Privacy policy

Last updated: October 26, 2026

Welcome to Walky Doggy. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, and safeguard your information when you use our mobile application.

This policy covers both the iOS app and the Android app. Items marked (iOS) or (Android) apply only to that app; everything else applies to both.

1. Information We Collect

1.1 Information You Provide

  • Account Information: Email address, username, password, and profile picture. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive the name and email address of that account.
  • Biometric Sign-In: If you turn it on, your email and password are stored encrypted on your device only, in its secure storage (iOS Keychain, Android Keystore), and are only sent to Firebase Authentication to sign you in. We never receive your fingerprint or face data.
  • Dog Profiles: Dog names, breeds, photos, and other details you choose to add, including the health records you enter for your dogs (weight, vaccines, vet appointments), and, if you wish, a birth date and an adoption date (see section 1.5)
  • Walk Data: GPS coordinates, distance, duration, photos taken during walks. A walk you cancel is also saved, with its route, distance and duration.
  • User-Generated Content: Comments, likes, emoji reactions, and interactions with other users. Reports and blocks that you make are described in section 1.6.
  • Payment Information: Payments are processed by Apple through the App Store (iOS) or by Google through Google Play Billing (Android); we never see or store your card details. We receive your subscription status and expiry date. On Android, the app sends us the Google Play purchase token and product ID so that our server can verify the purchase with Google, and Google Play receives a hashed account identifier, never your user ID or email address.

1.2 Information Automatically Collected

  • Location Data: Precise GPS location, only while a walk you started is in progress (including while the screen is locked during that walk). On Android, tracking runs in a foreground service with a visible notification, the app does not request background location access, and a walk cannot be started without precise location access.
  • Device Information: Device model, operating system version, and identifiers: the Firebase installation ID, the push notification token, the Crashlytics installation ID, the Analytics app instance ID (only when usage statistics are on), and, for ads, the advertising identifier (on iOS only if you allow tracking; on Android, the Android advertising ID and app set ID). The Firebase installation ID is also sent to our server when you use the referral features, to detect self-referral (see section 1.5).
  • Usage Statistics (optional): With your agreement, we use Google Analytics for Firebase to understand how the app is used (screens viewed, walks started, completed and cancelled, likes) and to fix problems. If you are in the European Economic Area, it stays off until you consent in the consent form shown by the app. Everywhere, you can turn it off or on at any time in Profile → Settings (gear icon, top right) → "Share Usage Statistics". Analytics does not use your advertising identifier and is not linked to your account.
  • Crash Reports: We use Firebase Crashlytics to receive crash reports and error diagnostics (device model, operating system version, the state of the app at the time of the error). We do this on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping the app stable. Crash reports contain no advertising identifier and no user identifier, are not linked to your account, and cannot be turned off in the app.

1.3 Third-Party Integrations

  • Push Notifications: Device token for sending notifications via Firebase Cloud Messaging. The token is stored privately with your account and removed when you sign out.
  • Apple Health (iOS): Premium only, and only if you allow it in the Apple Health permission screen. The app only writes to Apple Health: for each completed walk, a walking workout, its distance and estimated active calories. It reads nothing from Apple Health. This data stays in Apple Health, is not sent to our servers, and is not used for advertising.
  • Health Connect (Android): Premium only, and only if you allow it in the Health Connect permission screen. The app only writes to Health Connect: for each completed walk, an exercise session (walking), its distance and estimated active calories. It reads nothing from Health Connect. This data stays in Health Connect on your phone, is not sent to our servers, and is not used for advertising. You can turn the sync off in the app (Integrations) or remove the access in Health Connect.
  • Strava: The Strava integration is not available in the app yet. If it is released, this policy will be updated before it is turned on.

1.4 Maps and QR Codes

  • Maps: Walk maps are shown with Apple Maps (MapKit) (iOS) or with the Google Maps SDK (Android). On Android, the Google Maps SDK sends Google technical data (device model and operating system, IP address, a pseudonymous SDK identifier, map interactions and SDK crash reports) to maintain and improve its services.
  • QR Codes (Android): Dog invitation QR codes are read with Google ML Kit. The camera image is analyzed on your device and is not sent; ML Kit sends Google device and app information, per-installation identifiers and API performance and usage measurements, for diagnostics and usage statistics.

