Privacy Policy

1. Introduction and Scope

Paperless.pet is an independently operated service based in California, United States. This Privacy Policy explains how Paperless.pet ("Paperless.pet," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, discloses, retains, and protects personal information when you access or use the Paperless.pet website, web application, and related services (collectively, the "Service"), and describes the choices available to you regarding that information.

In this Privacy Policy, "personal information" means information that identifies, relates to, describes, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with an identified or identifiable individual. This Privacy Policy does not apply to websites, applications, or services operated by third parties, including services you choose to use in connection with the Service, which are governed by their own privacy policies. This Privacy Policy should be read together with our Terms of Service.

2. Information We Collect

We collect the categories of personal information described in this Section 2. We collect this information directly from you; from other members of your household; from documents you upload, which may contain information about you and about other individuals; from the sign-in provider you choose, if any; and automatically from the devices and browsers used to access the Service.

2.1 Account and Household Information

When you create or use an account, we collect your email address; your household name and other household information; account and authentication information; and information associated with household membership and access. If you add a display name or a profile photograph to your account, we also collect that information.

2.2 Signing In

You may sign in to the Service using a one-time link sent to your email address or using an account you hold with Google or Discord. If you sign in with Google or Discord, that provider confirms your identity to us and provides your email address and basic profile information, such as your name and profile picture. We may use the name provided as your display name, which you may change in Settings. We do not receive your Google or Discord password, and we do not request access to your contacts, messages, or other information held by those providers. Google and Discord process information about your use of their sign-in services in accordance with their own privacy policies. Our authentication service provider records sign-in activity, including the IP address and browser used, for the purpose of securing accounts.

2.3 Pet Information

We collect the information you provide about your pets, which may include name, species, breed, age or date of birth, sex, weight, photographs, microchip numbers and other identifiers, and other profile information.

2.4 Veterinary and Pet Health Records

We collect and store the veterinary and pet-care information you enter or upload, which may include vaccination records, medications, medical conditions, allergies, weights and measurements, veterinary visits and procedures, laboratory results, prescriptions, invoices and receipts, and other pet health or care information. Uploaded documents may consist of photographs, PDF files, and similar files. Veterinary documents may also contain personal information about individuals, including names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, signatures, account numbers, and information about veterinarians and clinic staff.

2.5 Information Extracted From Documents

When a document is processed, we generate structured information from it using artificial intelligence, as described in Section 5. Extracted information may include vaccination names and dates, medications, weights, medical conditions, visit history, and other information contained in the document.

2.6 Support Requests and Feedback

When you submit a request through the Send feedback feature of the Service or the contact form on our Support page, we collect the information you submit. A request submitted from within the Service includes your message, the type of request, the page from which it was submitted, your account email address, and technical information about your browser and device, consisting of browser type and version, window and screen dimensions, language, time zone, connection status, and error messages reported by the page. A screenshot is included only if you choose to capture or attach one, and you may obscure any part of a screenshot before submitting it. A request submitted through the contact form includes your email address, your message, and your name if you provide it. We use your IP address to limit the number of messages that may be submitted from a single connection; it is not stored with your message. Within the administrative tools of the Service, support requests and screenshots are available only to Paperless.pet staff who handle support, and staff access to or deletion of a request is recorded as described in Section 2.7. Support requests are also processed by our service providers as described in Section 4.5, and may be accessed by authorized personnel as described in Section 4.8. We use support requests solely to respond to you and to resolve problems with the Service, and we respond by email. Support requests and screenshots associated with your account are deleted when your account is deleted. Other retention periods for support requests and related correspondence are set out in Section 8.

2.7 Security and Audit Information

We maintain an audit log of specified account, security, and administrative actions, including signing in, creating a pet profile, uploading a document, deleting a document or record, renaming a household, exporting data, creating or revoking share links and calendar links, publishing or withdrawing a featured pet, requesting a change of email address, requesting deletion of household data or an account, and actions taken by Paperless.pet staff to operate or secure the Service, such as viewing a household's account details, opening a support request, or suspending or removing a household. An audit record identifies the account that performed the action, the time of the action, and the item it affected. Audit records do not contain the content of documents, photographs, or health records. Certain audit records contain account details: a record of a household being renamed contains the new name, and a record of staff removing a household contains the household's name and the email addresses of its members, so that the removal can be accounted for. We use audit records for account security, accountability, abuse prevention, and operation of the Service. Audit records are retained for 18 months from the date of the recorded action. When audit records and their copies, including copies held in backups, are deleted is described under "Audit and security records" and "Backups" in Section 8, subject only to the preservation of specific records described under "Exceptions" in Section 8.

