Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated October 14, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what Tailmates (“Tailmates,” “we,” “us”) collects, why we collect it, and the choices you have. We built Tailmates to get dogs walking, not to harvest data, and we keep the footprint deliberately small.

1. Information we collect

Account information

When you sign up we collect your email address (or the identifier Apple or Google gives us when you sign in with them), a username, your country, and your state or region. Your state or region sets the veterinary telehealth and VCPR rules that apply to you.

Dog and wellness information

You provide details about your dog: name, breed, birthdate, sex, weight, body-condition score, and optional photos. If you choose to pursue a lab verified longevity score, blood-panel results are processed and stored in a private, access-controlled store and are visible only to you and a veterinarian you explicitly link.

Location and activity data

Walk tracking uses your device location to draw your route and compute distance, pace, and XP. It tracks you only during a walk (including in the background if you enable it). Your route stays in your own record. We do not share it with other users, and we never broadcast your live coordinates.

When a walk ends, we save the weather for it and a short area name, such as a park or a neighborhood, never a street address. Your phone looks up that name from the middle of your route, with Apple on iPhone or Google on Android.

With the app open, Tailmates can also use your location to show the weather for your day, and dog parks, vets, and meetups near you. For the weather, our server asks Open-Meteo (and the US National Weather Service for alerts); for dog parks and vets, it asks Google Places. It sends the location with the request and nothing about who you are, and these lookups are not saved to your account. Outside a walk, the one place we keep is your home area: the first time the app sees your location, it places your account in a city-level region, which names your area on live walks.

While a walk is underway, packmates see that you are walking, plus your distance, pace, and elapsed time. The only place attached to it is a city-level label, taken from the region on your account. Tailmates does not store an approximate location cell for your walk, and it does not send one to anyone. A walk you open to friends can be joined. If you also turn on Discoverable to everyone, any member can find that open walk in Live Walkers, with the same city-level label.

Your profile, posts, and chats

Other members can see your profile (your username, the name, photo, and bio you add, and your dogs) and what you choose to post: posts, photos, videos, comments, and likes. They can find your profile in search and follow you. Groups and meetups show their members to each other. Messages in a walk party’s chat are seen only by the people in that party, and they are deleted an hour after the walk ends.

Live pack voice

A live pack activity or shared walk can carry a voice room. When you tap Join voice and unmute, your microphone audio is sent in real time to the other people in that room and theirs is sent to you. Nothing is recorded unless the host starts a recording (see Voice recordings below), and we never transcribe it. The room knows which account is speaking so hosts can mute or remove a person and so the speaking ring lights on the right avatar. Voice notes you dictate in Scout or the post composer are different: that audio is turned into text on your phone and never leaves it.

Voice recordings

A host with Tailmates+ or Tailmates Silver can record the speakers in the Voice room they host. Recording starts only when the host taps Start recording. While it runs, the app shows a recording indicator in the room. Where the app offers it, Party chat also says when it starts and when someone joins the stage.