1.5 Referral, Offered Premium, Rewards and Goals

  • Invite Code: Each account has a stable random invite code (6 to 8 characters), stored on your profile. "Invite friends" in Settings opens the system share sheet with the text and the link https://walkydoggy.fr/invite/{code}; you choose who receives it. The invite page on walkydoggy.fr detects your phone type to send you to the App Store or to Google Play, and on iOS it can copy the link to your clipboard when you tap "Copy the code".
  • Using a Code: You can enter a code when you sign up, or in Settings during the first 7 days of your account. (Android) The app can read the code automatically from the Google Play Install Referrer when you installed the app from an invite link. (iOS) If your clipboard holds an invite link, the app offers to paste it; the code is used only if you choose to paste it.
  • Referral Log: When a code is used, our server writes a log that only our server can access. It contains the account identifiers of the person who used the code and of the code's owner, the code, how it was entered (typed, Install Referrer, clipboard or link), the dates, the identifiers of the walks that count towards the reward, the status of the referral and the type of reward. Each of the two people sees the other's username in the confirmation or in the notifications they receive (a new referral, then the reward), according to their notification settings. In Settings → Referral you see your code, the number of people who used it and the months of Premium you earned.
  • Rewards: The person who enters a code gets 7 days of Premium. The code's owner gets 1 month of Premium once that person has done 3 walks of at least 10 minutes in their first 30 days. Our server checks this each time a walk is saved, using the recorded route of the walk; walks in which the referrer took part do not count. The reward is paid only if the person who used the code has a verified email address (or signed in with Google or Apple) and an account at least 7 days old. A referrer can earn at most 12 rewards per calendar year. If the referrer already has an active App Store or Google Play subscription when the reward is due, they receive 500 woofies instead.
  • Offered Premium: The end date of an offer is stored on your profile by our server. It is free, needs no payment information, never cancels a subscription you took through the App Store or Google Play, and does not stop you from subscribing. If your subscription ends, the offer stays active until its own end date, and the other way round.
  • Protection Against Fraud: To prevent self-referral and rewards obtained several times by the same person, a code is refused if the person using it and the code's owner share the same Firebase installation ID, or are the same account; one account can use only one code, and one device can use only one code. For this, your app sends the Firebase installation ID to our server (when the Referral screen opens and when you enter a code). Our server stores it only as a keyed one-way hash (HMAC-SHA256, computed with a secret key that stays on our server) together with the hash of your email address (normalized: lowercase, without a "+" tag, and without dots for Gmail addresses) when you use a code. A code's record also keeps the hashes of the installation IDs that its owner used (the last 10 at most).
  • Why and For How Long: The hashes of the email address and of the installation ID of someone who used a code are kept after the account is deleted. This is deliberate: it is how we refuse a second referral, and a second reward, to a person who deletes an account and creates a new one with the same email address or on the same device. We rely on our legitimate interest in preventing fraud. These hashes contain no account identifier, username or readable email address. They are deleted automatically 12 months after they are created. The other referral data (the log, your invite code and the lists of installation hashes held in your code's record) are deleted with your account.
  • Dog Anniversaries: The optional birth date and adoption date of a dog are stored with the dog. On the day, at about 9:00 in the time zone that our server keeps for your account, each owner of the dog receives a notification and 50 woofies (once a year per dog and per owner; the notification follows your "achievements and rewards" notification setting, the woofies are paid either way). A dog born on 29 February is celebrated on 28 February in other years. The dog's profile and thumbnail show a 🎂 badge that day, and the Android and iOS apps compute this badge on your device. To prevent abuse, each date can be changed only once every 6 months after the dog is created: we store the date of the last change. A dog added less than 30 days ago, and any reward beyond 10 anniversary rewards per year, do not pay.
  • Weekly Goal and Streak Freeze: In Statistics you can choose a goal (3 to 14 walks, or 5 to 100 km, per week from Monday to Sunday, in your local time). We store the goal on your profile, and our server stores the progress of the current week (walks, distance, date of success) calculated from your walks. Reaching the goal gives 30 woofies and 25 XP once per week. For Premium users, a streak freeze, one per calendar month, automatically covers a missed day; we store the list of days covered (the last 24).
  • Shareable Walk Card: The picture of a walk (route, distance, duration, dogs) is generated on your device and shown in the system share sheet; the app does not send it to our servers. It does not show addresses or the exact starting point. What you do with it after that is up to you and the app you share it with.

