Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and how to reach our Privacy Officer

ResQPaw designates a person responsible for the protection of personal information, as required by Law 25. You can reach our Privacy Officer for any question, request, or complaint about your personal information:

• Privacy Officer / Responsable de la protection des renseignements personnels
• Email: info@resqpaw.com

2. Personal information we collect

We collect only what we need to reunite lost pets with the people who care for them:

• Contact information — an email address and/or a phone number. We use this to notify you about potential matches and to send a one-time verification code (OTP) confirming the contact method is reachable.
• Pet photos you upload for your report.
• Pet descriptions and other report details you provide (species, breed, colour, distinguishing features, name).
• Location of the loss or sighting. By default this is displayed only in approximate form (rounded to roughly neighbourhood level). An exact location is used more precisely only if you choose to provide and share it.
• Guest accounts. You can use ResQPaw without a password. A guest account is created through anonymous authentication and is upgraded to a verified account when you confirm your contact method. Your guest data is preserved and linked to your account if you later register.
• Payment information. If you purchase an optional paid feature, payment is processed by a specialized payment processor. We never receive or store your card number; we retain only a customer reference and your purchase status.
• Usage and error data. Basic technical data (such as IP address, browser metadata, and error reports collected through an error-monitoring service) is used for security, abuse prevention, and to keep the service working.
• Notification preferences — the channels you choose to receive alerts through (email, SMS, browser push).

3. Why we use your information

• To match lost and found pet reports across the platform.
• To send you notifications about potential matches and follow-ups on your report (by email, SMS, and/or browser push, delivered through specialized delivery providers).
• To prevent fraud, abuse, and misuse of the service.
• To operate, secure, and improve the platform.

4. AI processing of photos and descriptions

To make visual matching possible, the photos and descriptions you submit are processed by automated systems:

• Photos are converted into image “embeddings” (abstract numerical representations) on dedicated image-processing infrastructure, and those embeddings are stored in a specialized similarity-search database so similar animals can be found.
• Descriptions are processed by a third-party AI provider to extract structured animal attributes (species, breed, colour, and so on) that improve matching.

This processing serves the same purpose for which the information was collected: reuniting animals with their families. Uploaded images may also be used to improve the accuracy of the matching service.

5. Public reports and community-sourced listings

Lost and found reports are meant to be seen so the community can help. When a report is shown publicly:

• Your contact information is never displayed publicly. Communication happens through the platform or through the contact details you explicitly choose to share.
• Location is shown in approximate form only, unless you opt in to share a more precise location.

Optional sharing on our Facebook page

When you create a report, you can opt in to having it shared as a flyer on ResQPaw’s public Facebook page to reach more people. This is entirely optional and off by default. The flyer shows only the pet’s photo, description, the neighbourhood, and the nearest cross streets to where the animal was seen — never your name. Your contact information (your verified phone number or email) appears only if you separately chose to show it on the flyer, and your exact location only if you chose to share it on your report. Facebook is operated by Meta Platforms, Inc.; anything posted there is public, is processed on Meta’s servers outside Québec, and is subject to Meta’s own terms and privacy policy, including how others may view, share, or comment on the post. You can withdraw this consent at any time by contacting our Privacy Officer, and we remove the post when your report is closed, reunited, or your account is deleted.

ResQPaw also ingests publicly posted lost/found and shelter listings from community and shelter sources to widen the search. For these listings we store only structured animal attributes (species, breed, colour, location, date, photos); we do not retain the free text of the original post, and we do not store the personal information of the person who posted it. Listings are attributed generically to their source, and the source link is kept so you can follow up on the original platform. If you posted such content elsewhere and want data derived from it removed, contact our Privacy Officer.

6. Service providers and where your data is processed

We rely on a small number of trusted service providers (processors) to run ResQPaw. Each handles only the data needed for its function. They fall into the following categories:

• Database, authentication, and file-storage hosting.
• Application hosting and serverless computing.
• Image-similarity storage and search.
• AI text and image analysis.
• Email and SMS delivery.
• Payment processing.
• Traffic management and rate limiting.
• Error monitoring.

A current list of our service providers is available from our Privacy Officer on request.

Processing outside Québec and Canada

Some of these providers process or store information outside Québec, including in the United States. In accordance with Law 25, we assess that the information receives adequate protection: transfers occur over encrypted connections, providers are contractually bound to their own privacy and security commitments, image-processing inference is run in a Montréal region where possible, and browser push payloads are end-to-end encrypted so push providers cannot read notification content. By using ResQPaw, you are informed that your information may be communicated outside Québec.

7. How long we keep your information

We keep personal information only as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected, after which it is deleted or anonymized:

• Active reports are kept while they remain active.
• Reunited or closed reports are anonymized about one year after they are archived — contact information and free-text descriptions are removed, while non-identifying animal attributes may be retained to improve matching.
• Inactive guest accounts are purged after about one year without activity.
• Notifications are deleted after about six months.
• Audit logs are retained for about two years.
• Payment records (transaction metadata only) are kept as required by Québec tax law.

8. Your rights under Law 25

You have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Rectify information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or ambiguous. You can update your reports and profile directly in the app.
• Withdraw your consent at any time, for example by changing your notification preferences or deleting a report.
• Request deletion of your account and personal information, including the cessation of dissemination or de-indexing of information made public.
• Data portability — receive the computerized personal information you provided, in a structured and commonly used technological format, as provided under Law 25 (in force since September 2024).

You can exercise any of these rights by contacting our Privacy Officer at info@resqpaw.com. We respond within the timeframe required by law (no later than 30 days).

9. Cookies and local storage

ResQPaw uses only what it needs to function. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

• Session cookies keep you signed in.
• A locale preference remembers whether you use the site in English or French.
• Session storagetemporarily holds an unfinished report draft in your browser so you don’t lose your progress.

10. Consent

We obtain your consent at the point of collection — when you create a report and when you choose how to be notified. Verifying your contact method with a one-time code is your explicit confirmation that you agree to be contacted at that address or number. You may withdraw your consent at any time as described in section 8.

11. Filing a complaint

If you have a concern about how we handle your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer first so we can address it. You also have the right to file a complaint with the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (CAI): www.cai.gouv.qc.ca.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we will update the “last updated” date above and, where appropriate, ask you to review the revised policy.