SHELTERSCAN · EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 12, 2026 · ANALYTICS AND SUPPORT V1

Privacy Policy

This policy describes the current ShelterScan prototype, a tool for comparing your pet’s photos with published shelter and eligible community-report photos. This version includes email/password accounts and optional saved search preferences. We will update this policy before materially changing how we handle information.

Your pet’s photos

Photos you select are analyzed in your browser. ShelterScan does not upload or store those photos, or their visual descriptors, on its servers. By default, photos remain available only in the open page while selected. If you enable “Remember photos on this device” when saving a search, we store copies in IndexedDB in that browser profile. They can be restored when you reopen the saved search there, including after a reload or restart. These copies are not synced to your account or another device. Anyone with access to your browser profile may be able to access them. Use “Forget photos,” remove the saved search in that browser, or clear the browser’s site data to remove local copies. Deleting your account clears local copies in the browser used for deletion; clear site data on other devices separately. Browser settings or storage eviction can also remove local copies. The prototype does not use your photos to train a model.

Last-seen location and coverage map

ZIP and city searches run in your browser using a locally served gazetteer. The coverage map, radius calculations and map movements also run in your browser without a third-party map service. When you select “Use my location,” your browser asks permission; your browser or operating system may use its own location services. ShelterScan keeps the resulting coordinates only in this page's memory. It does not transmit GPS coordinates or map movements, put them in links, or save them with your account. Clear location and reloading remove the point.

If you explicitly choose street-address lookup, we send only the entered address through ShelterScan to the U.S. Census geocoder to resolve an approximate location. ShelterScan does not log or persist that address or its returned coordinates. The Census Bureau receives the lookup address and our server's connection information; its privacy practices apply to that request. You can instead use ZIP/city lookup or optional device location. Your selected pet photos, their embeddings, pet names and descriptions are not sent with any location lookup.

Precise location is not saved in account searches, browser storage, URLs or analytics. Radius is not saved with your account or in browser storage or URLs; optional analytics can include only the selected radius bucket (25, 50, 100 or 200 miles). Public image requests can reveal which shelter photos you view to image providers or our image proxy; ordinary connection information such as your IP address may suggest an approximate area. GeoNames ZIP/city centers, Census boundaries and facility points can be approximate. Indexed-area browsing remains available for organizations without verified map locations.

Account information

If you register, we store your email address, a salted password hash, the account creation time, and the versions and time of your acknowledgment of the Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and scanning limitations. We do not store your password in plain text. Email addresses are not verified in this version; registration does not establish that someone controls the supplied mailbox.

We store hashed session identifiers and expiration times to keep you signed in for up to 14 days. A necessary, HttpOnly session cookie is set when you sign in. Signing out revokes that session; changing your password revokes all your sessions. You can change your password or delete your account on the account page. Account deletion removes your account, password hash, acknowledgment records, saved searches and sessions from the active account database. Browser caches and infrastructure logs are separate; clearing site data removes local caches. If you cannot sign in, contact us using the email below; an email request alone does not establish account ownership.

We use this information to provide accounts and prevent abuse. Temporary sign-in attempt counters use network addresses and hashed email identifiers and expire after 15 minutes. Your account is not linked to your selected pet photos or their descriptors. We do not automatically record a search history. If you choose Save search, we store the name you enter, the selected animal type and shelter area, and the latest update time with your account. Saved searches remain until you remove them or delete your account. You can reopen, change, or remove them from your account. Match results and photos are not saved to your account. Local photo storage is optional and described above. Email verification, password-reset emails, social sign-in and marketing emails are not implemented.

Public listings and community reports

We retrieve public shelter listings and, when a community provider is enabled, public posts that explicitly report a lost pet, found pet, or pet sighting. We retain the source post ID, source name, timestamps, approximate or geotagged location supplied by the provider, a short text excerpt, public image URL, original post URL, classification, and deduplication identifiers. We do not intentionally retain the post author’s profile identity. Lost-pet posts are kept separate from the standard found-match ranking.

When your browser cannot read a public source image directly, it requests that image through our service. Our service receives the requested public image identifier and ordinary connection information needed to deliver the response. Infrastructure and security logs may include IP addresses, timestamps, requested URLs, and errors. We retain aggregate delivery counts, byte totals, and content identifiers for public source images to measure bandwidth and plan improvements. Those counters are not keyed to an account or to your selected pet photos. Counter records expire after 30 days without a recorded delivery. Public listing and report snapshots remain until replaced; infrastructure log retention depends on the hosting providers and their settings.

Browser storage

Your browser may cache the AI model, public source images, and descriptors of public shelter or community-report photos to make repeat searches faster. You can remove this stored material through your browser’s site-data controls. We store your optional analytics preference in this browser so you do not need to choose on every page. The application does not add advertising cookies. Analytics runs in an isolated browser frame that cannot access site cookies or storage and does not keep a persistent analytics identifier.

Optional Google Analytics

With your permission, ShelterScan uses Google Analytics to understand aggregate site usage and improve the product. We measure public page visits and basic interactions such as starting or completing a comparison, selecting an animal type or radius, using location lookup or indexed-area browsing, viewing coverage, opening a shelter result, and visiting Support. We send only predefined interaction names and limited choices such as dog or cat, a radius bucket, lookup method, coverage availability and the number of selected photos.

Your owner-provided pet photos and visual embeddings remain in your browser and are not sent to Google Analytics. We also exclude entered search text, pet names and descriptions, email addresses, phone numbers, street addresses, exact coordinates, browser geolocation, account information, saved-search identifiers and other free-form text. Analytics receives a fixed public page address without query strings, fragments or referrers.

Google receives ordinary connection information, including your IP address and browser information, and may derive an approximate location. This is not a claim of complete anonymity. The analytics identifier is temporary and resets on each page load; we do not link it to your account, create user profiles, enable Google Signals, advertising or remarketing, or track you across sites. See Google’s Privacy Policy.

Analytics is off until you choose “Allow analytics.” You can decline or withdraw using “Analytics preferences” in the footer. Browser Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals also keep it off. Declining, blocking analytics or a Google outage will not affect searching, matching, maps, photos or shelter inventory updates.

Service providers and external sites

Cloudflare and DigitalOcean provide site delivery and hosting. Cloudflare’s performance beacon is enabled on this site and sends page-visit and loading-performance information to Cloudflare. See Cloudflare’s description of its performance beacon. Your browser also contacts Hugging Face and jsDelivr for model/runtime files, Google Fonts for fonts, and public listing or community image providers for public photos. If Nextdoor community reports are enabled, following or directly loading their content contacts Nextdoor or its media provider. Those requests disclose ordinary connection information, such as your IP address and requested resource, to the receiving provider. Your selected pet photos and their descriptors are not included in those requests.

Following a shelter listing or community report takes you to a separate service with its own privacy practices. We do not control those sites. The current prototype does not sell your selected pet photos or run targeted advertising.

Changes

Changes will be posted here with a new effective date. Account registration presents the then-current Privacy Policy and Terms of Service before an account is created. The version acknowledged during registration is retained at a versioned policy URL.

Contact

For questions about this Privacy Policy or your privacy, email [email protected].