Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Pedigree Lab is operated by [OPERATOR LEGAL NAME], [OPERATOR ADDRESS] ("we", "us"). We are responsible, as controller, for the personal data described in this policy.

For privacy questions and requests, write to [email protected]. For anything else, use our Contact page or write to [email protected].

2. Information we collect

Account details: your username, your email address, your password (stored only as a secure hash), the breed community you join when you sign up and the language you use. We do not ask for your real name when you sign up; you can add one to your profile if you want to. ID verification, described below, does ask for it.

Content you submit: photos and videos, Marketplace listings, comments and reviews, direct messages, support requests and Dog of the Month entries and votes, plus the members and kennels you follow and the pedigrees, listings and kennels you like. Reports you send about listings, comments, reviews, kennels, messages or pedigree records are stored with your account. If you subscribe to a breed newsletter, we store your email address for that purpose. Other members can see whether you are online and when you were last active, in messages and on your profile, unless you turn off Active Status in your account settings. Your followers and following lists are visible to others unless you make them private, and the owner of a pedigree can see who liked it.

Pedigrees: the dogs and pedigrees you create in the Pedigree Builder, with their photos, videos, show titles, registration numbers you choose to enter and the names of the dogs' breeders and owners, are public. The member who owns a pedigree can edit these names; anyone else can ask for a correction through our Contact page. The dog journal on a pedigree you create (microchip number, rabies and other vaccinations, worming, heat cycles and notes) is private: only you can see it, and our administrators when they need to for support. When you transfer a pedigree, you choose whether its journal goes with it.

Kennel profiles: the details you enter (kennel name, tagline, location, year established, website, social links, registry affiliations, health testing, description, logo, banner, featured dogs with their cover photos and captions, and videos) are public once you publish the profile. We also store who follows and likes a kennel, which members a kennel owner has confirmed as customers, and the reviews those members write. When someone visits a kennel page we count the visit: we store the time, a pseudonymous code made from the visitor's IP address (a salted hash) and the kind of page they came from. The kennel owner sees totals only, never who visited.

Pedigree Vault: the records and documents you keep in the Vault (registration and DNA numbers, registration papers and similar files) are private. Each entry has its own share link: anyone you give the link to can view the entry and, unless you hide them, its documents, and resetting the link turns the old one off. You can also attach an entry to one of your Marketplace listings so buyers can view it, openly or on request, as you choose. Our administrators can see your Vault entries when they need to for support.

Purchases: for each subscription or credit purchase we keep what you bought, the amount and date, and the payment notification we receive from the payment provider, which can include details you entered at checkout such as your name, email address and country. Card numbers never reach us.

ID verification: before you can post in the Marketplace, you verify your identity once. We collect your first and last name, street address, postal code, country, phone number and a photo or scan of a government ID document. The document is stored privately: it is never public, only our administrators can open it, for review or support, and every opening is recorded. Other members see only the ID verified badge after your username and, on your Marketplace listings, the month you were verified, never these details. When you send a new document, the earlier one is deleted, and deleting your account deletes your ID verification and the document.

Technical data: we store IP addresses with your account in our log of sign-ups, sign-ins and other account actions (kept for 3 months), with each signed-in session, on pedigree transfer records and on our block lists if an address is blocked. We use them to keep accounts secure, to stop spam, scams and fraud, and to stop banned members from signing up again. Our servers also record IP addresses in technical logs. Marketplace listing visits, which sellers see as totals, and Dog of the Month votes are counted with a pseudonymous code made from the visitor's IP address instead of the address itself, together with the browser details (user agent).

Pedigree Lab is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.

3. How we use your information

We use your information to provide Pedigree Lab: your account and breed community, pedigrees and the Pedigree Builder, breeding tools, the Marketplace, kennel pages, Dog of the Month, chat, notifications, subscriptions and credits, and the service emails that go with them. We also use it for moderation, security and abuse prevention, and to keep the records that tax and accounting law requires.

We process your data because it is necessary to provide the service you signed up for, because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the platform safe and preventing abuse and fraud, to meet our legal obligations, and, for the newsletter, because you asked for it. You can unsubscribe at any time with the link in every issue.

To protect members from scams, direct messages go through automatic checks on our servers before they are delivered. The checks look for links (accounts that are new or have an unverified email address cannot send them), for wording that pretends to come from our staff, and for the same text being sent to many people. Listings and comments are checked for slurs and, from new accounts, for links. We also keep an abuse score for each account, built from signals such as these checks, reports from other members, sign-ups that look automated and heavy automated use of the site. A high score flags the account for an administrator to review and can lead to it being blocked automatically. Some patterns, such as sending the same message to many people, block an account straight away.

