Privacy Policy

Last updated: 19 August 2026 · See also our Terms of Service

Hello from TetherTails

TetherTails is run by TetherTails Pte. Ltd., a company incorporated in Singapore. This policy explains what personal data we collect through the TetherTails mobile app (on iOS and Android) and the tethertails.com website, why we collect it, and the choices you have. We handle personal data in accordance with Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (the PDPA).

One housekeeping note: we sometimes rename or reorganise features as TetherTails grows. Names like "The Park", "Playdates", "Pack Pals", "Pets Hub", "PawPoints", "Care" and "Care+" may change, but this policy applies to the underlying feature whatever we call it, and a new name alone does not change what we do with your data.

The short version

We collect what we need to run TetherTails for you, and not more. We use no advertising SDKs and do no cross-app tracking. We never see your card or bank details. When you use Lost & Found we ask for location permission; if you allow it, we use your device's position to fill in your map pin and to work out which lost-pet alerts are near you — never in the background. Anything we share with partners about our community is aggregated and anonymised, so it cannot identify you. Being included in those anonymised insights is on by default and you can switch it off at any time in Profile → Privacy & Data. We do not share data that identifies you with partners. You can export your data or delete your account at any time, right inside the app.

What we collect, and why

Your account

You sign in with your phone number and a one-time SMS code, so we collect your phone number to create and secure your account. We collect your date of birth to apply our age rule: TetherTails is for adults aged 18 and over. You can add an optional recovery email so you can get back into your account if you change numbers. You can also add profile details of your choosing, which we use to show your profile to others within the app's features, as those features describe.

Your pets' profiles

You can create profiles for your pets, including photos and health and care records. These records are about your pet, not about you — they are not human health data — but because they are linked to your account, we protect them with the same care as your own information. We use them to provide the features you use, like records, reminders and sharing.

Voice notes

You can record a voice note against a pet's records — a medication instruction, a vet's advice, a note for a sitter. The audio is stored so that you, and anyone you have shared that pet with, can play it back. We do not transcribe it, analyse it, or use it to identify anyone. Delete a voice note and the recording is deleted with it.

Location

When you open Lost & Found we ask for location permission. If you allow it, we read your device's position to offer to fill in your map pin, and we store your most recent approximate position on your account so we can tell you when a pet is reported lost near you. We only read it while you are using the app — never in the background — we do not build a history of where you have been, and we stop using a stored position once it is more than 30 days old. If you decline, everything still works: you place the pin yourself, and you can still browse every listing.

Lost & Found

If you report a pet as lost or found, you place a pin on the map yourself. Your report, its pin and its contact number are visible to every signed-in TetherTails user while the report is active. We send alerts to users near the pin, but anyone in the app can see the listing — a missing pet is not a local secret, and someone across town may be the one who spots it.

Photos work differently again, on purpose. A photo attached to a report is served from a long, unguessable web link that opens without a TetherTails account, so a missing-pet poster can be forwarded to a neighbourhood chat, a vet, or a social post — which is often exactly what finds the pet. Anyone who is sent that link can view the photo. Please don't attach a photo that shows your home, a street number or a vehicle plate. Remove the listing and the photos go with it.

So helpers and owners can reach each other quickly, your report carries call and WhatsApp buttons. The number shown is the one that was on your account when you posted, or the alternate contact you entered — changing your account number later does not change a report that is already live, so edit the report if you need to update it. Those calls and WhatsApp chats happen outside TetherTails (WhatsApp under its own terms), so we cannot see or moderate them.

A user under 18 never publishes the phone number on their account. They can give a trusted adult's number instead, and an adult contact number is required when they send a finder report to the owner of a specific missing pet. Where one is given, the call and WhatsApp buttons reach that adult, not the young person. When a report is resolved, withdrawn or expires, the contact details are withdrawn with it.

How you use the app

We keep a record of which screens you open, so we can see which parts of TetherTails people actually reach and decide what to build next. It is not switched on yet — nothing is being recorded today. We are describing it here before the first record exists, rather than after.

Each record holds the internal name of the screen, the time you opened it, the version of the app, whether you are on iOS or Android, an installation identifier, a session identifier, and your account if you are signed in. That is the whole record. The screen name is a short label from our own list — lostFound, privacyData, support — never the pet, the person or the listing that was on the screen. The time comes from your device's clock rather than ours.

These records contain nothing you typed and nothing that was on the screen: no name, no phone number, no email address, no message, no note, no pet name, no photo. They hold no location, no device model, no advertising identifier and no crash data. No advertising software is involved and no outside analytics service receives them — they go to our own database and nowhere else. Your device's network address reaches our hosting platform in order to deliver the record, as it does for every request you make, but it is not written into the record and is never joined to it.