1.6 Safety and Moderation

  • Terms: Our Terms of Service (version 2) tolerate no objectionable content and no abuse; content and accounts that break them are removed within 24 hours. We store on your profile the version of the terms that you accepted and when.
  • Reports: You can report a walk, a comment, a photo or a profile (reasons: spam, harassment, inappropriate content, other). We store: your account identifier, what you reported (type and identifier of the item, with the identifier of the walk when it is a comment or a photo), the identifier of its author, the reason, the optional details that you write (500 characters at most), the date, the status, and whether your report counts for automatic hiding (see below). Only our administrator can see reports, and does so with our administration tools: administrators get a push notification showing the type of item and the reason. Reports are not shown to the person who is reported, and are not shared with anyone else. You can send at most 20 reports per day.
  • Automatic Hiding: When 3 different people report the same walk, comment or photo, it is hidden automatically from everybody except its author, who sees a "hidden" label; for a photo, the whole walk is hidden. To limit abuse, only reports from accounts with a verified email address (or signed in with Google or Apple) that are at least 7 days old count. We keep, on the hidden item, the list of the reporters whose reports hid it. We are warned and review the content; hiding is not a deletion.
  • Blocks: When you block someone, we store the identifier of that user and the date in a list that only you can read. Blocking removes the friendship and any friend request between you; deletes the notifications that person caused in your inbox, their comments and woofs on your walks, and their reactions on your comments; stops them from sending you friend requests, commenting, reacting or woofing on your content, or using a dog invitation from you; and hides that person's content from you. Unblock in Settings → Blocked users; this does not restore the friendship.
  • Automatic Masking of Offensive Words: Our server and apps use a list of offensive words in English and French. Comments (when you post or edit them), walk captions and walk notes are saved and shown with the offending word replaced by "•••", and so is the text of the notification that a comment generates. A username or a display name that contains such a word is refused by the apps; if one still gets into your profile (for example from the name of your Apple or Google account), our server replaces it automatically: the username becomes a neutral name made of "walker" and four digits, and the display name goes back to your previous clean name, or to your username. This is fully automatic, applies to whole words, and can make mistakes.
  • Retention: The reports that you filed, your block list and your entry in other people's block lists are deleted with your account. Reports about you, or about your content, are not deleted when you delete your account: we keep them to protect other users and to document our moderation decisions. They identify you only by your internal account identifier, no longer linked to a profile once the account is deleted, and may contain the details written by the person who reported. Reports are deleted automatically 12 months after they are closed.

2. How We Use Your Information

  • Core Functionality: Track walks, display maps, save photos, and manage dog profiles
  • Social Features: Enable friends, feed, likes, and user interactions
  • Achievements & Challenges: Calculate progress and award tokens
  • Premium Subscriptions: Manage subscription status and premium features, including Premium offered through referral
  • Referral and Rewards: Create invite codes, grant and cap referral rewards, and pay the anniversary and weekly goal rewards
  • Fraud Prevention: Detect self-referral and repeated rewards with hashes of the email address and of the installation ID
  • Safety and Moderation: Handle reports and blocks, hide content, mask offensive words in comments, captions, notes and names, and apply our Terms of Service
  • Right of Access: Prepare the export of your data at your request
  • Notifications: Send friend requests, likes, and challenge updates, according to the notification settings of your profile
  • Usage Statistics (optional, with your consent in the EEA): Understand how the app is used and fix problems
  • Crash Reports (legitimate interest): Keep the app stable
  • Advertising: Display ads via Google AdMob (for free users only), personalized only with your consent