Who is recorded. Only speakers, and only after they tap OK: the host, and the people who can talk and tap OK on the recording notice. In a Stage room the host, co-hosts, and the speakers the host brings on stage can talk; in a Free-speak room everyone can. You see the notice before your voice can be recorded, and nothing you say is recorded before you tap OK. Tapping OK is your agreement to be recorded. Listening is never recorded. Where the app marks a live walk as recorded, it says “Recorded (speakers only)”. After you tap OK, your voice is recorded whenever you are unmuted, until you leave the stage, leave Voice, or the recording ends. Nothing is recorded while it is paused. If your version of the app can’t show the notice, you are never recorded.
Saying no, and stopping. If you don’t want to be recorded, tap Not now or Leave, whichever the notice shows. Not now keeps your mic muted, and you keep listening. You can also leave the stage or leave Voice at any time, or choose Stop including my voice where the app offers it, and stay on the walk. What was recorded before you stopped stays in the recording.
What we keep. Each person’s voice as its own audio track, and one MP3 made from those tracks. Who was on the walk, who spoke and when, and when each person tapped OK or stopped being recorded. The recording’s title and length. A recording holds voices only. Messages in Party chat are never part of it.
Episodes. The host may publish a recording as a podcast episode for Tailmates members, for one of their groups, or for anyone, in Tailmates and on podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. An episode carries the voices of the host and the speakers who tapped OK. It never carries a map, a route, or a location, and a public episode never names a speaker. Speakers are not asked a second time before an episode goes live. Every speaker in a published episode is notified when it goes live, unless they have blocked the host or the host has blocked them, and any speaker can ask to be taken out of it. Copies people download from a podcast app can’t be recalled. To ask us to take down an episode you are in, write to privacy@tailmates.io.
Who keeps and plays it. The recording belongs to the host, who can play it, save or share a copy as an MP3, rename it, and delete it. The other people on the recording can’t save or share it. When speaker playback reaches their app, they can play it back in Tailmates while the host’s copy is available, without seeing the host’s route or the title the host gave it. A copy the host saves or shares lives outside Tailmates, and hosts must respect people’s choices and the law before they share one.
Where it lives. In our private storage on Cloudflare, encrypted in transit and at rest. A recording has no public link: every play and save goes through the signed-in app of the host or of a person on the recording, and we check each one. An episode the host publishes is public.
How long. The tracks and the MP3 stay until the host deletes the recording or deletes their account. If the host’s Tailmates+ or Tailmates Silver plan ends, the host can still play and save it for 30 days but can’t record. After that the recording is kept but locked until the host subscribes again. A refund ends that access right away.
If you delete your account. We delete the recordings you hosted. Recordings another host made with you in Voice stay with that host, and your voice stays in them. We delete your name, profile, and account. Those recordings keep an internal identifier that has no name, email, or profile behind it.

Podcasts

When a host publishes a podcast, or you listen to one, we keep:

The show. Its name, description, and artwork. Artwork made from a photo the host picks is cropped and resized, and everything stored inside the photo file, like where and when it was taken, is removed.
Each episode. The audio file we make from the host’s recording or upload, its title, notes, chapters, and length. We level its loudness and remove everything stored inside the original file, including any location. An episode never carries a map, a route, or a place.
Who is in it. Which accounts spoke in the episode, so we can tell each speaker it went live, take their lines out of a transcript, and answer a request to be taken out. A public episode never names a speaker. It shows the host as first name and last initial.
Transcripts, only if the host turns them on. We make them with speech-to-text on our own computers. The raw text never leaves that computer and is deleted as soon as it is read. Before anyone sees a transcript, we take out places, contact details, codes, and surnames, and the host reads and approves it. If a speaker asks to be taken out, their lines come out of the transcript at once.
What you play. When you are signed in, the episodes you play and how far you got, so you can pick up where you left off on any device. Hosts see how many times an episode was played. They never see who played it.
Shows you follow. When you follow a show (or save it as a favorite), we keep which shows you follow and whether you want alerts for new episodes, so we can let you know when one comes out. You can unfollow a show or turn its alerts off at any time.
Your private feed link, if you add a member or group feed to a podcast app. We keep only a scrambled form of the link, so we can check it without storing the link itself.
Requests and reports. A speaker’s request to be taken out and the host’s answer, and reports about an episode.

Public episodes play on the web without an account. When you play one signed out, we count the play without tying it to you.

Tailmates Town (beta)

Tailmates Town turns your walks into a small town you build. It keeps:

your walker’s look, as you choose it: skin tone, hair, face, body shape, clothes, and extras such as glasses, a hearing aid, or a mobility aid;
a Town look for each of your dogs: its breed’s shape, a coat color and markings, and the gear you pick. Your phone suggests the coat color from the dog’s profile photo. The photo is not sent anywhere for this, and you confirm or change the color;
your town itself: its plots, buildings, and furniture, your Coins, finds, and items, your Town settings, and your time zone, which sets when your Town day starts.