We never sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

4. Service providers

We rely on a small number of service providers. Each processes personal data only to provide its service to us:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts our servers, database and backups, and stores photos, videos and documents (Amazon S3).
• Cloudflare provides content delivery and protection against attacks and automated abuse, including the Turnstile check that may run when you sign up. Your connection to the site may pass through Cloudflare's network.
• Resend delivers our account and service emails, such as account verification, password resets and notifications. Breed newsletters are sent through Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), part of AWS.
• Lemon Squeezy, Fungies and Polar handle card payments. The provider shown at checkout acts as merchant of record for your purchase under its own terms and privacy policy, and card numbers never reach our servers.
• If we turn on site analytics, Google Analytics gives us visit statistics using cookies that hold a random identifier, not your name or account.
• Venice.ai creates the images in AI Pedigree Studio. When you make a poster, Venice.ai receives photos of your own dogs only; your kennel logo, if you choose to add it; the poster text you type, which can include contact details and a location; and, for a pedigree poster, the names of the dog's ancestors over three generations and photos only of the ancestors you own. When you change a poster, it receives your existing poster and the change you type. Posters are labeled as AI-generated and are stored until you delete them or your account; a deleted poster can remain in our content delivery network's cache for up to one day. When you delete a poster, the text you typed for it is erased too.
• Anthropic (Claude) reads pedigrees for the Pedigree Builder's import. When you drop a photo, scan or PDF of a pedigree into the builder, the file is sent to Anthropic so it can read the dogs' names, titles, colors, dates of birth and registration numbers; photos are sent without their embedded metadata, such as location. When you paste a link to a pedigree on another website that we have no reader of our own for, that page (or the picture or PDF it points to) is sent to Anthropic in the same way. We do not store the file you upload; we keep the pedigree read from it, with the file name or the link, so you can review it in the builder, until you delete your account.
• Expo (expo.dev) delivers push notifications to the Pedigree Lab mobile app. When you allow notifications in the app, we store your device's push token with its platform, device name and app version. For each notification we send its title, text and link, and your number of unread notifications, to Expo, which passes it on to Apple or Google for delivery to your device. Signing out of the app, or deleting your account, removes the token.

Support chat, direct messages, search, newsletter lists and the translation of messages and listings run on our own servers, so that content is not sent to an outside service for those features.

Some of these providers may process data outside your country, including in the United States. Where the law requires it, we rely on the safeguards these providers offer for such transfers, such as standard contractual clauses.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, or when it is necessary to protect the rights and safety of our members or the public.

5. Cookies

We use essential cookies to keep you signed in and to secure your session, and preference cookies to remember your language and the breed community you last visited. Our support chat sets its own cookies so your conversation stays open between visits, and Cloudflare may set cookies for its security checks. If site analytics is on, Google Analytics sets cookies with a random identifier to give us visit statistics. We use no advertising cookies.

6. Data security

We protect your data with encrypted connections (HTTPS), secure password hashing and access controls on our systems. Every code change we publish is scanned automatically for leaked passwords and keys, and the software libraries we use are checked regularly for security fixes. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong password that you do not use anywhere else.

7. Data retention

If you delete your account, we remove your email address, username, name, phone number, profile photo and other profile details, your Marketplace listings, kennel profile, Pedigree Vault, AI Pedigree Studio posters, ID verification and the other items listed on the account deletion page, and you can no longer sign in. Pedigrees you own stay in the registry as unclaimed pedigrees, because pedigree data is interconnected across generations, and messages, reviews and comments you wrote stay under a deleted member name. Payment records are kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires. Your newsletter subscription is removed when you delete your account; otherwise it is kept until you unsubscribe.

Kennel reviews, listing comments and seller reviews removed by moderation, comments deleted by their author or the seller, and videos that are refused, removed or replaced are kept privately as an internal record and are no longer shown. A member's decision to decline a customer confirmation is kept so that the kennel cannot repeat the request, and reports about a kennel and the kennel's earlier names are kept as a record. A suspension is kept while it lasts; once it is lifted it stays only in our account log, which we keep for 3 months. When a listing is deleted, its comments, sale records and reviews are deleted with it.

AI Pedigree Studio posters are kept until you delete them or your account. When you delete a poster, we delete the picture and the words you typed for it, and keep only a record that a poster was made, with its date and cost, to count your daily allowance and for our accounts. For a poster that could not be made, the words you typed are deleted from its record as soon as it fails.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask us to give you a copy of your personal data, to correct it, to delete it or to send it to you in a portable format, and you can object to or ask us to restrict some processing. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time.

To make a request, write to [email protected] from the email address on your account, or use our Contact page. You can delete your account yourself on the account deletion page or in the Pedigree Lab mobile app, or ask us to delete it for you. We answer within one month. You also have the right to complain to the data protection authority where you live.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Changes are posted on this page with a new effective date, and we tell members about significant changes by email or on the site.