PRIVACY
A data-minimising way to find a dog park
Dogs Social follows one rule: a field is not collected unless a feature actually uses it. This page explains what the web app and this marketing site handle, and what they leave alone.
Using Dogs Social without an account
The map, the park pages and checking in all work without an account. Anonymous use hangs on a random device_id that Dogs Social keeps in your browser's localStorage, so your dog and your check-ins stay attached to the same device. It is not a cookie, not a fingerprint, and it goes to nobody. Your browser also remembers the language you picked, and if you add the app to your home screen it keeps the app's own files there so it loads faster. No tracking cookies and no advertising identifiers are used, on the site or in the app.
What an account adds
An account is needed for three things: scheduling a later arrival, uploading a dog photo and saving a bio. You can create one with an email address and a password, or sign in with Google. Supabase Auth handles the sign-in and stores your password only as a hash, so nobody at Dogs Social can read it. If you use Google sign-in, Google passes on your email address and knows that you signed in here. Supabase also sends the confirmation and password-reset emails that sign-in needs.
Your dog's profile
A dog profile holds the dog's name, age group, size, sex, social style, an optional breed, an optional short bio and an optional photo. Dogs Social does not ask for your real name, phone number or postal address, and has no field to put them in. The account itself holds your email address and your preferred language.
Check-ins
A check-in records which park, which dog, when it started, and either how long you plan to stay or when you plan to arrive. It drops out of view about three hours later unless you check out sooner. Where you are between parks is recorded nowhere, because the app never asks.
What other people can see
Anyone using Dogs Social, with or without an account, can see the dog information you fill in and whether your dog is at a park now or expected later. Nobody sees your email address, your name or your location. Dog photos live in public storage, which means the direct link opens the photo outside the app too. Treat a dog profile as public and leave out anything you want to keep private.
Location
Location is requested only when you tap the locate-me button. It centres the map at that moment and never reaches the Dogs Social database. Refuse the permission and the map still works.
Park photos
Park photos come from Google Places. The lookup happens on the Dogs Social server, which only ever asks Google about parks that exist in the app, so your browser never calls the Google Places API itself. The image file is then loaded by your browser from Google's servers, so Google receives that image request the way it would for any other image on the web.
Feedback and ideas
The feedback sheet in the app and the idea field on the What's next page write to the same private inbox. Both store your message, a category, your language, the time, and a reply address if you leave one. They store no device_id, no account link, no IP address and no user agent, so a message cannot be tied to your check-ins. A reply address is used to answer you and for nothing else; it never joins the updates list. Nothing you write is published: the board only shows ideas the owner rewrote. There is no automatic deletion yet, so ask through the privacy contact if a message should go.
Votes on the idea board
A vote stores only which idea was voted for and when. No identifier of any kind is attached to it. Your own browser remembers what you voted for so the page stops offering the same vote twice, and that is the only thing holding back double votes, which is why the counts are a rough signal rather than a headcount.
Email updates
If you sign up for updates, Dogs Social keeps your email address, your language, which form you used and the time. The legal basis is your consent. The address is used only to write to you about Dogs Social and is passed to nobody else. Every message carries an unsubscribe link that works immediately; afterwards the record survives only so that the unsubscribe holds. You can also unsubscribe through the privacy contact.
Analytics
Dogs Social uses Umami Cloud for cookieless audience statistics on this site and app.dogs.social. Umami derives temporary anonymous visitor recognition from browser and network information. We send public page addresses, including the park viewed, page titles, referring website origins, browser language, screen dimensions, approved campaign labels and check-in submissions, successful app actions and park sharing, without dog, account or device identifiers or form contents. A marketing-to-app link also carries a marker showing that it came through this site. Campaign labels are kept in sessionStorage for a fixed 30 minutes and passed to the app through links. They are not linked to dog profiles. Umami Hobby keeps analytics for six months. Cloudflare Web Analytics also collects aggregate, cookieless audience and page-performance statistics on this marketing site without browser storage or visitor profiles. Vercel Speed Insights separately measures app performance. We use no advertising pixel. You can disable Umami in each browser and origin by setting localStorage umami.disabled to 1; Do Not Track is respected.
Error reports
The production app sends error reports to Sentry, hosted in the European Union. A report carries the error, the code that failed, the route it happened on and the version of your browser and operating system. Nothing more is allowed in: no user identification, no session recording, no click tracking, and identifiers such as the device_id or a dog's ID are stripped out of messages and web addresses before the report leaves your browser.
IP addresses
Every service that delivers something to your device sees your IP address, because otherwise the answer arrives nowhere, and Cloudflare, Vercel, Supabase and Mapbox each keep it briefly in their own logs. Dogs Social does not store it. The limit that protects the database against abuse stores a hash of the address with a salt that changes every day and is deleted with the day, so an old hash leads back neither to an address nor to the same visitor on another day.
Services we use
Supabase provides the database, the sign-in and photo storage. Vercel hosts the app at app.dogs.social; Cloudflare hosts this marketing site. Mapbox draws the map. Google supplies park photos and the optional Google sign-in. Sentry receives error reports. Resend delivers the transactional email. Each one receives only what its role requires.
Legal bases
Dogs Social relies on legitimate interest to run the map, the presence signal and the security that protects them; on your consent for the things you choose yourself, such as an account, a photo, a bio or email updates; and on a legal obligation where one applies. You can withdraw consent at any time, which does not make what happened before unlawful.
How long things are kept
Little is deleted automatically today, and saying so beats dressing it up. A check-in drops out of view after about three hours, but the record stays in the database until the dog or the account it belongs to is deleted. Feedback messages and submitted ideas stay until they are deleted by hand. A subscription survives an unsubscribe, marked as unsubscribed, precisely so the unsubscribe holds. Account data stays while the account exists. A fixed retention schedule has not been set yet; until it is, a request through the privacy contact is the way to have something erased.
Your rights
Under applicable data-protection law you can ask for access, rectification, erasure, portability or restriction, and you can object where the legal basis allows it. Write to privacy@dogs.social. You can also complain to the Belgian Data Protection Authority, Drukpersstraat 35, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, contact@apd-gba.be, +32 (0)2 274 48 00.
Erasing your account or data
Account erasure removes the account, the profile, the dogs, their check-ins and the stored photos on the server, not just from view. The app has no delete button yet, so send the request to privacy@dogs.social and it will be carried out. Dogs Social is not directed at children under 16.
Controller and contact: For a privacy question, a request about your rights or an erasure, write to privacy@dogs.social.
Last updated: 17 September 2026