Coins and finds come from your walks. When a walk qualifies, our server records that for Town. Town never receives your route or your location, and a home trail you pick with Near me is chosen on your phone. Your Packmates can visit your town. They see its buildings and layout, your town’s name, and your walker’s and dogs’ looks. They never see your Coins, items, walks, or location. New towns let Packmates in by default. Anyone you block can’t visit. Town runs on our own Town service on Cloudflare, with a copy of your progress in our main database, and deleting your account erases your town.

Care Pass

When you give or hold a Care Pass, we keep:

What you add. Care details you add (feeding, walking and handling notes, allergies, your phone number, an emergency contact, your dog’s vet and microchip number), vaccine records you upload, the Care Passes you give (who, when and what they can see), care sessions (times, duration, distance, check-ins, notes and photos) and who opened your dog’s care details.
Location. When a caregiver records a care walk, their phone records location only while the walk runs. We use it to check the walk and measure its distance. Owners see the time, duration and distance, never the route. We delete the route after 30 days.
Who sees it. The person or business you choose, and only the people on their team you allow. They see your dog’s care details, the medications and supplements on its record, and the vaccine records you pick.
Staff. People at a business you give a pass to see your phone number and emergency contact only on days they care for your dog. The business’s owner and managers can see them for the whole pass.
Emergency contact. Add someone only with their permission.
Emergency notes. What you write under “If your dog needs a vet and you can’t reach me” is shown to your caregiver. It isn’t a legal authorization.

Apple Health (HealthKit), iPhone only

Tailmates can import outdoor walks you already recorded elsewhere, so they still earn points. The import runs only when you tap it, and only after you grant access in Apple’s own Health permission sheet. With access granted, Tailmates reads your walking workouts, their routes, walking and running distance, and step count from Apple Health, and it looks only at workouts that ended in the last day. Tailmates never writes to Apple Health.

What leaves your phone is the route points and the start and end times of the workouts you import, which our server needs to verify and score the walk exactly like a walk recorded in the app. Your step counts and the rest of your Health history stay on your device.

Health data is used to run walk tracking and scoring. Scout may use only derived totals from activity you imported, subject to the additional controls described in section 4. We never use it for advertising or marketing, never share it with data brokers or advertising networks, never use it for any other use-based data mining, and never sell it. You can revoke access at any time in Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Health, then Tailmates; walks already imported stay in your Tailmates history until you delete them or your account.

Device and usage data

We collect standard diagnostic and product-analytics events (for example, that a walk was finalized) to keep the app working and improve it. We never use them to track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

Scout conversations and settings

When you use Scout, we collect the messages you send, Scout’s replies, and any action you ask Scout to propose or confirm. We also store your Scout data choices and a content-free audit record of changes to those choices. The audit record contains the setting changed and its on-or-off state, not your chat, dog, health, activity, or community content.

Optional contact matching

If you choose the “find friends from contacts” feature, Tailmates reads contact email addresses and phone numbers on your device, normalizes them, and hashes them on-device with SHA-256. Only those hashes are transmitted to Tailmates for matching. We do not receive or store your address book’s raw contact names, email addresses, or phone numbers. This feature is optional, and declining contacts access does not affect the rest of the app.

Research contribution

Tailmates is working to radically extend canine lifespan, and that research runs separately from the app. Contributing your dog’s data to it is opt-in and off by default, and the app works the same either way. From version 1.2.2, the app asks new members once, after their first walk, and you can change your choices any time in Settings, under Privacy. You choose for each dog, with one switch for each of the eight contributions the consent names: walks and activity, body condition and photos, lab results, medications and supplements, food and diet, vet records, end of life record, and contact for optional research. For walks, that means only a walk’s date, distance, duration, pace, and active minutes, filed under a research code instead of your dog’s name, and never your route, a location, the time of day, or who you are. The other switches are saved as your choices, and nothing from them reaches a research dataset yet. Today only Tailmates can open what is contributed; an outside researcher would need our approval and would have to follow our access controls and data-use requirements. We publish our methods openly and our findings only as totals and summaries. Turning a switch off stops new contribution, and analyses already completed stay as they are. In Settings, you can also pause or withdraw a dog’s contribution. “Pause contribution” keeps your choices and stops new contribution until you resume. “Withdraw” turns everything off, with no reason needed. Neither changes analyses already completed.