Two things we would rather tell you than let you assume. The installation identifier is a random value created on your device, with no hardware or advertising identifier in it — but it is not anonymous. It is the same value our referral checks use, and it is stored there alongside the phone number on the account, so these records can be connected back to you. And uninstalling removes the copy on your device, not the records already sent to us: those keep their identifier until their retention window ends.

You can turn this off. The switch is in Profile, under Privacy & Data, next to the insights one. Turning it off stops the recording and also deletes the records already collected from your account — not only the future ones.

We keep them for at least 90 days and no more than about four months. They are deleted in whole monthly batches, which is why the outer limit is not an exact date. Once a month we count them into plain figures, such as how many people opened Lost & Found. A figure is only produced when at least 20 different people are behind it; anything smaller is not produced at all. Those monthly figures carry no identifiers, and they are the only part of this that can ever be shared or licensed to a partner, as described under anonymised insights. The underlying records are never sold, licensed or given to anyone outside TetherTails.

Inside TetherTails, only authorised staff can read them. Deleting your account deletes them. They are not yet part of the in-app data export — if you want to know what they hold about you, email support@tethertails.com and we will tell you.

Singapore's PDPA lets us collect this without asking you each time, because we tell you about it up front and give you a way to switch it off: the notice when you create your account, and the switch described above. We then use what we hold to improve our own service. Neither of those permits using it to market to you, and we do not.

Push notifications

If you allow notifications, we register your device with our push provider and process a push subscription identifier linked to your account, so that alerts reach the right person. We keep the text of the notifications we queue for you, a record of which alerts we sent, and your in-app notification history. You can switch notification categories off in the app; security and sign-in codes, critical account notices, billing notices and "your pet has been reported lost" alerts cannot be switched off.

Optional identity verification

Identity checks are not switched on yet. If you start the check today, the short video you record stays on your own phone and is deleted the moment the step ends — it is not uploaded to us, and nobody at TetherTails reviews it. When we do switch this on we will update this policy first, ask for your explicit consent inside the flow before you record, have a member of our team review the video, and permanently delete it the moment a decision is made. We never compute or store face templates, embeddings or any other biometric identifiers. What we keep afterwards is the outcome — whether your account is verified, the date, the reason if it was rejected, and any appeal you send us.

The Park — our 18+ social space The Park is our social module, with a friends mode (currently named Pack Pals) and a dating mode (currently named Playdates). It is strictly for people aged 18 and over, checked against the date of birth on your account. The space itself has not opened yet — there is nobody to browse, no likes, no matches and no chat — but you can build your Park profile now, and if you do, we save it. Building one is your choice: you start it yourself from the Park tab, and nothing is stored until you reach the end and tap the final button. What we keep is the profile you built: the display name you choose, your age, your gender if you give one, an optional occupation, your bio, the interests you tick, a photo of you, and whether you chose Pack Pals, Playdates or both. A clear solo photo of yourself is required to finish. If you have pets, you also choose which of them appear on your card and which of their album photos or videos to show, so those pets are linked to your Park profile; if you have no pet, you design a dream one instead and may add your own photos and a short video. All of it is stored privately and nobody else can see any of it while The Park is closed. A Park profile also covers who you would like to meet and what you are looking for, along with optional lifestyle details such as your height, star sign, love language, and whether you drink or smoke. Some of these are asked for at different points as the feature rolls out, and where you give them we store them with the rest of your profile; taken together with your gender, your answer about who you would like to meet can indicate your sexual orientation, so we treat it as sensitive and never show it to anyone but you until The Park opens. Once it does, we will also process your connections (likes and matches) and, when chat launches, the messages you exchange with other users, because that is what makes the feature work. One thing to know about chat: messages you send become part of your recipients' conversations too, so if you later delete your account, the copies you already sent them remain in their chats. The Park is kept separate from the core pet features: it sees only the pets and photos you choose to put on your card, and nothing here changes how the rest of your pet data is used.

PawPoints, rewards and referrals

PawPoints are earned through activity in the app — they can never be bought and have no cash value. We keep track of what you earn and redeem so your balance is right. If you redeem PawPoints for a partner voucher, we record the redemption and issue your voucher in the app; when you use the voucher, the partner's own voucher conditions apply. For our referral programme, we collect a device identifier and use it to prevent fraud, because each referral reward can be given only once per account and once per device.

Sponsored content in the app

The app shows sponsored content and our own promotions, such as partner offers and sponsored rewards. We record your interactions with them (views and taps) so we can run these promotions properly. Part of that record is kept against your account: we count how many times each individual promotion has been shown to you on each day, so that we can stop showing you the same one too often. It is a first-party count held in our own database and used for nothing else — there are no advertising SDKs in the app, no advertising identifier, and no cross-app tracking of any kind; we do not use it to build an advertising profile of you, and we do not give it to the sponsor, who sees only totals that do not identify anyone. We keep these daily counts for 30 days and then delete them automatically.

