Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 August 2026

General

This Privacy Policy explains how CatWatch collects, uses, and shares your personal information. It applies to the CatWatch mobile application, the catwatch.app website, and related services (together, the "Service"). By using the Service, you agree to the collection, use, and sharing of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

In this Privacy Policy, "CatWatch", "we" and "us" mean the operator of the Service. Questions about this Privacy Policy or your personal information: info@catwatch.app.

CatWatch is under active development. Any feature described in this Privacy Policy may change, or may not be available to all users or in all jurisdictions.

1. Information we collect

Data	Why
Email address and password (hashed), or an Apple / Google sign-in identifier	To create and secure your account. We never see your Apple or Google password. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we only receive the relay address.
Profile: username, first and last name (optional), bio (optional), city and country (optional), avatar, language, Telegram / Instagram handles (optional)	To show your public profile to other users. Everything except your email is visible to other users of the app.
Photos of cats you upload	To create and illustrate cat cards, to verify feeding, and to detect duplicates of the same cat.
Location of a cat sighting — taken from the photo's EXIF data, or from your device location if the photo has none	To place street cats on the shared map. Stored as a property of the cat, not as a history of your movements. Domestic cats are stored without any location.
Your country and city	Shown on your public profile and used for city and country statistics. Stored as references to a directory of countries and cities — not as precise coordinates. You can edit or clear them at any time.
Activity: cats added, sightings, feeding logs, likes, follows, daily streak, reports you submit, users you block	To run the core features of the app — lifelist, map, feeding, statistics, moderation.
Push notification token (only if you enable notifications)	To send you reminders about your streak. You can turn this off at any time in the app settings or in iOS settings.
Technical data: device and app version, error logs, request timestamps	To keep the service working, diagnose crashes and prevent abuse.

We do not collect advertising identifiers, we do not track you across other apps or websites, and we do not run third-party advertising or analytics SDKs in the app.

2. Photos and location

We do not track your movements and we do not store a history of where you have been. The app asks for your device location to work in the moment, and what stays in our database is limited to what is listed below.

Your device location is used, and then discarded, to:

centre the map on where you are, so you see cats around you rather than a random place;
find street cats near you and sort them by distance;
pre-fill your country and city when you set up your profile;
attach a location to a street cat you are adding, when the photo itself carries none;
check that you are within 100 metres of a cat when you log a feeding — this coordinate is sent to our server for that single check and is not saved.

What is actually stored: the coordinates of a cat (so it can appear on the shared map), and your country and city as directory references on your profile. Nothing else about your location is kept, and no background or continuous tracking takes place — the app only asks for your position while you are using it.

For street cats, coordinates normally come from the photo's EXIF metadata, together with the date the photo was taken. If the photo carries none, the app asks for your device location at that moment instead. You can decline; adding a street cat will then not be possible, but the rest of the app keeps working. Location permission can be withdrawn at any time in iOS Settings.

Photos of street cats and their locations are public inside the app: other users can see the cat card, the photos and the point on the map — this is the point of a shared map. Photos of domestic cats are never placed on the map, and their visibility depends on your privacy setting in the app.

3. Automated processing of your content

To make the app work and to keep it safe, content you submit is sent to automated services:

Cat recognition. Photos you scan are sent to Google's Gemini API to identify whether the image shows a cat and to estimate breed, colours and other visible traits, and to compare a new photo with existing cats to detect duplicates.
Feeding verification. A feeding photo is checked automatically for the presence of a cat and food, and against the time and distance limits, before a feeding is recorded.
Safety filtering of photos. Uploaded photos are screened for unsafe content. A photo that fails this check is rejected.
Text moderation. Cat names, comments and profile text are checked against a profanity dictionary at the moment you save them, and afterwards sent to OpenAI's moderation API to detect harassment, threats, hateful and sexual content. Flagged items go into an internal review queue.
Translation on request. If you tap "translate" on a profile bio or a cat comment, that text is sent to Google's Gemini API and the translation is cached. Nothing is translated unless you ask for it.

These providers process the content to return a result for us; under our agreements with them the content is not used to train their models. No automated decision with legal consequences for you is made — a moderation flag leads to human review, not to an automatic ban.

4. Who we share information with

We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising. We use these service providers ("processors"), each only for the purpose listed:

Supabase — database, authentication, file storage and server functions (hosting of all app data).
Google (Gemini API) — cat recognition, feeding verification, photo safety screening, on-demand translation.
OpenAI — text and image moderation.
Expo / Apple Push Notification service — delivery of push notifications, if you enable them.
Cloudflare — hosting of the catwatch.app website and public links.
Apple, Google — only if you choose to sign in with them, to verify your identity.

These providers may process data outside your country, including in the United States. Transfers rely on the providers' standard contractual clauses and equivalent safeguards.

We may also disclose data if we are legally required to, or where it is necessary to protect the rights and safety of users.

5. Retention

Account and profile data — while your account exists.
Deleted account — you can delete your account in the app. Deletion is scheduled with a 30-day cancellation window; during that window the account is inaccessible and can be restored by signing in. After 30 days your profile, photos and personal data are erased permanently.
Street cat records — cat cards, sightings and feeding history are shared community data and remain after an account is deleted, without any link to your identity. Domestic cats you created are deleted with your account.
Moderation records and reports — kept for up to 12 months after resolution, so that repeat abuse can be recognised.
Technical logs — up to 90 days.

6. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you have the right to access, correct, export or delete your data, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to withdraw consent you have given.

Access and correction — in the app, in your profile and settings.
Deletion — in the app: Settings → Edit profile → Delete account.
Export or anything else — write to info@catwatch.app and we will respond within 30 days.
Location and notifications — permissions can be withdrawn at any time in iOS Settings.

If you are in the EU or the UK and believe we have handled your data unlawfully, you may lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority.

7. Legal bases (EU/UK users)

Performance of a contract — running your account and the core features of the app.
Consent — device location, push notifications, on-demand translation. Each can be withdrawn.
Legitimate interests — safety, moderation, abuse prevention, keeping the service reliable.
Legal obligation — where the law requires us to keep or disclose data.

8. Security

Data is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored on managed infrastructure with row-level access rules, so that each user can only read what they are allowed to see. Passwords are stored hashed and are never visible to us. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep the amount of data we hold small.

9. Children

CatWatch is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, write to info@catwatch.app and we will remove it.

10. Changes

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page, and for significant changes we will notify you in the app. Continuing to use CatWatch after a change means you accept the updated policy.

11. Contact

Privacy questions, data requests and anything else about CatWatch: info@catwatch.app

You can also reach us on Telegram: @CatWatchSupportBot