Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated July 25, 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 your Apple Sign-In identifier), a username, and your US state. State is used only to apply the correct veterinary telehealth and VCPR rules.

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. Location is collected only while you are recording a walk (including in the background if you enable it). Location shared with your pack is coarse only. We never broadcast your precise live coordinates to other users.

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, and for nothing else. 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. It is not sent to any AI provider. 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. With your consent (App Tracking Transparency), limited measurement may be used; you can decline without losing any functionality.

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.

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 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 early-access status.

3. How information is shared

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

With your pack, and only what you choose to post, plus coarse presence when you are mid-walk.
With a veterinarian you link, who can see only the dogs you connect to them, scoped by row-level security.
With service providers (hosting, authentication, 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.
When required by law, or to protect rights, safety, and the integrity of the service.

4. Automated analysis

Two features send your content to Google Vertex AI for automated analysis. Both calls are made by our servers, never by your phone, using a Google Cloud service account under our control. Nothing else in the app uses AI on your data, and we use no other AI provider.

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.

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. 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 or to any other AI provider.

Both features are optional. Skip the photo read and set body condition with the slider yourself; skip bloodwork and keep the free Longevity Estimate.

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 core app, walking, gamification, and your Longevity Estimate, is free, and you will never hit a paywall to use it.

6. Your choices and rights

Export: request a copy of your data from in-app settings.
Delete: delete your account at any time; this removes your profile and cascades to your dogs, walks, and posts.
Location: revoke location permission in your device settings; walk tracking simply stops working until you re-enable it.
Tracking: decline App Tracking Transparency with no loss of features.
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.

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. 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.

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.