Privacy Policy

Effective date: 14 September 2026 · Last updated: 28 September 2026

This document is available in several languages. The English version is the authoritative one.

This policy explains what TailTag collects, why, who sees it, and what you can do about it. TailTag exists for a moment when somebody is frightened and in a hurry, so we have tried to write it so it can be read quickly and still be true.

1. Who we are

TailTag is operated by TailBook d.o.o., registered in Montenegro, at Trg Sunca br. 4, 85310 Budva.

• Privacy questions and requests: tailbookme@gmail.com
• In-product: the Support button in the footer

We are the data controller for the personal data described here. We have not appointed a formal Data Protection Officer; the contact above handles all privacy matters.

2. Two products, kept apart

TailTag and TailBook are two products of the same company, and we are the data controller for both. They are separate services.

TailTag has its own accounts, its own database and its own storage for photographs. What you add to TailTag - your account, your animal, its photographs - is kept in TailTag. It is not copied into TailBook and it is not visible there.

If you use both products you have two accounts, even when they carry the same email address. Each product knows only the account you created in it. Changing or deleting one does not change or delete the other.

What the two products share is what stands behind them: the company, the people who run the service, and the service providers named in section 9.

There is one crossing point, and it runs one way. While a search is open, TailTag reads the pages TailBook publishes about street animals - the same pages anybody can open without an account - so that a volunteer photographing a cat on a street three days from now can turn into a possible match for you.

To ask, TailTag sends TailBook a place, a distance and a species: where your animal went missing, how far around it to look, and whether it is a cat or a dog. It does not send your animal's name, its photographs, its description or anything about you. Nothing about your animal is published in TailBook by this, and nobody in TailBook is told that you are looking.

3. What we collect

From you, about you

• Account details: name, email address, and password — stored only as a secure hash. We never see your actual password.
• Anything you send us through support.

From you, about your animal

• Profile: name, species, description, distinguishing features, photographs.
• Microchip number, if you choose to add one.
• When a search is open: roughly where and when the animal went missing, the photographs you chose to make public, a reward if you offer one, and a contact route you choose.

From people who found an animal

Anyone can report seeing an animal without an account. We then hold what they wrote, any photograph they attached, the place and time they gave, and a contact detail if they chose to leave one. If you are that person: what you write reaches the person looking for that animal, and nothing else about you does.

Automatically

• Technical data needed to run and secure the service — IP address, device and browser type, session information.
• Usage data — which pages and features are used — so we can see what works.

4. The microchip number

A chip number identifies an animal in national registries, and in the wrong hands it is a way to claim an animal that is not yours.

We never show a chip number to anybody. It is not on the public search page, not in a poster, not in the API's public responses. It is used for exactly one thing: when somebody types a chip number into «check by chip», we compare it and answer whether that animal is being looked for. The number itself is never returned.

5. What becomes public, and when

An animal's profile is private by default. It is shown to you and to nobody who simply asks for it, signed in or not. The place you gave for where the animal lives is never shown to anybody else.

A code on a collar opens a page for whoever reads it, if you printed a card or attached a tag. That page shows the animal's name, one photograph, its species, sex, age and colours, and a way to write to you. Nothing else.

Turning on a search publishes one page, containing only what section 4 of the TailTag Terms lists: the animal, the photographs you picked, roughly where and when, a reward if offered, and the animal's permanent code. Your address, your email and the chip number are not on it.

The place you give is the place the animal was lost, not where you live. Please do not enter your home address. If the animal went missing at your door, a nearby street or landmark helps the same people and tells strangers less about you.

Ending a search stops the page being public. Copies already made by other people — screenshots, printed posters, chat messages — are outside our control.

6. Comparing photographs

While a search is open, TailTag compares the animal with animals that people report to TailTag as found, and with street animals recorded in TailBook (section 2). The comparison uses species, colour, sex, size, features, place and time, and the photographs, turned into a numerical representation, where TailTag holds both of them. A street animal recorded in TailBook is compared by its description, not by its photograph.

Two things about this:

• It produces suggestions, for a person to judge. Nothing is merged, nothing is decided, no record changes on its own. Under Article 22 of the GDPR this is not automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects: the result is a list you look at, and the decision is yours.
• The comparison is replaceable and may run on a service we operate. If that ever means sending a photograph to a third-party processor, we will name that processor here before it happens.