3. Data Sharing and Disclosure

3.1 With Other Users

  • Profile information, dog profiles, and walks you share are visible to your friends and the public feed
  • If you use a referral code, or someone uses yours, each of you can see the other's username in the notifications. Your reports and your block list are never shown to the people concerned.
  • You control visibility settings for your content

3.2 With Third Parties

  • Firebase (Google): Cloud hosting, authentication, database, notifications, usage statistics and crash reporting, as our service provider. Usage statistics are collected only with your consent in the EEA and unless you turn them off.
  • Google AdMob: Advertising services for free users. The Google Mobile Ads SDK collects your IP address, ad interactions, diagnostics and the advertising identifier, and this data is shared with Google for advertising, analytics and fraud prevention.
  • Google Maps and Google ML Kit (Android): Technical data described in section 1.4
  • Google Play (Android): Purchase processing, purchase verification and subscription management
  • Apple (iOS): In-App Purchase processing and subscription management

Apple Health and Health Connect data written by the app stays on your device and is not shared with us or with advertisers.

3.3 Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or to protect the rights and safety of Walky Doggy, our users, or the public.

4. Data Storage and Security

  • Storage: Data is stored on Google Cloud Platform via Firebase services
  • Encryption: Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest
  • Authentication: Firebase Authentication with secure password hashing
  • Access Control: Firestore security rules ensure users only access their own data
  • Photos: Stored in Firebase Storage with access controls
  • Data Exports: Stored in a Firebase Storage folder that only you can read, and deleted automatically after 7 days

5. Your Rights and Choices

5.1 Access and Control

  • Account Settings: Update profile, email, and password in the app
  • Dog Profiles: Edit or delete dog information anytime (the birth date and adoption date can be changed once every 6 months)
  • Walk History: Delete individual walks in the app; all your walks, including cancelled ones, are deleted with your account
  • Location Services: Control GPS access in your device settings (iOS Settings, or Android Settings → Apps → Walky Doggy → Permissions)
  • Push Notifications: Manage notification preferences in app settings
  • Export of Your Data: Settings → Privacy → "Export my data" (see section 5.6)
  • Blocked Users: Settings → Blocked users, to see and unblock
  • Weekly Goal: Choose or change it in Statistics (a change applies from the next week)
  • Usage Statistics: Turn them off or on in Profile → Settings → "Share Usage Statistics"

5.2 Account Deletion

You can delete your account at any time in the app (Profile → Settings → Delete Account, at the bottom), on Android and on iOS. Deletion starts as soon as you confirm. If you cannot use the app, you can ask for the deletion at https://walkydoggy.fr/delete-account or by writing to [email protected]; we process requests within 30 days.

  • What is deleted: Your profile, walks (with routes, photos, likes and comments), the comments, likes and emoji reactions you left on other people's content, your dogs (a shared dog is only removed from your list), your friends and invitations, your referral log and invite code, your block list, the reports you filed, your data exports, the notifications you received and those your activity generated for other users, your woofies and achievements, your leaderboard entries, your subscription records on our servers, your photos and files, and your sign-in account. If removing your files fails, we retry automatically every day; if it keeps failing, we remove the files by hand.
  • What remains: The one-way hashes of your email address and of your installation ID, if you used a referral code (section 1.5; deleted automatically after 12 months), and the reports about you or your content (section 1.6). The photo of a dog that you share with other owners stays with the dog, because it belongs to them as well. A few older notifications that do not record who triggered them may remain. Data not linked to your account stays with each provider (see section 5.3). Apple and Google keep their own records of purchases. We may keep data where the law requires it.
  • Subscriptions: If you subscribed through Google Play (Android), we ask Google Play to cancel the renewal of your subscription when you delete your account; check in Google Play (Profile → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions) that it is cancelled, and cancel it there if it is not. If you subscribed through the App Store (iOS), deleting your account does not cancel it: cancel it in your Apple ID subscriptions (the app links to them) to stop being charged.

5.3 Data Not Linked to Your Account

Data collected by Google Analytics, Firebase Crashlytics, Google AdMob, and on Android Google ML Kit and Google Maps, is not linked to your account. Deleting your account does not erase it: each provider keeps it for the period set in its own privacy policy.