Community donations

Each month, TetherTails intends to donate a pot to animal shelters, split according to community votes. We record your vote to count it. The donations are made by the company. Any receipts we publish will be our own and will not include your personal data.

Pet sharing and households

You can create view or care links so trusted people — family, friends, sitters — can see or help with your pet's profile, and you can invite people into a household that shares pets and their records. We record who you have shared with so the link works, and you can revoke a link or remove a member at any time. Members of a household you own can see the pets and records you have shared with them, at the level of access you gave them.

Support conversations and feedback

When you contact us, we keep the ticket and our replies so we can help you and improve support. If you send us product feedback, or report another user or a listing, we keep that too — see "How long we keep your data" for what happens to it when you delete your account.

Account recovery requests

If you lose access to your account and ask us for help, we keep that request — the phone number and any note you send — for up to 90 days after it is resolved, or 180 days if it is never resolved, and then delete it. The network address the request was sent from is used only to prevent abuse and is discarded after 30 days. Deleting your account removes any recovery requests you have made.

The tethertails.com waitlist

The waitlist form on our website collects your name, email address and country, so we can tell you about our launch and availability where you live.

Subscriptions

Our optional paid plans (currently named Care and Care+) arrive shortly after launch. When available, they are billed by the Apple App Store or Google Play. Your payment goes through them under their terms — we never receive your card or bank details. We receive your subscription status so the app can unlock your plan.

Features arriving soon — covered now, so there are no surprises later

Some features are on their way, and we would rather explain them before they arrive than after. Nothing in this section happens until the feature it describes launches.

Crash reports. A future app update will add crash reporting, so we can process technical crash logs to find and fix problems. We do not collect crash or diagnostic data today. We will process only what that feature needs.

Automated content safety. Photos you post to Lost & Found are sent to an automated classifier that checks them for unsafe content. It receives the image only, with no name, account or contact details attached, keeps nothing after the check, and no person reviews your photo unless it is flagged or reported. This provider processes the image outside Singapore. When our social features launch, the same screening will apply to photos on public-facing surfaces there.

Community safety signals. When our social features launch, we may also process signals about how the service is being used — things like report rates, blocked-user patterns and unusual messaging frequency — solely to detect abuse, spam and behaviour that puts people at risk. This is community protection, not surveillance: we look for patterns of harm, not at individuals going about their day.

What we never do

Some lines we simply do not cross. We never read your location in the background, never build a location history, and never sell or share your location with anyone. We use no advertising SDKs and do no cross-app tracking. We never see or store your card or bank details. We never create face templates or embeddings. We never sell your personal data. And PawPoints can never be purchased with money.

One thing we should name rather than imply: we use a third-party notification provider whose software is part of the app. It receives a device subscription identifier and basic in-app engagement signals so that notifications work. It does not track you across other apps.

Consent, and how we ask for it

We keep our consents separate, so you always know what you are agreeing to. Accepting our Terms of Service is required to use TetherTails. Marketing messages are optional and off by default. Location permission is asked for by your phone, and you can change your answer at any time in your device settings.

Inclusion in our anonymised community insights is on by default for new accounts, and you can switch it off at any time in Profile → Privacy & Data. We tell you this when you create your account. If you had an account before we introduced this notice, whatever you had chosen stays as it was. We do not share data that identifies you with partners at all.

Consent for identity verification is asked inside the verification flow itself, right before you record, and only once that feature is switched on.

Beyond consent, we process some data because it is needed to deliver what you have asked for (for example, sending your one-time sign-in code), for legitimate purposes the law recognises (for example, using a device identifier to prevent referral fraud), or because the law requires it.

You can withdraw any consent at any time in the app's settings or by emailing support@tethertails.com. We will tell you if withdrawing a particular consent means we can no longer provide part of the service, and withdrawal does not affect processing that already lawfully happened.

Aggregated, anonymised insights

We create aggregated, anonymised insights about our community — things like pet-care trends and patterns of demand for products and services — and we may share or license these insights to partners, including for commercial purposes. Before anything is included in these insights, it is aggregated across many users and anonymised so that it cannot identify you or any individual, and we apply safeguards to keep it that way. Consistent with guidance from Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission, data that has been properly anonymised in this way is no longer personal data. Inclusion in these insights is on by default, and you can switch it off at any time in Profile → Privacy & Data.

To be clear about the boundary: these insights are statistics about the community as a whole. We do not share data that could identify you with partners.