2. How we use information

To run the core loop: record walks, compute XP, streaks, levels, leagues, and badges.
To generate your dog’s Longevity Estimate and, if you opt in, a lab verified longevity score.
To power social features you turn on: packs, the activity feed, and the “active now” presence glow.
To record a voice room when its host starts a recording, to keep that recording for the host, and to publish it as an episode when the host chooses.
To publish the podcasts hosts make, play them for the people allowed to hear them, count plays, remember where you stopped, and make transcripts when a host turns them on.
To run Tailmates Town: turn qualifying walks into Coins and finds, and keep your town.
To run Care Pass: show your dog’s care details to the caregiver you choose, check and measure care walks, and send you their reports.
If you turn on research contribution, to add the contributions you switch on to canine health and longevity research, as Research contribution describes.
To sell paid groups and meetups, give buyers their access, and keep each host’s record of sales and fees.
To answer requests you send to Scout using only the categories you leave enabled in Scout Data Settings.
To match contact-derived hashes when you optionally ask to find people you know on Tailmates.
To detect and prevent cheating, fraud, and abuse.
To communicate with you about your account, safety, and purchases, and to send tips and product news by email. Every tips or news email has an unsubscribe link.

3. How information is shared

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only:

With other members, and only what you choose to share: your profile, what you post, and the fact that you are walking while a walk is underway. No coordinates and no route go with it.
Publicly, in an episode, when a host publishes a recording you agreed to be in: your voice, on Tailmates and in the host’s podcast feed, which podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify read.
With podcast apps, when a host publishes an episode for anyone. The show’s public feed lists the episode, its title, notes, chapters, artwork, the host’s first name and last initial, and an approved transcript if the host turned them on. Podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify read the feed and handle it under their own privacy policies. They get nothing about who listens on Tailmates. When a host turns the public feed on, we also send the feed’s address to Podcast Index, a public podcast directory other podcast apps read, so they can find the show.
With people you invite to co-own a dog, who see that dog in their own app and can log walks with it.
With the person or business you give a Care Pass, who see your dog’s care details, the medications and supplements on its record, and the vaccine records you pick, for the dates you set, as Care Pass describes.
With a veterinarian you link, who can see only the dogs you connect to them, scoped by row-level security.
With a clinic you ask us to invite. When you add your vet’s clinic and ask us to invite it, we email the clinic an invitation with your first name and your dog’s name.
With approved research collaborators, only if you turn on research contribution, and only the contributions you switch on, as Research contribution describes. None has access today.
With service providers (hosting, authentication, email delivery, payment processing) under contract and only as needed to operate the service.
With Google Vertex AI, for the two automated-analysis features in section 4: reading a dog photo, and transcribing a bloodwork document.
With OpenRouter and Google, to generate Scout replies from your message and the enabled, server-filtered context described in section 4. OpenRouter routes the request; Google’s Gemini models generate the reply.
With Google, for a vet visit brief, when you ask for one. Our server sends a redacted summary of your dog’s record to Google’s Gemini models to draft questions for the appointment. The summary carries no medication, supplement, or food names. Section 4 lists what it does carry.
With Google and weather services, for what is near you. Our server sends a location to Google Places for dog parks and vets, and to Open-Meteo and the US National Weather Service for weather, with nothing about who you are.
With Cloudflare, for live pack voice, voice recordings, and Tailmates Town. Your phone sends voice through Cloudflare’s real-time relay, which forwards it to the other people in the room and keeps none of it. When a host records, our recording service, which runs in our own Cloudflare account, receives the audio of each speaker who tapped OK on the recording notice, keeps each voice as its own track in our private Cloudflare storage, and makes the MP3. Episodes a host publishes are served from Cloudflare too. The audio travels with your account id so the room knows who is speaking, and with nothing else about you. Tailmates Town also runs in our Cloudflare account.
When required by law, or to protect rights, safety, and the integrity of the service.

