Carefully is operated by Vakil Ventures LLC (“Carefully,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). This policy explains what information Carefully handles, why we use it, which service providers receive it, how long we keep it, and the choices available to you. Carefully was previously named PawCast; references to PawCast in an older app version, receipt, system identifier, or legacy URL refer to the same service and operator.
The short version: Carefully does not sell personal information, run third-party advertising, or use Vet Visit recordings to build advertising profiles. We use data to provide the features you request, secure the service, process purchases, and improve reliability.
Information we collect
- Account information: your email address and, when supplied by Apple or Google, your name and provider account identifier. The Google Sign-In SDK may also process a phone number and other account information described in its shipped privacy manifest.
- Pet and household information: pet name, photo, breed, age, size, coat details, birthday or adoption date, notes you add, invited email addresses, membership role, and household activity. The current complete pet experience is designed for dogs.
- Location and weather: precise coordinates when you ask for local conditions or track a GPS walk, coarse location derived by a sign-in or platform provider, a saved place or city, and weather observations and recommendations produced for that place.
- Care and activity records: meals, water, medications, bathroom events, notes, timestamps, walk duration and distance, optional photos, and—when GPS tracking is enabled—route points.
- Vet Visit information: audio you intentionally record, its transcript, and AI-generated structured summaries, questions, medications, and aftercare items.
- Imported medical records: PDF, JPEG, or PNG source files you intentionally select, the original filename, file metadata, and AI-extracted summaries and proposed health details. Imported records are owner-only in the current service.
- Purchases: product, entitlement, transaction, renewal, and expiration information supplied by Apple or Google. Carefully does not receive your full payment-card details.
- Technical information: IP address, user agent, app version, device and platform type, device and randomly generated analytics identifiers, request and security logs, crash, app-hang, and performance diagnostics, product interactions, other usage data, and other technical data needed to operate, secure, and understand the service. We conservatively treat these identifiers, usage events, and diagnostics as linked to an account or device in our App Store disclosures, even when direct account fields are removed from a telemetry event.
- Support communications: messages and files you choose to send to us.
How we use information
- Provide personalized weather and activity guidance, Care logging, walk tracking, read-only sharing, Vet Visit summaries, owner-only medical-record import and review, synchronization, and account support.
- Authenticate accounts, prevent abuse, maintain subscription entitlement state, and protect users and the service.
- Send notifications you enable, such as safer walk windows, weather changes, and medication reminders.
- Diagnose failures and improve performance and usability using minimized telemetry. Some technical identifiers and provider telemetry remain associated with an account or device for authentication, security, app functionality, and analytics.
- Comply with law, enforce our Terms, and respond to valid legal requests.
Location and background activity
Carefully uses location in two different ways. For weather, it uses a coordinate or city to retrieve nearby conditions. For an active GPS walk, it uses location while the walk is running, including when Carefully is in the background, so it can calculate your route, distance, and duration. Android displays a persistent notification during this tracking. You can deny or revoke location access in device settings and use city-based weather or a time-only walk where offered.
Vet Visit recordings, medical records, and AI
Recording starts only after you choose it, ask everyone present, and confirm that everyone knows about and agrees to recording. Recording laws vary; you are responsible for following the laws that apply where you are. Audio is held in app-private local storage while recording or retrying, streamed for transcription, and removed from the device after successful processing or when you delete it. Carefully does not intentionally retain raw audio on its servers. Transcripts and structured summaries are retained with your account until you delete the visit or your account.
Medical-record import starts only after you select a supported file and confirm that you have permission to upload it. Carefully sends the source file to its AI processor to propose a document type, overview, and source-linked health details. The source and extraction are encrypted in Carefully’s live service and remain owner-only. Proposed details do not activate medications or reminders; you must compare them with the original and explicitly confirm, correct, or reject them.
We use OpenAI as a processor for Vet Visit transcription and structured summarization and for medical-record extraction. OpenAI states that API data is not used to train its models by default. Depending on the endpoint and Carefully’s approved data-control configuration, limited submitted content may be retained for abuse monitoring for up to 30 days. Vet summaries and medical-record extractions are informational, may contain errors, and are not veterinary advice.
When we share information
We disclose only what is needed to service providers acting on our behalf or when required by law. Providers may include:
- Open-Meteo for weather, using coordinates without your Carefully identity.
- OpenAI for Vet Visit transcription and structured summarization and for extracting proposed information from medical-record files you choose to import.
- Apple, Google, and Resend for sign-in, purchases, and email verification. Google Sign-In may process linked name, email address, phone number, coarse location, provider user ID, device ID, other usage data, and other technical data for app functionality and analytics. Carefully does not use that data for advertising or tracking.
- Hosting, database, monitoring, and analytics providers for secure operation, diagnostics, and product measurement. When production telemetry is enabled, these include Sentry for scrubbed crash and performance diagnostics and PostHog for a small allowlist of product events associated with a generated device identifier. Carefully filters account fields, pet names, transcripts, medical records, care notes, precise locations, and similar private content from telemetry, but conservatively discloses technical identifiers, usage events, and diagnostics as linked to an account or device. These providers are not used for advertising or cross-company tracking.
A pet owner may invite a viewer to one dog. A viewer can see the shared profile, place-level weather, Care history, walk summaries without route geometry, Vet questions, and structured summaries. Viewers cannot access precise coordinates, route geometry, raw Vet transcripts, imported medical-record source files or extractions, owner account information, or billing information.
Storage, security, and retention
We use access controls, encrypted transport, app-private device storage, encryption for retained Vet Visit and imported medical-record content, and other administrative and technical safeguards appropriate to the information. No method of storage is completely secure. Account-created records are retained while your account is active unless you delete them. After deletion synchronizes, Carefully removes the clinical content from a deleted Vet Visit, the details from a deleted Care entry, and the route, weather, notes, and measurements from a deleted Walk in the live service. We retain only the minimal identifiers, ownership, category where needed, and update/deletion times required to propagate the deletion and prevent an older copy from restoring the record. Deleting an imported medical record removes its source and extraction from Carefully’s live service; encrypted backups age out under the backup-retention period described below. Operational and security logs are retained only as long as reasonably needed. When an account is deleted, active data is removed or de-identified and encrypted backups age out within 14 days, except information we must retain for security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or law.
Your choices and rights
- Review or edit pet profiles, logs, permissions, sharing, and notification settings in Carefully.
- Turn off precise or background location, microphone, photos, camera, or notifications in device settings.
- Leave a shared pet or revoke a viewer’s access.
- Manage subscriptions through Apple or Google. Deleting Carefully does not automatically cancel store billing.
- Delete individual Vet Visits and imported medical records where available, or delete your full account in Carefully account settings.
- Request account deletion without the app at carefully.pet/delete-account.
Depending on where you live, you may also have rights to access, correct, export, object to, restrict, or request deletion of personal information. Contact us to make a request. We may verify your identity before acting.
Children
Carefully is designed for adult pet parents and is not directed to anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from a person under 18. Contact us if you believe a minor has provided information.
International use and changes
Carefully is operated from the United States. If you use it elsewhere, information may be processed in the United States and other places where our processors operate. We may update this policy as Carefully changes. Material updates will be communicated in the app or by another appropriate method, and the date above will change.
Contact
Email [email protected] with privacy questions or requests. Carefully is operated by Vakil Ventures LLC.