Who helps us run TetherTails

Like every app, we rely on a small number of service providers, who process data for us under contractual obligations to protect it and use it only on our instructions. Our app data is hosted, encrypted, on Amazon Web Services infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific (Singapore) region. An SMS delivery provider processes your phone number to deliver your one-time sign-in codes. A push provider processes your device subscription identifier and your account identifier so notifications reach you. An automated content-safety provider screens photos posted to Lost & Found. Email service providers process the website waitlist details (name, email, country). Apple and Google handle subscription billing under their own terms.

Beyond service providers: we may disclose personal data where the law requires it, for example to law enforcement under a lawful request. And if TetherTails is ever part of a corporate restructuring or acquisition, personal data may be transferred as part of that transaction, with the protections in this policy continuing to apply.

Where your data lives

Your app data is stored, encrypted, in the AWS Asia-Pacific (Singapore) region, on the hosted database and storage platform we run on. Three things leave that region: photos sent to our automated content-safety provider for screening, push notifications routed through our global push provider, and website contact details held by our email platform. Whenever personal data is transferred outside Singapore, we remain responsible for it and ensure, through legally enforceable obligations on the recipient, that it receives a standard of protection comparable to the PDPA, as the PDPA's transfer limitation obligation requires.

How long we keep your data

We keep personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purposes described here, or as long as the law requires us to keep specific records. Some concrete rules we follow:

A lost- or found-pet listing runs for 14 days. You can bump it to bring it back to the top up to three times, and when it expires the listing and its contact details are withdrawn automatically.

An account recovery request is kept for up to 90 days after it is resolved, or 180 days if it is never resolved; the network address it came from is discarded after 30 days.

The daily counts of how many times each sponsored promotion has been shown to you are kept for 30 days, and older ones are deleted automatically every day.

If you record a verification video today it is deleted on your own device the moment the step ends, and never reaches us.

If you cancel or downgrade a paid plan, we never delete your data. Before a downgrade takes effect we ask you to bring your account within the new plan's limits — for example by removing or memorialising pets, or freeing storage. What goes is always your choice, and we do not remove anything on your behalf.

When you delete your account, deletion is immediate, except for specific records the law requires us to keep (such as financial and audit records), which we keep only as long as the law requires and then dispose of securely. Two things also outlive the account with your identity removed: product feedback you sent us, and any report you filed about another user, which we keep as part of our safety record.

One natural limit: if you have used in-app messaging (such as The Park's chats, when they launch), messages you have already sent are part of your recipients' conversations too, so their copy may remain visible to them after you delete your account.

Your rights and controls

You are in control of your data. Right inside the app, you can see what we hold about you, correct your name, photo, phone number and recovery email, export a copy of your account data, withdraw the consents described above, and delete your account. To correct your date of birth, or to ask for anything the app does not yet let you change yourself, email our Data Protection Officer at support@tethertails.com. We respond to access and correction requests as soon as we can, and within 30 days; in the rare case where we cannot fully respond within 30 days, we will tell you within that time, and give you the soonest date by which we can.

Children and age rules

TetherTails is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not allow accounts for anyone under 18 and do not knowingly collect a child's personal data; if we learn that we hold personal data of someone under 18, we will delete it. We check this against the date of birth you give when you create your account. If you are a parent or guardian with any concern about your child's use of TetherTails, contact us at support@tethertails.com and we will help.

Messages from us

Some messages are part of running the service safely, and cannot be switched off: security and sign-in codes, critical account notices, billing notices, and alerts that your pet has been reported lost. Everything else you can control in the app, including how many lost-pet alerts you receive. Marketing is different again: it is optional, off by default, and only ever sent if you opt in — and you can opt out at any time in the app or via the message itself. We send marketing to Singapore phone numbers only with your clear consent, consistent with Singapore's Do Not Call requirements.

How we protect your data

Your app data is encrypted, and we limit access to personal data to those who need it to do their jobs, under appropriate technical and organisational safeguards. No system on earth is perfectly secure, but protecting your data — and your pet's — is something we take seriously every day.

If something ever goes wrong

If we ever suffer a data breach, we will assess it promptly. If the breach is notifiable under the PDPA — because it is likely to result in significant harm to affected individuals or is of a significant scale — we will notify the Personal Data Protection Commission within three calendar days of determining that it is notifiable, and we will notify affected users as soon as practicable, telling you what happened and what we are doing about it.

Cookies and the website

tethertails.com is a simple website. Its main data collection is the waitlist form described above. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies on it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a material way, we will tell you in the app or by a message before the change takes effect. Renaming a feature is not by itself a material change — the policy follows the feature, not the name. The "Last updated" date at the top always tells you when this policy last changed.

Contact us

Our Data Protection Officer can be reached at support@tethertails.com for any question, request or complaint about personal data. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may also contact Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission at pdpc.gov.sg.

TetherTails Pte. Ltd. · Singapore · Terms of Service · support@tethertails.com