4. Automated analysis

Three clinical-support features send your content to Google’s Gemini models for automated analysis, normally on Google Vertex AI and in some configurations routed through OpenRouter; either way, Google’s models process the content. All three calls are made by our servers, never by your phone. The Vertex AI calls use a Google Cloud service account under our control.

Dog photos. When you add a dog, or take a weekly body-condition photo, the photo is sent to Vertex AI to estimate your dog’s body-condition score and, during onboarding, to guess breed, size, and an approximate age band. The breed you typed is sent with it so the model can cross-check the build. Your name, email, and account identifier are not sent. You confirm or correct every suggestion before it is saved, and the estimate is educational, never a diagnosis.
Bloodwork documents. If you or your veterinarian add a lab report to your dog’s record, the document (a PDF or an image) is sent to Vertex AI to transcribe the printed result rows into structured values. The document goes as it was uploaded, so anything printed on it, which usually includes your name, your dog’s name, and the clinic and lab details, is sent with it. A veterinarian reviews and corrects that transcription; the software never creates a lab verified longevity score on its own.
Vet visit brief. When you ask for a brief before an appointment, our server assembles the brief itself from your record and sends only a redacted summary to Vertex AI, which drafts questions to ask your vet. That summary carries your dog’s name, breed, age, the length of the change window, the latest weight on file and the date it was taken, how many medications and supplements are current, and whether a longevity score is on file and which tier it is. It also carries the changes inside that window as generic dated lines: started or stopped a medication, a supplement, or a food; a weight move with the two weights behind it; a body-condition move on the 9-point scale from your photo reads; and how your logged activity compares with the window before. It carries no medication, supplement, or food names, and not your name, email, or account identifier. The rest of the brief never reaches a model. If the model is unavailable, the brief still renders, without the questions.

Scout. When you send Scout a message, our server sends that message, recent Scout conversation context, and only the data categories you have enabled to OpenRouter, which routes the request to Google’s Gemini models, the model provider Scout currently uses. Those categories are dog profile, care and longevity, your Tailmates activity, Apple Health-derived activity, community activity, and weekly check-ins. We do not send your account email or account identifier to the model provider. Scout never receives precise routes, raw location samples, or raw Apple Health samples. Its answers may be incomplete or wrong and are not veterinary advice or a diagnosis.

Google processes this content as our service provider, on our instructions, to return a result to us. The Google Cloud terms that cover Vertex AI prohibit using customer content to train its models. For Scout, OpenRouter sits between our servers and Google’s models as a routing layer, under its own terms of service. We do not use it for advertising, we do not sell it, and results are stored in your dog’s record under the same access controls as the rest of your data. Apple Health data is never sent to Vertex AI. Scout may receive derived Apple Health activity aggregates only when all three boundaries allow it: you previously granted Apple Health access and imported the activity, the Apple Health category remains enabled in Scout Data Settings, and Tailmates has enabled that server-side capability. Precise routes and raw Apple Health samples are never sent to Scout or its model providers.

The photo, bloodwork, and vet visit brief features are optional. Skip the photo read and set body condition with the slider yourself; skip bloodwork and keep the free Longevity Estimate; skip the brief and your record is unchanged. Scout’s saved data categories start enabled, but you can independently turn any category off in Scout Data Settings. Turning a Scout category off stops future Scout use; it does not delete or change the source data used by the rest of Tailmates.

A photo chosen for an automated photo read is uploaded to a private, access-controlled staging area under a five-minute signed link. The server deletes that staging copy as soon as it has read the image. A separate cleanup job removes uploads left behind by an interrupted app or request after their 15-minute staging period. If you also choose the photo as your dog’s profile picture, that separate profile copy remains until you replace it or delete it or your account.

5. Payments

Blood panels and any veterinary services you purchase are processed by our payment provider (Stripe). We do not store full card numbers. The optional Tailmates+ and Tailmates Silver memberships are processed by Apple or Google. We receive and retain the store product, transaction, subscription-status, and expiration data needed to grant the correct membership and handle renewals, cancellations, and refunds; we do not receive your full Apple or Google payment details. The core app, walking, gamification, and your Longevity Estimate are free, and you will never hit a paywall to use them.