2.8 Technical and Network Information

Our network infrastructure logs requests made to the Service. These logs include IP address, browser or user-agent information, requested URL, date and time of the request, and response status. Our file-storage provider similarly logs requests to view or upload a document, including the IP address of the device making the request. We use this information for security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting, and operation of the Service, and we do not use it to create advertising profiles or to track your activity across unrelated websites. Retention of these logs is described in Section 8. Information collected through cookies and similar technologies is described in Section 7.

3. How We Use Information

We use personal information for the following purposes:

(a) to create, maintain, and authenticate accounts;

(b) to provide household and multi-user functionality;

(c) to store, display, and organize pet profiles, records, and documents;

(d) to process uploaded documents and extract structured information from them;

(e) to provide the reminder, appointment, calendar, sharing, and export features you use;

(f) to send transactional messages, service notifications, and responses to support requests;

(g) to protect accounts and the Service against unauthorized access, fraud, abuse, and security incidents, and to maintain security and audit records;

(h) to diagnose technical problems and to maintain and improve the reliability and functionality of the Service; and

(i) to comply with applicable legal obligations and to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

We do not use pet records or veterinary documents to build advertising profiles.

4. How We Disclose Information

We disclose personal information only as described in this Section 4. Certain features of the Service allow you to provide other people with access to information, as described in Sections 4.1 through 4.4.

4.1 Household Members

A household may have more than one member. Members of a household can access the information associated with that household, including its pets, pet records, and uploaded documents. By granting another person access to a household, you authorize that person to access the information available to household members. Removing a person's household access prevents further access through that person's account, but Paperless.pet cannot retrieve information that the person previously downloaded, exported, copied, photographed, or otherwise retained while authorized. You should grant household access only to people you trust.

4.2 Pet Share Links

You may create share links that provide access to selected pet information without requiring the recipient to sign in. Any person who possesses a valid share link may access the information made available through it, and a recipient may forward the link to others. Because share-link visitors are not required to authenticate, Paperless.pet cannot identify every person who views information through a share link. A share link expires at the end of the period you select when creating it, and you may revoke an active share link at any time. Revoking a link prevents further access through that link but cannot retrieve information that a recipient previously viewed, downloaded, copied, or otherwise retained. You should treat share links as confidential and provide them only to intended recipients.

4.3 Calendar Subscription Links

The Service can generate subscription links for calendar feeds containing information such as reminders and appointments. A calendar subscription link functions as a credential: any person who has the link may subscribe to and view the information in that feed without signing in to the Service. Calendar applications to which you add a subscription may store the link and the information retrieved through it. You may revoke a calendar subscription link at any time. Revocation prevents further retrieval through that link but may not remove information that a calendar application or recipient previously downloaded or cached. You should keep calendar subscription links confidential.

4.4 Featured Pets

You may voluntarily submit a pet to be featured on public pages of the Service, including the signed-out login page. Participation is optional, and a submitted pet appears publicly only after approval. Only the pet's approved name and photograph are published; the pet's veterinary records and other private account information are not. Because featured pets appear on publicly accessible pages, their approved name and photograph may be viewed by anyone who visits those pages. You may withdraw a pet from the featured-pet program at any time. Withdrawal removes the pet's name and photograph from public featured-pet displays; it does not affect the pet's private profile or records. Withdrawal cannot retrieve copies, screenshots, or other reproductions that visitors may have made while the pet was displayed.