7. Why we may use your data, and our legal bases

• To provide the service (contract): your account, your animal's profile, the public search page you turn on, delivering messages from finders to you.
• Your consent: things you opt into — adding a chip number, adding a place, making photographs public, notifications about animals lost near you. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the service secure, preventing fraud and the extortion of people who have lost an animal, and improving TailTag — weighed against your rights, and you can object.
• Legal obligations: where the law requires us to keep or disclose information.

8. Notifications about animals lost near you

If you choose to be told when an animal goes missing near you, we store an area you set yourself — a point and a radius you choose — and use it only to decide whether to tell you about a search.

We do not derive this from your location history, and we do not track where you go. It is off unless you turn it on, it can be turned off in one place, and turning it off deletes the area.

9. Who sees your data

We do not sell personal data — ever.

• Anybody, on a search page you turned on: only what section 5 describes.
• The person looking for an animal, if you are a finder: what you wrote and the contact detail you chose to leave.
• Service providers (processors) who run the platform on our instructions, under contractual data-protection safeguards: Railway (hosting, database and media storage, European region), Cloudflare (a backup copy of the database and the photographs, kept outside Railway) and Resend (transactional email).
• Google Analytics, only if you allow analytics cookies in the cookie notice. Until you do, it is not loaded at all. We use no advertising trackers.
• Authorities, where we are legally required to disclose — for example a valid legal request, or to help address suspected cruelty, fraud or extortion.

10. International transfers

TailTag is operated from Montenegro and used by people in the EU/EEA, the UK and beyond. Where personal data crosses borders we rely on recognised safeguards, including the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses or their UK equivalent, and technical measures such as encryption. On request we will describe the safeguards in more detail.

11. How long we keep things

• Your account and your animals' profiles: while the account is active, or until you delete them.
• A closed search: the public page stops being public immediately. The record of the search stays on the animal's history, because it is part of what happened to that animal.
• A search that keeps looking: up to 120 days from the day it opened, after which the automatic comparison stops. The search itself stays until you close it.
• Messages from finders: with the animal, until you or we delete the animal.
• An animal you delete: its profile, its searches, the messages sent about it and its photographs are removed from the service. A backup copy kept for recovering from a disaster may hold them for longer. We are setting a limit for that and will state it here.
• Technical and security logs: generally up to 12 months.

When you delete your account we delete or anonymise your personal data, except what we must keep by law or to resolve a dispute.

12. Your rights

Wherever you live, you can contact us and we will answer within the time the law requires — usually one month under the GDPR.

In the EU/EEA or the UK, you have the right to access your data and get a copy, correct it, erase it in the cases the law allows, restrict processing while a concern is resolved, port it to another service, object to processing based on our legitimate interests, withdraw consent at any time without affecting what already happened, and complain to a data-protection authority. In Montenegro that is the Agency for Personal Data Protection and Free Access to Information (AZLP); in the EU/UK you may also contact your local authority. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.

In California (CCPA/CPRA), you have the right to know what we collect and why, to a copy, to correction, to deletion, and to limit the use of sensitive information. We do not "sell" or "share" personal information as those terms are defined, and we will never discriminate against you for exercising a right.

To exercise a right, email tailbookme@gmail.com from the address on your account and tell us what you would like to do. We may ask a question to confirm it is really you.

13. How we protect your data

• Encryption in transit for everything you send us.
• Restricted access — only people who need data to run the service can reach it.
• Regular backups, including off-site copies.
• Ongoing monitoring and prompt security updates.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever affects your rights we will notify the relevant authority within 72 hours and, where the risk is high, tell you directly.

14. Children

TailTag is for people aged 16 and over. If you are under 16, please use it with a parent or guardian. If you believe a child has given us personal data without appropriate consent, contact us and we will remove it promptly.

15. Changes

As TailTag grows we may update this policy. For significant changes we will give notice in the product and, where appropriate, by email before they take effect. Minor updates are published here with a new date.

16. Contact

• Email: tailbookme@gmail.com
• In-product: the Support button in the footer

Thank you for reading this far — and for giving your animal a way home. 🐾