PickyCat Privacy Policy

Last updated: 20 August 2026

PickyCat helps you record what your cat eats and recommends tinned food from it. This policy sets out what it collects, what it does not, and how to withdraw and delete.

1. Data that stays on your device

Your cat's profile, every logged meal, the wishlist and the head-to-head answers are stored in your device's local storage. The app has no accounts, you do not register, and there is no way for us to read any of it from a server.

A note for the web version: this data lives in browser site storage. Safari deletes it on its own after a period of not visiting, and a private window never keeps it at all. That is browser behaviour and outside our control. The "Her data" screen offers a backup you can export.

2. Anonymous sharing (off by default)

If you turn this on, the app sends a copy of the record to our server to improve the recommendations — specifically, so the app can learn what cats in similar circumstances did with the same tins.

What is sent, in full

• The cat's age in whole years, and sex
• Breed and coat, if you provided them (both are fixed lists, not free text)
• The pickiness level you chose (1–5)
• The proteins you marked as liked, disliked, or to be avoided
• For each meal: the can's identifier, what she did with it (finished / half / licked / barely touched / walked away), whether it needed a topper, whether anything happened afterwards, whether the entry was recalled during setup or logged at the time, and which day the meal happened — the day only, never a time of day
• A random number generated on your device, used to group one cat's entries together
• The upload timestamp and a data format version

What is never sent

• Your cat's name
• Her photograph, or any image
• Your name, email address or phone number
• Your location
• Device identifiers or advertising identifiers
• Any free-text you typed

The upload is built from a whitelist: the code names every field that may travel, rather than taking the whole profile and removing what should not. An automated check enforces that rule.

About that random number

It is generated on your device using the system's cryptographic random source. It has no relationship to your name, email or device, and no meaning anywhere else. It exists solely so that repeated uploads from one cat are recognised as one cat rather than counted as many.

Under Apple's App Store categories this counts as "Data Linked to You", because entries are associated through that number. We declare it as such.

3. Camera answers (off by default)

You can photograph a tin. The app reads the words on the label, offers three tins it might be, and you pick one. That tap is a correct answer — somebody holding the tin telling us whether the camera read it right — and it is the only thing that can measure whether it works.

With Send my answer when I pick a tin switched on in Settings, what is uploaded is:

• The words read off the label
• The three tins offered, in the order shown, and which one you picked
• Or that none of them was right — the most useful answer of the three, because it is the only one that says the correct tin was not among them
• Which reader produced it, since they score differently

The photograph is not uploaded. It stays on your phone. The table on the server has no column for an image, so there is nowhere for one to land even if a future version tried to send it, and an automated check fails the build if the upload ever mentions the photograph's path.

Nothing in it identifies anyone: no cat, no meals, not the random number described above, nothing that identifies you or your phone. A row is some words from a label, three catalogue ids, and which one was right.

This is a separate switch from anonymous sharing. Both are off until you turn them on, and either can be on without the other. They are kept apart because agreeing to share what your cat ate is not agreeing to send what your camera read.

On deletion: precisely because these rows carry no identifier, we cannot find "yours" — there is no handle to look them up by. If you would rather they were not sent, switch it off; nothing further is sent from that moment.

4. What we do not do

• No advertising. There is no ad code in the app.
• No tracking as Apple defines it — we do not link this data with third-party data for advertising or measurement, and we do not sell or share any data with data brokers.
• We do not attempt to re-identify anyone from the anonymous data.
• We do not repurpose data collected to improve recommendations for anything else.

5. Third parties

Shared records are stored on our own server in Guangzhou, China (Tencent Cloud). We run the database ourselves; no database hosting provider is involved any more. No other third party receives this data. The app contains no analytics, advertising or social SDKs.

Before 20 August 2026 this data was held on Supabase, outside China. Copies of the app already installed keep uploading there until their owner updates: the address is compiled into the app at build time, and we cannot change it remotely on an installed copy.

One thing worth stating plainly: as with any web service, the server sees the IP address of the request, and the hosting provider's access logs may retain it briefly. We do not use it in connection with the uploaded content.

6. How long it is kept

Shared records are kept indefinitely, because studying how taste changes requires the history. As they contain nothing identifying, they do not become a profile of you over time.

7. Withdrawing and deleting

To stop sharing: open the app → Settings → Her data → switch off "Share an anonymous copy of her record". It takes effect immediately; nothing further is uploaded, and anything still queued is discarded.

To delete what has already been shared: on that same screen, while the switch is on, a number is displayed. That number is the only identifier your record carries on the server. Copy it and email it to the address below, and we will delete the matching records.

Please understand why it has to work this way: precisely because the server holds nothing that points to you, we cannot find "your" rows from a name or an email address. That number is the only handle. If you have already deleted the app or cleared its data, the number is gone with it and we can no longer locate those records — at that point they are anonymous data that cannot be connected to any person.

8. Children

This app is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.

9. Changes to this policy

If what we collect changes, this page is updated and the date at the top changes with it. If collection is broadened, we will ask for your consent again rather than relying on consent given for something narrower.

10. Contact

For privacy questions or deletion requests: pickycatapp@gmail.com