We collect the minimum needed to run the platform. This policy explains what we keep, why, and how to ask for it back.
1. What we collect
- Account info: name, email, language preference, profile picture.
- Pet info: your pets' profiles and their health records — events you add, documents you or your vet upload (vaccination booklets, lab reports, prescriptions, invoices), and consultation notes written by the vet.
- AI Companion chats: the messages you exchange with the Companion, kept so you can revisit your conversations.
- Provider info: business address, services, photos, working hours.
- Booking info: dates, services requested, online consultation details and the pre-consultation summary generated from your pet's record.
- Outcome info: after a consultation or urgent referral, what you tell us happened, and — when a vet records it — the outcome they enter (diagnosis category, treatment type, resolved or ongoing).
- Usage info: pages visited, anonymised analytics, device/browser type.
2. Why we keep it
To match owners with providers, to deliver booking notifications, to detect abuse, and to improve the product. We never sell or rent your personal data or your pet's record to anyone — not to advertisers, not to insurers, not to data brokers, not to any unrelated company.
3. Who can see it
Provider profiles are public by design. Your pet's health record is private to you: a vet sees a summary of it only when you book a consultation with them, and documents a vet sends you are visible to you and that vet. Sharing with a vet you book is necessary for the care you asked for, and is entirely separate from the aggregate research described in the next section. The optional Pet Card is only reachable by people you give its link to, and you can revoke every shared link at any time. Booking details are visible only to the owner, the provider and authorised Aniwal staff (in support escalations).
4. Aggregate research — your choice
To improve the service for all pets, we build an aggregate research dataset from health records and outcomes across many pets. Before anything enters it, the data is anonymized: we copy only non-identifying facts — species, breed, age band, symptom tags, outcome category — and the copy keeps no link back to you, your account or your pet's record. This is anonymization, not pseudonymization: no key exists anywhere that could reconnect an entry to you. Your chat messages, documents, free-text notes and contact details never enter this dataset.
We use this dataset to improve the accuracy of the Companion's triage guidance and to identify patterns between symptoms and outcomes across pets. Contributing is your choice: you can turn it off at any time on your profile page, and everything else — the record, the Companion, bookings, reminders — keeps working exactly the same. Because contributed entries hold no link back to you, opting out stops future contributions; entries already in the dataset cannot be found or removed.
5. Service providers we rely on
- Email — Purelymail. Notification and login emails (booking confirmations, reminders, sign-in codes) are delivered through Purelymail, a US-based email provider. They process your email address and the content of those emails, which can include your pet's name and appointment details.
- AI — OpenRouter and model providers. When you use AI features (the Companion chat, or automatic reading of uploaded documents), your messages and the relevant excerpts of your pet's record are sent to OpenRouter and the AI model provider serving the request, processed under their data-processing terms to generate the reply. We send what is needed to answer, and nothing when you don't use these features.
- Analytics — PostHog and Google Analytics, in anonymised form, to understand how the product is used.
- Video consultations run on our own server in the EU. Calls are not recorded and no third party receives them.
- WhatsApp — Meta. Only if you choose to message our WhatsApp number, those messages are processed by Meta under WhatsApp's own terms.
6. Cookies
We use first-party cookies for authentication and language preference. We use Google Analytics in anonymised mode for usage statistics. You can opt out via the banner shown on your first visit.
7. Data retention and deletion
You can delete pets, individual health events, documents, the Pet Card and Companion chats yourself, at any time, from the app — deletion is immediate. To delete your entire account, email privacy@aniwal.com from your account address: we close the account and delete identifiable data within 30 days, except where retention is required by law (invoicing, tax).
When you delete your account, here is exactly what happens. Deleted permanently: your name, contact details, addresses, profile photos, login and connected accounts, uploaded documents, Companion chat history, saved vets, and any pending requests or reminders. Kept in anonymized form: veterinary professionals you booked keep the structural appointment history (dates, status) with all of your notes and personal details removed, and your pet's clinical health record (species, breed, age, events) is retained de-identified — with the microchip number, your notes and photos removed — so it is no longer linked to any identifiable person. We use this de-identified animal health data to operate and improve the service.
If you have an upcoming booking or an open follow-up when you ask for deletion, we complete the deletion automatically as soon as it passes or closes, and we record only that a deletion happened — never what was deleted.
Anonymized aggregate research data (section 4) holds no link back to you, so deleting your account does not affect it — there is nothing in it that identifies you.
8. Your rights
Under GDPR you can request a copy of the data we hold about you, ask for corrections, restrict processing, or request deletion. Email privacy@aniwal.com and we'll respond within 30 days.
9. International transfers
Our infrastructure and video-call server run in the European Union. The sub-processors named above for email (Purelymail) and AI features (OpenRouter and model providers) process data in the United States under EU-approved standard contractual clauses.
10. Changes
Material changes to this policy are announced at least 14 days in advance.
11. Contact
Data protection enquiries: privacy@aniwal.com. Supervisory authority: Comissão Nacional de Protecção de Dados (CNPD).