Paid groups and meetups work the same way. A purchase in the app goes through Apple or Google, and an in-person meetup can be paid through Stripe. We keep the purchase record (what you bought, the price, and its status) to give you access and to handle refunds, and the host sees you as a member or attendee, as with any group or meetup. If you host and charge, Stripe collects what it needs to pay you, such as your name, date of birth, tax ID, and bank account, on its own pages and under its own privacy policy. We receive your Stripe account’s status and keep the record of your sales, fees, refunds, and payouts.

6. Your choices and rights

Export: request a copy of your data from in-app settings.
Delete: delete your account at any time. You are signed out at once, and we erase your profile, dogs, walks, posts, your town, and the voice recordings you hosted, then email you when it’s done. Voice recordings another host made with you in Voice stay with that host, with an internal identifier that has no name, email, or profile behind it.
Recordings: a host can delete a recording at any time in Recordings. To ask about your voice on someone else’s recording, use Contact support in Settings or email privacy@tailmates.io.
Podcasts: a host can unpublish or delete an episode at any time, and turn transcripts off, which deletes them. If you are in an episode, use the link in the email we sent you, or Contact support in Settings, to ask the host to take you out. Account export includes the shows you host, your episodes, the episodes you are in, your requests, the shows you follow, and your listening history.
Care Pass: any member of your dog can end or remove a pass at any time. Account export doesn’t include Care Pass yet. To get a copy of your dog’s care details, vaccine records and care reports, email privacy@tailmates.io.
Location: revoke location permission in your device settings; walk tracking stops working until you re-enable it.
Microphone: voice rooms are optional and you join them muted. Leave a room at any time, or revoke microphone permission in your device settings; you can still listen to a room without it. Turning live voice off on a pack activity you host closes the room for everyone. If a host records, you see a notice before your voice can be recorded, and leaving the room stops your voice being recorded from then on.
Tracking: Tailmates does not present an App Tracking Transparency prompt because it does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.
Contacts: skip contact matching or revoke Contacts permission at any time in your device settings. Contact-matching data associated with your account is deleted when you delete your account.
Scout data: turn any saved data category off or back on in Scout Data Settings. A setting change applies to new Scout requests and weekly check-ins across your devices. Your Scout messages, settings, and setting-change audit records are included in account export and removed when you delete your account.
Emails: every tips or news email has an unsubscribe link. Account, safety, and purchase emails still reach you.

7. Data retention & security

We retain data for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the service and meet legal obligations, then delete or anonymize it. Some records, such as purchase and payout records, may be kept where the law requires it, and backups roll off on a 30-day cycle. Access is governed by row-level security so users, and linked vets, can reach only the records they are entitled to. Health records live in a private, non-public store. Contact-derived hashes are used only for matching; they are never disclosed to other users or to third parties for their own purposes, and neither raw contacts nor contact-derived hashes are sold. Live voice audio is kept only when a host records; otherwise it exists only in transit between the people in a room. A voice recording and its tracks stay until the host deletes it or deletes their account. An episode stays until its host unpublishes or deletes it, or deletes their account, which takes their shows and episodes with it. When an episode comes down, we delete our public copy and take it out of the feed. Copies podcast apps or listeners already downloaded can’t be recalled. If you delete your account, we delete your listening history and private feed links, and episodes you spoke in stay with their host without your name, as recordings do. Care Pass deletes a care walk’s route 30 days after the walk, and keeps the record of who opened your dog’s care details for 2 years after the pass ends. Care reports and their photos stay until the dog’s profile is deleted, even if the caregiver deletes their account. A photo you hide from a report is deleted 30 days later. Vaccine records stay until you or a co-owner removes them.

8. Children

Tailmates is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

9. Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be announced in-app or by email, and the “last updated” date above will change.

10. Contact

Questions? Email hello@tailmates.io.