Individual Entrepreneur Fedar Trukhan, registered in Georgia, Shota Rustaveli dead-end II, 7, Tskneti 0181, Georgia ("CareTail", "we", "us"). We are the controller of the personal data described in this policy.
Contact: [email protected].
2. The short version
- You can use CareTail without an account. Then everything you enter stays on your device.
- If you sign in, your pet records are stored on our servers in Germany so they sync across your devices and with your family. With CareTail Pro, your photos and documents are stored in the EU too.
- We do not show ads, do not track you across other apps or websites, and do not sell your data.
- You can export your data and delete your account in the app at any time.
3. Using CareTail without an account
Without signing in, pets, routines, logs, photos and other records are stored only on your device. We do not receive them. Our subscription provider still creates an anonymous profile so the app can show plans and restore purchases (see section 6). On Android, the app's data is not included in Android device backups, so it is removed when you uninstall the app.
4. What we collect when you sign in
Account data
- Sign in with Apple (iPhone): an Apple user identifier, and, if you share them, your name and email address (which may be an Apple private relay address). We also store an Apple token, encrypted, so we can revoke Sign in with Apple when you delete your account.
- Continue with Google (iPhone and Android): a Google user identifier, your name, and your email address if Google has verified it. We do not store your Google profile picture.
- Email sign-in link: your email address. We send you a one-time sign-in link and code, which expire after 15 minutes; we keep only a hashed form of them and delete it within 48 hours.
- Settings you choose in the app, such as time zone, notification preferences, and optional profile details such as your city; the app version you use.
Your pets' records
- Pet profiles (name, species, breed, sex, birthday, card colour, avatar).
- Care routines, care logs, events and reminders (including notes, doses, amounts, places and contact phone numbers you add to them), weight entries, and the medical card (for example blood type, microchip number, sterilisation, insurance provider and policy number, notes).
- Contacts you add for your pet, such as a vet or sitter (name, organisation, phone, email, address). If you import a contact from your phone's address book, only the contact you pick is copied. On Android, the app first asks for permission to read your contacts, because Android requires it to read the contact you pick; the app does not read or upload the rest of your address book.
Photos and documents (CareTail Pro)
Photos and avatars are uploaded only for CareTail Pro members; otherwise they stay on your device. Before upload, the app converts each photo to JPEG and removes its embedded metadata, including location. The date the photo was taken is kept as a separate field so your photo diary stays in order.
Adding documents (images or PDFs) requires CareTail Pro. A document you add is uploaded together with its details (such as its type and title) and then syncs like your other records. If Pro ends, documents already uploaded are not deleted: you can still view, edit, export and delete them, but you cannot add new ones until you subscribe again.
Family sharing
If you create or join a family, its members see the family's pets and records, and each other's name and email address. Please only invite people you trust. Records you add about other people (for example a vet's phone number) are processed on your instructions.
Permissions on your device
CareTail asks for a permission only when you first use the feature that needs it: the camera, to photograph your pet or a document; your photos, to add pet photos and documents (on Android, the app uses the system photo picker and receives only the photos you pick); your contacts, to import a vet or sitter (see above); and notifications, for reminders. You can withdraw a permission at any time in your device's settings. CareTail does not ask for your location or your microphone.
Device and notifications
On iPhone, if you allow notifications, we store your device's push token, bundle identifier, iOS version and language so we can send reminders and service notifications through Apple's push service. On Android, CareTail does not use push notifications: the app sends us no push token, and nothing is sent to your device through Google's push service. On both platforms, reminders for scheduled care are scheduled locally on your device.
Purchases
Subscriptions are bought through the App Store on iPhone or through Google Play on Android, and are processed by Apple or Google. We receive your subscription status and transaction identifiers from our subscription provider Adapty and, for App Store purchases, also from Apple; we never receive your payment card details.
Technical data
When the app talks to our servers, your IP address and request details are processed by our network provider and appear in short-lived server logs used for security and troubleshooting. Server errors are reported to our error-monitoring service (see section 6); these reports concern our server code, not the content of your records.
5. Why we use your data, and our legal bases
| Purpose | Legal basis (GDPR) |
|---|---|
| Creating your account, storing and syncing your records, family sharing, backups | Performance of our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Providing CareTail Pro and restoring purchases | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Reminders and service notifications (for example a pet's birthday or an unusual weight change) | Your consent to notifications, which you can withdraw in your device's settings (Art. 6(1)(a)), and our contract |
| Security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting | Our legitimate interest in running a secure service (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Accounting and legal obligations, including keeping purchase records after you delete your account (see section 9) | Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)); for handling refunds, disputes and chargebacks, our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
Pet health information is information about animals, not about you. We do not use your data for advertising, profiling or automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. We do not send promotional push notifications.
Providing an email address or identifier is necessary to create an account; you can use CareTail without one.
6. Service providers
We use these providers to run CareTail. They process data only on our instructions.
| Provider | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Hetzner Online GmbH | Servers, database and backups | Germany |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Storage of photos and documents (R2), network protection for our API, website hosting | EU storage; global network |
| Adapty Tech Inc. | Subscription management: your CareTail user identifier, purchase and subscription status, and device information, IP address and country collected by its SDK. On Android, the app turns off the SDK's advertising-ID collection and does not request the advertising-ID permission, so the advertising ID is not collected. We do not use the advertising ID for advertising, tracking or attribution. Your purchase profile at Adapty is kept after you delete your account (see section 9) | USA |
| Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.) | Sending sign-in emails | EU (Ireland) |
| Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry) | Server error monitoring | USA |
Apple and Google are not our service providers in this sense. When you use Sign in with Apple, Google sign-in, the App Store or Google Play (including purchases, subscriptions and refunds), they process your data as independent controllers under their own terms and privacy policies. On iPhone, push notifications are delivered through Apple's push notification service, which Apple operates under its own terms.
- Apple (Sign in with Apple, App Store purchases and subscriptions, push notifications): Apple Privacy Policy
- Google (Google sign-in, if you choose it; Google Play purchases and subscriptions on Android): Google Privacy Policy
7. International transfers
Your data is stored mainly in the European Union. Because we operate from Georgia, and some providers are based in the United States, your data may be accessed from or transferred to those countries. Where a country does not have an EU adequacy decision, we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
8. How long we keep data
| Data | Kept |
|---|---|
| Account and pet records, photos, documents | Until you delete them or your account |
| Sign-in link and code (hashed) | Up to 48 hours |
| In-app notifications and family activity | 90 days |
| Unused family invitations | Deleted 7 days after they expire |
| Database backups | 14 days, then overwritten |
| Subscription event records from Apple and Adapty | Adapty events: 13 months; Apple notifications: 90 days; removed earlier when you delete your account |
| Your purchase profile at Adapty | Not deleted when you delete your account; kept for as long as we need it for refunds, disputes and our accounting and tax obligations (see section 9) |
| Server and network logs | A limited period for security and troubleshooting, then overwritten |
If your subscription ends, we do not delete your photos, documents or records.
9. Deleting your account and exporting your data
In the app, go to More › Delete account (shown while you are signed in). We sign you out everywhere at once and then delete your account, your devices, your avatar and, if you are the only member of your family, your pets, records, photos and documents. If other people remain in your family, the family's shared pets and records stay with them and ownership passes to another member. Deleted data disappears from backups within 14 days. If you signed in with Apple, we also revoke CareTail's access to your Apple Account.
Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription; cancel it in the App Store or Google Play. Our subscription provider Adapty keeps your purchase profile after you delete your account. It holds your random CareTail user identifier, the store's transaction identifiers, the product, the purchase, renewal and expiry dates, the subscription status and the device data described in section 6; it holds no name, email address or pet data. We keep it because we need the purchase history to handle refunds, disputes and chargebacks and to meet our accounting and tax obligations, for as long as those require. After deletion, the identifier points only to an anonymised record in our database, so the profile is no longer linked to your CareTail account data. Apple and Google keep their own purchase records under their own privacy policies.
You can also ask us to delete your account without the app: see Delete your account.
You can export your data at any time in More › Export my data: the app creates a ZIP file with your records, photos and documents.
10. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you have the right to access, correct, delete or restrict the processing of your personal data, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time. Write to [email protected]; we answer within one month.
Right to object: where we process your personal data on the basis of our legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, see section 5), you have the right to object to this processing at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will then stop the processing unless we can show compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights and freedoms, or we need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. To object, write to [email protected].
You may also complain to a data protection authority: in the EU, the authority in your country of residence; in Georgia, the Personal Data Protection Service.
11. Tracking, cookies and the website
The CareTail app contains no analytics or advertising SDKs, shows no ads and does not track you across other companies' apps or websites. The device data that our subscription provider's SDK collects is described in section 6. The caretail.app website sets no cookies and uses no analytics; its host, Cloudflare, processes your IP address to deliver pages and protect the site.
12. Children
CareTail is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
13. Security
Data is encrypted in transit. Access to our systems is restricted, sensitive tokens are stored encrypted, and file downloads use short-lived links.
14. Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date above; for material changes we will also tell you in the app before they take effect.