4.5 Service Providers

We disclose personal information to service providers that perform services on our behalf, to the extent reasonably necessary for them to provide those services. The categories of service providers we use are cloud infrastructure, database, and authentication providers; file-storage and backup providers; artificial-intelligence and document-processing providers; transactional email and notification providers; and network, security, and infrastructure providers, including a security-check provider that protects the sign-in page against automated abuse and receives technical information about your browser and device, including your IP address, as described in Section 7.2. Certain providers also process limited information for their own disclosed purposes, such as improving their security services, as described in their privacy policies and, for the sign-in security check, in Section 7.2. The use of personal information by our service providers is governed by their agreements with us and by their own privacy policies. If you sign in with Google or Discord, that provider also receives information about your sign-in, as described in Section 2.2. We do not disclose personal information to advertising networks or data brokers.

4.6 Legal Requirements and Protection of Rights

We may disclose personal information where we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with applicable law, legal process, a court order, a subpoena, or a lawful request from a governmental authority; to investigate suspected fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, or security incidents; to protect the rights, safety, security, or property of Paperless.pet, its users, or others; or to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.

4.7 Business Transfers

If the operation or ownership of the Service is transferred, reorganized, or acquired, personal information associated with the Service may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to this Privacy Policy or to a privacy policy that provides comparable protection.

4.8 Access by Paperless.pet Personnel

Access to the systems that operate the Service is limited to Paperless.pet personnel who operate and maintain it. The administrative tools used by Paperless.pet staff display account, household, and usage information, such as email addresses, household and pet names, document processing status and file names, and support requests. They do not display the content of uploaded documents or pet health records. Personnel with administrative access to the underlying infrastructure are technically able to access stored information. They access the content of user records only where reasonably necessary to provide support you request, to maintain or secure the Service, to investigate suspected abuse or security incidents, or to comply with legal obligations. Actions taken by staff through the administrative tools are recorded as described in Section 2.7.

5. Artificial Intelligence Processing

The Service uses artificial intelligence to extract structured information from the documents you upload, as described in this Section 5.

5.1 AI and Your Documents

Paperless.pet uses the application programming interface provided by Anthropic to extract structured information from veterinary documents. Extraction ordinarily begins automatically after a document is uploaded. The processed copy of the document, from which metadata has been removed as described in Section 9.2, is transmitted to Anthropic, which processes the information visible in the document, including any personal information about you or other individuals that appears in it. Documents may be submitted through Anthropic's batch processing service. Under Anthropic's commercial terms applicable to Paperless.pet, API inputs and outputs are not used to train Anthropic's models by default. Paperless.pet has not opted into any program that would permit such use, and does not intentionally submit uploaded documents through feedback or reporting mechanisms that would permit their use for model training. Anthropic retains and deletes API data in accordance with its commercial data retention practices. Its published retention schedule, available at the first address listed at the end of this Section 5.1, states the period for which API data is ordinarily retained and the limited circumstances, such as where required by law or to enforce its usage policies, in which it is retained for longer. Deleting a document or an account from Paperless.pet does not cause Anthropic to delete data it has already received; that data is deleted in accordance with Anthropic's practices. Anthropic describes its practices at https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/7996866-how-long-do-you-store-my-organization-s-data and https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/7996868-is-my-data-used-for-model-training. If we change artificial-intelligence providers or materially change how documents are processed by artificial intelligence, we will update this Privacy Policy.

5.2 Accuracy of AI-Extracted Information

Artificial-intelligence extraction may produce errors. You may review and correct extracted information, and a value you enter or correct takes precedence over the value originally produced by artificial intelligence. You should verify important veterinary information against the original document rather than relying on an extracted value.

6. Your Data Is Not for Sale

We do not sell personal information, and we have not sold personal information collected through the Service. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, we do not disclose personal information to data brokers, and we do not operate third-party advertising integrations. We do not collect information about your browsing activity on unrelated websites or build advertising profiles based on your use of the Service.

7. Cookies and Similar Technologies

The Service uses first-party cookies and browser storage as necessary to authenticate users, maintain sessions, preserve application state and preferences, protect account security, and operate the Service. We do not use third-party advertising cookies, and we do not use third-party analytics services.

7.1 What Paperless.pet Stores in Your Browser

Paperless.pet uses three kinds of first-party browser storage to operate the Service.

Authentication cookies maintain your signed-in session. If you remove them, you will be signed out of the Service.

Browser session storage temporarily holds the state of a document upload in progress and records whether certain dialogs have already been displayed during the current browser session. This information is normally cleared when the browser tab or window in which it was created is closed, although a browser that restores previous tabs may restore it.

Browser local storage records interface preferences on your device, such as whether you have dismissed certain prompts, so that those prompts are not displayed repeatedly.

Those three are the only first-party browser storage Paperless.pet uses, and they are used solely to operate the Service and its user interface. Apart from a security check on the sign-in page, Paperless.pet does not load or execute third-party JavaScript in its application pages. The security-check provider's script runs in its own frame and may store information in your browser under its own domain in accordance with its privacy policy. We do not use browser storage for advertising, behavioral analytics, profiling, or tracking across unrelated websites.

You may remove this information at any time through your browser settings. Doing so will sign you out, may interrupt a document upload in progress, and may cause dismissed prompts to be displayed again.

7.2 Third-Party Tracking

The sign-in page uses a security check, Cloudflare Turnstile, to protect accounts against automated abuse. When the sign-in page loads, Cloudflare receives your IP address, information about your browser and its connection, and the address of the website using the check. Cloudflare's Turnstile Privacy Addendum, available at https://www.cloudflare.com/turnstile-privacy-policy/, states that Cloudflare uses this information to distinguish people from automated programs and to improve that detection, and not to identify, profile, or target individuals. Because Cloudflare provides the same security check to many other websites, it may receive similar information when you visit those websites. Apart from this security check, we do not knowingly permit third parties to collect personal information about your online activities over time and across different websites through the Service.

7.3 Do Not Track and Privacy Preference Signals

Some browsers transmit "Do Not Track" signals. The Service does not respond differently to Do Not Track signals. Some browsers also transmit Global Privacy Control or similar opt-out preference signals, which communicate a request to opt out of the sale of personal information or its sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising. Paperless.pet does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and therefore does not engage in the processing that such signals are intended to stop. If our practices change, we will update this Privacy Policy and honor such signals as required by applicable law.

8. Data Retention and Deletion

We retain personal information for as long as your account remains active or as long as necessary to provide the Service, unless it is deleted earlier as described in this Section 8.

Household data and account deletion. Settings > Privacy & data provides two self-service deletion controls: deletion of all pet data in your household, and deletion of your account. Access to the affected information through your account ends when you submit the request. Share links and calendar subscription links for the household stop working when the deletion is carried out. The information is deleted from the active systems of the Service within 24 hours of the request. Deleting pet data deletes every pet, record, document, and photograph in your household, and deleting your account also deletes your login. These controls are available to the administrator of a household that has no other members. In other cases, you may request deletion by contacting us as described in Section 14.

Pets. Removing a pet or marking a pet as passed away archives the pet and does not delete its records. You may request deletion of an individual pet's information by contacting us.

Documents. When you delete a document, it is removed from your account immediately, and the stored file is deleted from active storage within approximately 7 days. Structured information that you previously confirmed from a document remains in your pet's records until you delete it separately.

Original uploads. When you upload a document, the file is first held, as uploaded, in restricted temporary storage. After the document has been processed and the processed copy has been stored, the original is deleted from temporary storage. If the file cannot be processed because it is unreadable, unsupported, or exceeds our size or page limits, the original is deleted. If processing fails for any other reason, the original, including any metadata it contains, is retained in temporary storage so that it is not lost, until you delete the document.

Backups. We keep encrypted, access-controlled backup copies of uploaded documents and of our database, and our file-storage provider keeps earlier versions of stored files for recovery. These copies expire on a fixed schedule rather than being deleted individually. The latest date on which a backup or recovery copy of deleted information can remain is determined as follows:

(a) information you delete through the Service, including through the deletion controls described above: 45 days after you delete it or submit the deletion request;

(b) information we delete at your request after you contact us: 45 days after the date on which we carry out the deletion, which we will state when we confirm that the deletion is complete; and

(c) information deleted automatically under this Privacy Policy, including original uploads deleted from temporary storage and records deleted at the end of a retention period: 45 days after it is deleted from the active systems of the Service.

Backups include uploaded documents, whether uploaded as photographs, PDF files, or other files, and may include original files held in temporary storage at the time of a backup. Pet profile photographs, account profile photographs, featured-pet photographs, and support screenshots are not included in backups.

Audit and security records. Audit records are retained in the active systems of the Service for 18 months from the date of the recorded action and are deleted within seven days after that period ends. Copies maintained in separate log storage are deleted within 18 months from the date of the recorded action. Notifications sent to Paperless.pet staff about audit activity state the number of audit records recorded or awaiting review and do not contain the audit records themselves. Backup copies of audit records expire under paragraph (c) of "Backups" above, no later than 45 days after the records are deleted from the active systems.

Network logs. Request logs, including the file-storage access logs described in Section 2.8, are kept in separate, access-restricted storage so that they cannot be altered, and are deleted no later than 120 days after they are created.

Support requests and email. Support requests, contact-form messages, and screenshots are retained in the active systems of the Service for 24 months after the most recent activity on the request or message, and are deleted within seven days after that period ends. Backup copies of support requests and contact-form messages expire under paragraph (c) of "Backups" above; we do not keep backups of screenshots. Email correspondence with Paperless.pet, including copies of reminders, sign-in links, and other messages we send to you, is deleted before 24 months have passed since the most recent activity in the conversation, and we do not keep backups of it. For a support request or contact-form message, the most recent activity is the later of its submission and the most recent change to its status. For email, the most recent activity is the date of the latest message in the conversation. Support requests and screenshots associated with your account are deleted earlier if your account is deleted, and you may request earlier deletion of any of them by contacting us.

Information shared with others. Information you make available to another person through household access, a share link, an export, or a calendar feed may remain in that person's possession after the original information is deleted or access is revoked.

Exceptions. The periods stated in this Privacy Policy, including in Section 2.7, apply unless we are required by law to preserve specific information, or need to preserve specific information to resolve a particular dispute, to enforce our agreements, or to investigate a particular instance of fraud, abuse, or a security incident. In those cases, we preserve only the information concerned, use it only for that purpose, and delete it when it is no longer required. Backups are not retained longer for these purposes: backup copies expire as described above, and information preserved under this paragraph is kept separately from backups.

9. Security

This Section 9 describes the measures we use to protect personal information and the limits of those measures.

9.1 Data Security

We maintain administrative and technical safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, and destruction. Information is transmitted to and from the Service over encrypted connections using Transport Layer Security (TLS). Uploaded documents are encrypted at rest in our object storage, and selected sensitive fields in pet records, including microchip numbers, veterinarian and care-team contact details, allergies, and clinical notes, are additionally encrypted within our database. Access by Paperless.pet personnel is limited as described in Section 4.8. No method of transmitting or storing information is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee the absolute security of personal information. You are responsible for protecting your account credentials, share links, and calendar subscription links.

9.2 Document Processing and Metadata Removal

When you upload a document, the file is first held, as uploaded, in restricted temporary storage. Our servers then process the file as described in this Section 9.2 and store the processed copy, which is the copy displayed in the Service, included in exports, and sent for artificial-intelligence extraction. What happens to the original file afterward is described under "Original uploads" in Section 8.

Images. JPEG and PNG images are re-encoded without being resized, which removes embedded EXIF metadata, including GPS location information. Images in Apple's HEIC format are converted to JPEG and processed in the same manner. Pet profile photographs, account profile photographs, and photographs submitted for the featured-pet program are re-encoded and resized, which removes the same metadata.

PDF documents. We rebuild each PDF document from its pages. This removes metadata, consisting of the document information dictionary (such as author, title, and creating application), XMP metadata, and metadata associated with embedded images. Rebuilding also removes document-level content that is not metadata: file attachments, bookmarks, scripts, and the interactive form structure. Before rebuilding, we draw the values of filled-in form fields onto the page, so that they remain visible in the processed copy, including the copy sent for extraction, but can no longer be edited as form fields. If a filled-in value cannot be drawn faithfully, processing stops without storing a processed copy, the original file is retained as described under "Original uploads" in Section 8, and you are asked to re-save or print the document as a new PDF and upload it again.