5.4 Marketing and Ads

  • Free Users: See ads via Google AdMob. Where Google requires it (for example in the EEA and the United Kingdom), Google's consent form is shown before any ad is requested, and you can change your choice at any time in the app settings under "Ad Privacy Choices".
  • Tracking (iOS): The App Tracking Transparency request only concerns personalized ads. You can change your answer in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. It does not affect usage statistics, which never use your advertising identifier.
  • Advertising ID (Android): You can delete or reset your advertising ID in your Android device settings (Ads).
  • Premium Users: Enjoy an ad-free experience

5.5 Withdrawing Your Consent

  • Usage statistics: Profile → Settings → "Share Usage Statistics"
  • Ads: "Ad Privacy Choices" in the app settings, where it is shown; App Tracking Transparency in iOS Settings (iOS); your advertising ID in Android settings (Android)
  • Apple Health (iOS) / Health Connect (Android): Turn the sync off in the app (Integrations) or remove the access in Apple Health or Health Connect
  • Location, camera and notifications: Your device settings

Withdrawing your consent does not affect processing that took place before.

5.6 Exporting Your Data (Right of Access)

In the app, go to Settings → Privacy → "Export my data". Our server builds a JSON file, written progressively (streamed) while it gathers your profile, the dogs you own, your walks with their routes, the comments you wrote, your likes, your friends (identifier and username only), friend requests, notifications, achievements, challenges, woofie history, your store purchases (product, store and expiry, without any purchase token), your referral data, your blocked users, the reports you filed, and the addresses of your photos. Push notification tokens and our internal moderation fields are not included. The file is placed in a private folder and you get a link, valid for exactly 7 days, that lets you download it; the app then offers to share or save it. Anyone who has the link can download the file while it is valid, so keep it private. The file is deleted automatically after 7 days. You can ask for one new export every 24 hours; inside that time the app gives you the last one again.

6. Children's Privacy

Walky Doggy is not intended for children under 13. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13; if you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us at [email protected] and we will delete it.

7. International Data Transfers

Your information may be processed in countries other than your own, including the United States, where Google, which provides Firebase and our other Google services, processes data. For transfers of personal data from the European Economic Area to the United States, Google relies on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and on the Standard Contractual Clauses of the European Commission, as set out in its data processing terms.

8. GDPR Compliance (EU Users)

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), we process your data on the following legal bases:

  • Performance of our contract with you: Your account, walks, dog profiles, social features, notifications, achievements, rewards (referral, anniversaries, weekly goal, streak freeze) and Premium subscription
  • Consent: Usage statistics (Google Analytics), personalized ads, and the Apple Health or Health Connect sync
  • Legitimate interest: Crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics), to keep the app stable; the anti-fraud hashes of the referral programme (section 1.5); reports, blocks, automatic hiding and masking of offensive words, to keep the community safe (section 1.6)
  • Legal obligation: Data we must keep or disclose under the law

You also have additional rights under GDPR:

  • Right to Access: Request a copy of your personal data, directly in the app with the data export (section 5.6)
  • Right to Rectification: Correct inaccurate data
  • Right to Erasure: Request deletion of your data (see section 5.2)
  • Right to Data Portability: Receive your data in a structured format (the export is a JSON file)
  • Right to Object: Object to processing of your data, including processing based on our legitimate interest
  • Right to Withdraw Consent: Revoke consent for data processing at any time (see section 5.5)
  • Right to Lodge a Complaint: Complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular in the country where you live; in France, this is the CNIL (cnil.fr)

To exercise these rights, contact us at [email protected]

9. CCPA Compliance (California Users)

If you are a California resident, you have rights under CCPA:

  • Right to Know: What personal information we collect and how it's used
  • Right to Delete: Request deletion of your personal information
  • Right to Opt-Out: Opt out of the sale of personal information (we do not sell data)
  • Non-Discrimination: We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes via:

  • In-app notification
  • Email to your registered address
  • Updated "Last Modified" date at the top of this policy

Continued use of Walky Doggy after changes indicates acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact Us

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this privacy policy or your personal data, please contact us:

12. Third-Party Services

This privacy policy applies only to Walky Doggy. Our app uses third-party services with their own privacy policies: