1. Who controls your data
Pawshare Ltd. operates an online community marketplace that helps dog owners and sitters arrange pet-care services. Pawshare Ltd. is the data controller for the personal data described in this notice.
Contact: privacy@pawshare.co.uk. Postal address: 50 Birch Walk, Porthcawl, CF36 5AN, United Kingdom.
Back to contents2. What this notice covers
This notice covers pawshare.co.uk and the Pawshare web application, including account registration, social sign-in, owner and sitter profiles, dog profiles and care plans, discovery, bookings, messaging, care cards, payments and payouts, reviews, reports, disputes, support, and safety administration.
Other organisations have their own privacy notices when they provide a separate service, such as Facebook or Google sign-in or Mapbox maps. Pawshare will identify any approved payment provider before enabling payment or payout processing.
Back to contents3. Information Pawshare collects
- Account and contact data: name, email address, phone number, login identity, account roles, profile image, postcode, town, country, and account status.
- Owner, sitter, and household data: biographies, experience, services, rates, availability, approximate location, service radius, home and garden details, household pets or children, dog-size preferences, emergency contacts, and verification status.
- Dog and care data: dog name, breed, age, sex, size, photographs, temperament, compatibility, routines, feeding, walking, medication, medical conditions, veterinary contact details, and emergency instructions.
- Booking and care data: requested services, dates and times, locations, notes, status changes, cancellation or completion reasons, check-in and check-out information, care-card events, meals, water, toileting, walks, route information, wellbeing updates, and care photos.
- Communications and safety data: conversation messages, attachments, reactions, read status, reviews, reports, disputes, support messages, evidence, moderation decisions, and administrative audit records.
- Transaction data: Paw Token balances and ledger entries, booking prices, test orders, refunds, payouts, and payment-provider identifiers where an approved money feature applies. Pawshare does not currently offer card purchases, cash-out or paid professional care in the community-first launch and is not intended to store full card details.
- Technical and usage data: IP address and device or browser information available in service logs, session and authentication data, request timestamps, errors, security events, feature usage, local preferences, and location information when a map, route, or location feature is used.
- Third-party sign-in data: when Facebook or Google sign-in is used, Pawshare receives the account information the provider and user authorise, currently basic profile information and email address. Pawshare does not receive the user's provider password.
- Community data: update text and photos you choose to post, permitted dog tags, comments, likes, in-app shares, follow requests and choices, connections, Circle of Trust choices, audience preferences, optional public-local profile and post choices, coarse postal-district centres, grouped activity, reports, and the records needed to operate these features safely. Care photos are not automatically posted to Community.
4. How and why Pawshare uses information
- To provide the service and perform contracts: create accounts, show relevant profiles, arrange and manage bookings, deliver messages and care updates, process tokens and payments, and provide account support.
- For Pawshare's legitimate interests: keep the marketplace safe, prevent fraud and misuse, moderate content, resolve disputes, maintain service reliability, understand aggregate usage, and improve existing product flows. Pawshare must balance these interests against user rights.
- To meet legal obligations: maintain records, respond to lawful requests, handle data-protection rights, support accounting and tax requirements, and protect users where the law requires it.
- With consent where the law requires consent, for example for optional device permissions or future non-essential cookies and marketing. Consent can be withdrawn without affecting earlier lawful use.
5. Who can see information
Information is shown according to the feature being used. Public sitter profiles, reviews, profile photographs, service information, and some dog or route media may be visible publicly. Booking participants can see the profile, dog-care, booking, conversation, and care-card information needed to provide or receive the service.
Conversations, bookings, reports, care cards, and verification records are intended to be restricted to authorised participants and Pawshare administrators or support staff where access is needed for safety, support, disputes, fraud prevention, or system integrity.
Some profile, dog, sitter-gallery, demonstration, and route media currently use public storage areas and may be accessible to anyone with the file URL. Users should not upload identity documents, exact home addresses, private care instructions, or other sensitive material to a public-media field.
Public local discovery is optional and off by default. A member may separately allow a limited public profile card, their profile photograph, a broad postal district, selected dogs, and individual posts shared to the Public local audience. Signed-out visitors near a searched area can see only those explicit choices. They do not receive full surnames, account or profile IDs, exact postcodes, home coordinates, schedules, reviews, networks, contact details, or private care information.
Back to contents6. Community updates and relationships
Most Community audiences are available only to signed-in members who are permitted to see them. You choose the audience for each update, and the default is your Circle of Trust. Public local is a separate, optional audience that must first be enabled in settings and confirmed again for each post; eligible signed-out visitors within about 10 miles may then see that post. Changing your default audience does not change earlier posts, and Public local can never be selected as the default.
Following is a separate, one-way choice for social updates and requires approval by default. Following does not create permission to message. An accepted connection lets two members message each other. Circle of Trust remains a separate, one-way choice: someone you add is notified and may choose to add you back. Adding someone grants that person access to your Circle of Trust updates, including earlier updates, but does not automatically add you to their circle.
