Privacy Policy
Last updated 16 August 2026
The short version. Barknity helps dog owners near each other meet up. To do that we store what you put on your profile, roughly where you are, and the messages you send. We never show your exact position to anyone unless you choose to share it with one specific match, and that sharing stops after two hours. We do not sell your data or run advertising. You can download everything we hold, or delete your account and it is really deleted.
Who is responsible for your data
Barknity is run by Mohammed Zekri, based in Spain. Under the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation we are the "data controller" for the information described here.
For anything in this policy, including requests to see or delete your data, contact barknity@gmail.com.
Who can use Barknity
Barknity is for adults only. You must be 18 or over. We ask for your date of birth when you sign up and refuse accounts under 18. If we learn that someone under 18 has created an account, we delete it.
What we collect, and why
Things you give us
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address | To log you in, reset your password, and confirm the account is really yours |
| Password | Stored only as a one-way hash. We never see it and cannot recover it |
| Your name (as you choose to display it) | So matches know who they are talking to |
| Date of birth | To enforce the 18+ limit and to show your age. Your age is shown; the exact date is not |
| Gender | So people can choose who they want to see |
| Photos of you (up to six) | Your profile. The first is what people see first |
| Your dog's name, breed, size, weight, age, whether they are neutered and vaccinated, and a description | The other half of your profile |
| Photos of your dog | Shown on your card |
| A description of yourself, and optionally your height, job, education and hobbies | Shown to people who see your card. All optional |
| Your town or city | Shown on your profile |
| Messages you send to matches | To deliver them |
| Walks you organise or join | To show them to the right people |
| Reports and blocks you make | Safety, and so we can act on them |
Location
This is the most sensitive thing the app handles, so we are specific about it.
- Your general area is stored so we can show you people and walks nearby. Other users never see your coordinates — only a rough distance, such as "3 km away".
- Live sharing is separate, and always your choice. You can share your position with one specific match at a time. It lasts a maximum of two hours, you can stop it whenever you like, and it stops on its own if you close the app. It is never broadcast, never shown to strangers, and never on by default.
- Walks have a meeting point you choose. Anyone who can see the walk can see that point — that is the purpose of it.
Things collected automatically
- A push notification token, so we can send notifications to your device. You can turn notification categories off in Settings.
- Basic technical logs — request times and error messages — kept briefly so we can find faults.
What we do not collect
We do not ask for or store your sexual orientation, religion, political views, health, ethnicity, or anything else GDPR treats as a special category. We do not track you across other apps or websites. We do not run advertising and there are no advertising trackers in the app.
Our legal basis for using it
| Purpose | Basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account and showing you people nearby | Performance of our contract with you |
| Sharing your live position with a match | Your consent, given each time, withdrawable at any moment |
| Keeping people safe — moderation, reports, blocks, the 18+ check | Legitimate interests, and legal obligation |
| Service emails: confirmation, password reset | Performance of our contract with you |
Who else sees your data
We do not sell your data and we never will. We use these companies to run the service, and nothing else:
| Who | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Neon | Database | Frankfurt, Germany (EU) |
| Render | Servers | Frankfurt, Germany (EU) |
| Cloudflare R2 | Photo storage | Western Europe |
| Expo and Google Firebase | Delivering push notifications | Notifications may be processed outside the EU under standard contractual clauses |
| Resend | Sending service emails | EU |
| Google Maps | Displaying maps in the app | See Google's own privacy policy |
Other users see what you put on your profile: your photos, name, age, town, your description, your dog's details, and anything optional you filled in. They see a distance, never your address or coordinates.
How long we keep it
- While your account exists, we keep your profile and messages so the app works.
- Live location shares expire after at most two hours and are then deleted.
- When you delete your account, your profile details, photos, dog, swipes, matches and location history are deleted immediately, and your photo files are removed from storage. The messages you sent to other people have their content erased, but the fact that a conversation existed remains on the other person's side — we cannot delete their record of what happened to them.
- Reports and blocks are kept after deletion, because they exist to protect the person who made them.
Your rights
Under GDPR you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or object to us using it. You can withdraw consent for location sharing at any time by stopping the share.
Two of these are built into the app and need no request at all:
- Download your data: Profile → Settings → Download my data.
- Delete your account: Profile → Settings → Delete my account. There is also a web form if you have already uninstalled the app.
For anything else, email barknity@gmail.com. We will reply within 30 days.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to your national data protection authority. In Spain that is the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos.
Security
Connections use HTTPS. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored in a form we can read. Sessions expire and refresh tokens rotate. Photos are checked to make sure they are genuinely images before they are stored.
No service is perfectly secure. If we discover a breach affecting your data, we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.
Changes to this policy
If we change anything significant we will update the date at the top and tell you in the app before the change takes effect.