Limits. Metadata removal is not redaction. Information that appears in the content of a document or image, such as names, addresses, or account numbers, is not removed.

9.3 AI Processing and Encryption

Documents submitted for artificial-intelligence extraction cannot remain end-to-end encrypted in a manner that prevents Paperless.pet and Anthropic from reading their contents. The Service must access a document in order to transmit it for processing, and the artificial-intelligence provider must process the document in order to perform extraction.

9.4 Security Breach Notification

If Paperless.pet discovers a security breach that triggers a legal notification obligation, we will notify affected individuals and take other actions required by applicable law.

9.5 Pet Health Information and Sensitive Data

Pet health information is not human medical information and is not protected health information under HIPAA, which applies to identifiable health information about individuals in circumstances covered by that law. Veterinary records may nevertheless contain highly personal information about pet owners and other individuals, and names, contact details, addresses, signatures, and account information appearing in a veterinary record may be personal information protected by applicable privacy laws. Paperless.pet therefore treats uploaded veterinary documents and pet records as private user content, whether or not the information they contain is legally classified as sensitive personal information.

10. Reviewing, Correcting, Exporting, or Deleting Your Information

You may review and update most account, household, and pet information, correct individual records and AI-extracted information, delete records and uploaded documents, revoke share links and calendar subscription links, and export all of your household's information or the records of an individual pet, directly through the Service. Self-service deletion of household data and accounts is described in Section 8. To request access to, correction of, a copy of, or deletion of personal information that you cannot manage through the Service, contact privacy@paperless.pet. Depending on where you reside, applicable law may grant you additional rights with respect to your personal information, which may include the right to know what personal information we have collected, to request its correction or deletion, to obtain a portable copy, to opt out of certain processing, and to appeal our decision on a request. We respond to requests made under this Section 10 regardless of where you reside, subject to the exceptions and limitations permitted by applicable law. Before acting on a request, we may take reasonable steps to verify that it is made by the account holder or by an agent authorized to act on the account holder's behalf. If you do not have an account and believe that a document uploaded to the Service contains personal information about you, you may also contact privacy@paperless.pet. We will take reasonable steps to verify your identity and your connection to the information. We do not routinely review the content of users' documents manually, so we may be unable to locate information about you unless you identify the account or document concerned. In assessing and responding to such a request, we protect the personal information of other individuals and records unrelated to you. Where appropriate, we may provide you with the personal information about you that a document contains without providing the document itself or other information in it. If we decline a request, we will explain the reason, and you may ask us to reconsider our decision by replying to our response. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. You may opt out of reminder and notification emails at any time through Settings or the unsubscribe link included in those emails. Service and security messages necessary to operate your account cannot be disabled while the account remains active.

11. Children's Privacy

The Service requires users to be at least 18 years old, as described in our Terms of Service, and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 in circumstances requiring parental consent, we will take reasonable steps to delete that information, or otherwise address the account, as required by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") or other applicable law. A parent or legal guardian who believes that a child under 13 has provided personal information to Paperless.pet may contact privacy@paperless.pet.

12. United States Processing and International Transfers

Paperless.pet is operated from the United States, and personal information is processed and stored in the United States. Some of our service providers, including our email service provider, process information in other countries, so email sent to or received from Paperless.pet may be processed outside the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your personal information will be transferred to, processed in, and stored in the United States and other countries whose data protection laws may differ from those of your jurisdiction.

13. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. The effective date shown at the top of this Privacy Policy is the date on which the current version took effect. If we announce a change in advance, we may publish the revised Privacy Policy before it takes effect, showing both the date on which it was last updated and the date on which it takes effect. If we make a material change that affects how we collect, use, or disclose personal information associated with existing accounts, we will provide notice before the change takes effect through the Service, by email to the address associated with the account, or by another reasonably conspicuous method. Where applicable law requires consent before a change applies to previously collected personal information, we will obtain that consent.

14. Contact Us

Paperless.pet is operated by an individual located in California, United States. If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, or wish to make a request described in Section 10, contact Paperless.pet at privacy@paperless.pet.