Two-degree sharing can include people connected through one accepted connection beyond your direct connections. It requires the relevant wider-sharing and wider-viewing choices. It does not grant access merely because someone is nearby, follows you, or has a care booking, and intermediate members are not named as an explanation of access.
Audience access is checked again whenever content is requested. A person who later joins an audience may see earlier updates in that audience. Removing access, narrowing an audience, blocking, or deleting content changes future delivery, but Pawshare cannot retract screenshots or copies someone has already saved.
Public local uses a postal-district centre rather than a household coordinate, hides map markers and totals below three opted-in households, limits public posts to the previous 30 days, and sends social photos through a short-lived authorised delivery route. Turning off the public profile or public-post option removes it from future signed-out delivery. Blocking protects signed-in interactions, but a signed-out visitor cannot be identified as the blocked account; members should turn off public sharing or remove a post if it must not remain publicly viewable.
Sharing initially sends a reference to a post through an existing eligible Pawshare conversation. Both sender and recipient must be allowed to see it. Sharing does not widen the post's audience; the reference becomes unavailable if access is removed. Authors see grouped sharing activity, not recipient identities.
Social uploads use private storage and authorised delivery. Existing public-profile media is separate and may still use public URLs as described elsewhere in this notice. Dog tags do not share private health, routine, or care instructions. Members should not include another person's private information in captions, comments, or photographs.
Likes, comments, and shares are grouped by post in Activity rather than creating a separate notification for every event. Follow and connection requests and Circle of Trust notices appear separately under People. Members can adjust the available in-app activity preferences; this release does not add device push notifications.
Back to contents7. Service providers and other disclosures
Pawshare uses service providers that process limited data to operate the platform. Current active providers include Supabase for authentication, database, storage, and realtime services; Vercel for hosting and runtime delivery; Mapbox for maps and location features; and Google or Meta when a user chooses their sign-in service. Pawshare will update this notice before activating a payment or payout provider.
Pawshare may also disclose information to professional advisers, insurers, regulators, courts, law-enforcement bodies, or another organisation involved in a business transfer where disclosure is lawful and necessary. Pawshare does not sell personal data.
Back to contents8. International data transfers
Some service providers may process data outside the United Kingdom. Before launch, Pawshare must verify each provider's processing locations and contractual safeguards. Where UK data-protection law requires it, Pawshare will use an approved transfer mechanism and carry out any required transfer-risk assessment.
Back to contents9. How long information is kept
Pawshare keeps personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purposes described above. The relevant criteria include whether an account or booking remains active, whether another user needs an accurate booking or care record, and whether records are needed for safety, fraud prevention, disputes, legal claims, accounting, tax, or regulatory obligations.
When data is no longer required, Pawshare will delete or anonymise it. Copies may remain temporarily in protected backups until they are removed through the normal backup cycle. A documented retention schedule and deletion process must be approved and implemented before production launch.
Deleting a Community post stops its delivery to other members immediately. Unreported post media is removed within seven days, and unpublished orphan uploads are removed after 24 hours. Reported text and photo evidence may be retained while a report is open and for 90 days after final resolution; a documented hold may extend that period when necessary. Evidence remains restricted even when the underlying post is deleted or hidden.
Community moderation audit metadata is kept for 12 months without retaining unnecessary copies of captions or photos in those audit records. Inactive grouped social activity is kept for 90 days, and operation receipts used for safe retries are kept for 30 days. Protected backups follow a separately documented cycle, so deletion from the active service does not promise immediate removal from backups or recipients' saved copies.
Back to contents10. Security
Pawshare uses authentication, access controls, database row-level security, restricted administrative access, private storage for care and verification media, and service logging intended to protect personal data. No online service can guarantee absolute security, and Pawshare must continue to test and review these controls.
Back to contents11. Your data-protection rights
Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law may give you rights to be informed, access your data, correct inaccurate data, have data erased, restrict or object to processing, receive portable data, and complain about how data is used. You may also withdraw consent where consent is the legal basis.
Pawshare may need to verify identity before acting on a request. Requests should normally receive a response within one month, although the law permits extensions for complex or numerous requests. Rights are not absolute and lawful retention exceptions may apply.
See Pawshare's data handling and deletion process. You may also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office through its official website at ico.org.uk.
Back to contents12. Automated decisions and profiling
Pawshare may use rules, filters, ranking, or safety signals to organise search results and highlight activity for review. Pawshare does not currently intend to make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects solely by automated means. Material moderation, dispute, verification, and account-safety decisions should remain reviewable by a person.
Back to contents13. Cookies and local storage
Pawshare uses essential authentication and session technologies and may store interface preferences locally. Third-party providers may use their own technologies when their services are opened. See the Cookie Policy, which must also be finalised before launch.
Back to contents14. Changes and contact
Pawshare will update this notice when its services, providers, or legal obligations change and will show the revision date. Material changes should be brought to users' attention through an appropriate in-app or account notice.
Privacy questions and rights requests can be sent to privacy@pawshare.co.uk, submitted through the data-handling request form, or posted to 50 Birch Walk, Porthcawl, CF36 5AN, United Kingdom.
Back to contents