Your data, in plain English.
gotcha exists to get a lost dog home, so some of what you give us is shown to a stranger who finds your dog — that is the whole point. Everything else is kept for you and no one else. Here is exactly what we hold and what we never do with it.
Last updated July 11, 2026
What we collect
Your account email, your dog's profile, and — only if you pay for the vault — the vet paperwork you upload.
- Your account email. It is how you sign in (with a one-time link, never a password) and how we reach you.
- Your dog's profile — including your name, phone, and email. This contact information appears on the public found page for your dog on purpose: it is what lets a finder reach you. Anyone who scans the tag or enters its code sees it.
- Vet documents you upload to the vault, and the text machine-read from them. These scans often carry clinic letterhead, and sometimes your home address or payment details. We also keep a machine transcription of the text so records can be searched — read by software, not by a person browsing your files.
- Care-log entries. The meals, walks, meds, and notes you or a sitter jot down.
- When a share link is opened. If you create a link for a sitter or walker, we log each time it is opened, so you can see the link is being used. It is a record of the link, not of a named person.
- Tag scans and alerts. When someone views your dog's found page or sends you an alert, we record it — including any location note the finder chooses to type. It is the trail that helps get your dog home.
Payments
Stripe handles the card. We never see or store your card number.
The vault is billed through Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe and are never touched by gotcha — we only learn whether your subscription is active. Stripe's own privacy terms cover what they do with payment information.
Cookies and tracking
One sign-in cookie. No advertising trackers, no analytics cookies.
We set a single session cookie so you stay signed in — nothing more. The one other third-party tool we use is Cloudflare Turnstile, a privacy-minded bot check on the "found a dog" alert form, so real finders can reach you and bots cannot flood you. There are no advertising trackers and no analytics cookies anywhere on gotcha, and we do not follow you around the web.
Where your data lives
On Cloudflare's network — their database for records, their storage for files.
gotcha runs on Cloudflare. Your records sit in Cloudflare's D1 database and your uploaded files in Cloudflare's R2 storage, and your data is processed within Cloudflare's network as you use the site.
Share links never leak your documents
A sitter's link shows your vet documents only if you deliberately turn that on for that link.
Share links are for sitters and walkers, and by default they show no medical documents at all — because a raw scan can carry your home address. Documents are included on a share link only when you explicitly opt in for that specific link. Off is the default, every time.
Your data is yours
Export everything, free, any time — even after a subscription lapses. Delete, and it is really gone.
- Full export is free and always available. Download everything for a dog as a zip whenever you like. This never sits behind a paywall — it works even after a vault subscription lapses.
- Deletion really deletes. Remove a pet or your whole account and its documents, photos, and records are erased — the stored files are swept from Cloudflare's storage too, not just hidden.
- Retired tag codes are never reused. When a dog is deleted, its tag code is retired for good and never assigned to another dog — a stranger who bookmarked the old found page will only ever hit a dead end.
- Anonymized scan events remain as an audit trail. The record that a code was scanned or alerted survives a deletion, on purpose, but it no longer points to a dog or an owner.
We do not sell your data
We do not sell your personal data. Full stop.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it to advertise to you. The only place your details are deliberately shown is the found page for your own dog — the one job you signed up for.
Questions
Email us. A real person reads it.
Reach us any time at support@gotcha.dog and we will help.
See also our Terms of Service.