Arkly
Privacy Policy
Effective Aug 19, 2026
What Arkly collects, what it sends to other companies, and how long it keeps things. Written to match what the app actually does.
The short version. We collect what the app needs to build a care plan and remind you about it. We do not run advertising, we do not use analytics or tracking SDKs, and we do not sell your data or your pet's records to anyone.
Photographs you take are sent to AI providers so they can be analysed. That is the one place your content leaves our servers, and it is listed by name below.
Who this is from
Arkly is an iPhone app for looking after pets, published by Arkly. This policy covers the app and this website.
What we collect
When you sign in
Sign in with Apple gives us a stable identifier for your account and, if you allow it, your name and email address. We never see or store a password, because there isn't one. Apple returns your name only on the very first authorization, so if you have used the app before, a later sign-in does not overwrite the name we already have.
What you tell us about your pet
Name, species, breed, birthday or life stage, weight, activity level, where they live, known conditions and allergies, and anything you add later: vaccination and medication records, vet visits, and your vet's contact details. This is the material the care plan is built from.
Photographs
Photos of your pet, of a symptom you want checked, and of vet paperwork you want read. Two things happen to every image on the way in:
- It is re-encoded as a JPEG, which removes the EXIF metadata, including the GPS coordinates a phone camera normally writes into a photo taken at home.
- It is stored on a private disk under a random filename, and is only ever served through a signed link that expires after 60 minutes.
Location, only if you offer it
Weather-aware scheduling needs to know roughly where your pet is, so a walk can be moved out of the afternoon heat. The app asks the phone for reduced accuracy, and we round what we receive to two decimal places before storing it: roughly a kilometre. We do not ask for, receive, or keep a precise location, and a household that never shares one is simply skipped by that feature rather than given a default.
Your device, for reminders
If you allow notifications, we store the push token Apple issues so we can send reminders. The token belongs to the device rather than to you: if a phone is handed on and someone else signs in, the token moves with the phone and stops delivering the previous owner's reminders.
Your subscription
Apple tells us whether a subscription is active, when it renews, and when it lapses. We never receive your payment details. Those stay with Apple.
What we do not collect
- No analytics or tracking SDKs. There is no Google Analytics, no Firebase, no Facebook SDK, and no advertising identifier in this app.
- No advertising, and no sale or sharing of your data with data brokers.
- No precise location, and no location at all unless you turn on the weather feature.
- No contacts, no photo library scanning. We receive only the images you pick or take for a specific purpose.
Who else sees your data
These are the only companies your content is sent to, and only for the purpose listed:
| Who | What they receive | Why |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | The photograph being analysed | Identifying a breed, reading a symptom photo, and pulling the dates off vet paperwork |
| Google (Gemini) | The onboarding photograph | A second opinion on breed, so the app can tell you when two models disagree instead of asserting one answer |
| Apple | Your sign-in, push tokens, coarse location, subscription status | Sign in with Apple, notification delivery, WeatherKit forecasts, and App Store billing |
| Sentry | Crash and error reports | Finding out that the app broke, and where |
| Our email provider | The email address you are inviting | Delivering household invitations |
We also use a hosting provider to run the servers and store the database and uploaded files. Each of these companies has its own privacy policy, and each is used only for the job above.
Sharing inside a household
Pets belong to a household, not to one person, so everyone in it sees the same pets, routines and records. Roles limit what people can change: a sitter can tick tasks off and see what is going on, but cannot alter pets or medical records. Other members' email addresses are not shown to sitters.
How long we keep things
- A pet you add before signing up is tied to your device and deleted after 14 days if you never create an account.
- Deleting your account starts a 30-day window. Everything stops working immediately, but nothing is destroyed until the window closes, so signing back in cancels it.
- Backups. We keep a daily backup of the database for 14 days, so that a failure cannot lose your pet's history. Deleted records go from the live database at the end of the window above, and from the backups within 14 days after that.
- Records outlive the person who added them. If you leave a household you share, the pets and their history stay with the household rather than going with you.
What you can do
- See and correct anything about your pet, in the app.
- Export a pet's full record as a PDF: weight, vaccines, medications, visits and past checks.
- Delete your account from Profile, with the grace period above.
- Turn off notifications or location in iOS Settings at any time. The app keeps working without either.
If you want a copy of your data or want something erased sooner, email support@getarkly.com and we will handle it.
Children
Arkly is not directed at children and is not intended for use by anyone under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
Security
Traffic is encrypted in transit. Uploaded files sit on a private disk and are reachable only through short-lived signed links. Access to a pet's records is checked against the household it belongs to on every request. No system is perfect, and we do not claim otherwise. But if something goes wrong we will tell you rather than hope you don't notice.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect or who we send it to, we will update the effective date at the top and say so in the app.
Contact
Questions about any of this: support@getarkly.com.