Privacy policy

Who we are

Pet Papers is an iPhone and iPad app published by DosSantos Systems LLC, 488 Pleasant St, Unit 1A, New Bedford, MA 02740, United States. In this policy, “we” means DosSantos Systems LLC and “you” means anyone who uses the app or opens a Pet Papers link.

Your records stay on your devices and in your iCloud

Everything you add to Pet Papers, including pets, vaccine and test records, documents, photos, preventives, medications, allergies, care notes and contacts, is stored on your device and in your own iCloud account using Apple’s CloudKit private database. It syncs between your devices through iCloud. We can’t see it and we don’t keep a copy.

If you share your household, Pet Papers uses Apple’s iCloud sharing. You invite people through Apple’s sharing sheet, and each person you invite can either make changes or only view. They see the shared pets through their own iCloud account. You can stop sharing with them at any time.

Apple handles iCloud storage under its own privacy policy. If you aren’t signed in to iCloud, your records stay on that device only.

Reading documents happens on your device

When you add a certificate, invoice or photo of a record, Pet Papers reads it on your device. It uses the text already inside a PDF, Apple’s built-in text recognition and, on devices that support it, Apple Intelligence running on the device. The document isn’t sent to us or to anyone else to be read.

Scans and photos you keep are saved as documents with your records. They sync through your iCloud like everything else, and they leave your devices only inside a share link or PDF that you create. In a share link they are encrypted.

No accounts, ads or tracking

You don’t create an account with us. The app contains no advertising, no analytics or crash reporting services from us or anyone else, and no tracking of any kind. We don’t sell or share personal information, and we don’t combine your data with data from other companies.

If you’ve turned on Share With App Developers in your device’s Analytics settings, Apple may share crash reports and usage statistics for Pet Papers with us. Apple shares them in a way that doesn’t identify you, under Apple’s own privacy policy, and you can turn this off in the Settings app at any time.

Share links

When you create a link, Pet Papers makes a snapshot of only the records and documents you chose. Unless you turn it off when you share, the snapshot also includes your name and phone number as the owner contact. Pet Papers encrypts the snapshot on your device with a new random key and uploads the encrypted data to our server at petpapers.cloud. The key is part of the link itself, in the part after the # sign. Web browsers never send that part to a server, so we never receive the key and can’t read what you shared. If you also make a PDF, an encrypted copy of it goes up with the snapshot.

Anyone who has the full link can open it until you turn it off. The page decrypts the records in their browser. The private name you give a link in the app, like the name of a kennel, is never uploaded, not even in encrypted form.

For each link, our server stores:

• a random link ID and the date it was created
• the encrypted snapshot, which we can’t read
• a one-way hash of the link’s management token, so only your devices can update or turn off the link
• the size of each snapshot and when it was uploaded
• when your device made each snapshot, so an older copy never replaces a newer one
• a random ID and the size of each encrypted file in the snapshot, like a certificate image or the PDF
• a one-way fingerprint of each snapshot, so your devices don’t upload the same records twice
• how many times the link was opened, and when, so the app can show you that it was viewed

To make sure uploads come from the genuine Pet Papers app, your device also registers a key with Apple’s App Attest service, and our server keeps that key’s ID, its public part and a counter. It doesn’t identify you.

When you turn off a link, the app tells our server as soon as your device is online, usually right away, and the server deletes the link’s encrypted data at once. We keep only a record that the link ID was turned off, so it can never be reused.

How long things are kept on our server:

• When you update a link, the files from the previous snapshot stay readable for 10 minutes, so someone who has the page open doesn’t lose it mid-view. Then they’re deleted from the live server.
• We keep the times of the 50 most recent opens of each link, until you turn the link off.
• Database backups are kept for 14 days. They contain link IDs, token hashes, snapshot sizes and times, open times and the record of turned-off links, never readable records.
• Each night we copy the encrypted files to a backup on our server and keep each night’s copy for 14 days. Files from a snapshot you replaced can stay in those copies for up to 14 days, still encrypted and unreadable to us. Turning a link off removes its files from every copy at once.
• Server logs are kept for 14 days. They record which kind of request was made and when, with link IDs and IP addresses removed.
• The daily totals described below are kept indefinitely. They contain no link IDs.

If someone sends you a link

The page loads from petpapers.cloud and decrypts the records in your browser. It sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser and loads nothing from other companies, not even fonts. Our server notes the time the link was opened, counting several opens within a minute as one, so the person who shared it can see it was viewed. It doesn’t record who opened it.

Daily totals

We count how many times shared pages are opened each day, and whether they were opened from a link, the QR code shown on screen or the QR code on a PDF. We also count how many links are created, updated and turned off. These are daily totals. They aren’t tied to a link, a device or an address, and we use them only to see how Pet Papers is used.

To tell the QR codes apart, the address in a Pet Papers QR code ends with a short marker, like “?s=qr”. It says only which kind of code was scanned. The part of the link that unlocks the records still never reaches our server.

IP addresses and hosting

Like any website, our server sees the IP address of each request. We use it only in memory to limit abuse, for example too many requests in a short time. IP addresses are not written to our database or our logs, and each one is forgotten within about an hour.

Our server is a computer we run ourselves in the United States. No cloud hosting company, content delivery network or analytics service sits between your browser and it, so no other company logs your visits for us. Hover, where the petpapers.cloud domain is registered, answers the lookups that point browsers to our server.

Notifications

Reminders are scheduled on your device as local notifications. We don’t run a push notification service and don’t know when your reminders fire. The only push messages Pet Papers receives are Apple’s silent iCloud sync notices, which tell the app that your records changed.

Purchases

Pet Papers is sold through Apple’s App Store. Apple handles the payment and we never receive your name, payment details or Apple Account information.

Support messages

If you use the message form on our support page, we receive what you write, the email address you give us, the topic you pick, and your device and Pet Papers version if you add them. We use them only to reply to you, and we keep the conversation so we have the context if you write again.

The message is stored without your IP address. It’s encrypted on our server as soon as it arrives, and a copy is emailed to us through Twilio SendGrid, so it passes through SendGrid and our email provider on its way to us. We never add you to a mailing list, and we never share your message. Ask us to delete it and we will.

Children

Pet Papers isn’t directed to children under 13. We don’t collect personal information through the app, so we don’t knowingly collect any from children.

Your choices

• Turn off any link in the app to delete its encrypted data from our server once your device is online.
• Delete a record or document in the app to remove it from your devices and your iCloud.
• Move a pet to Past pets to turn off its reminders. Its records are kept, so it can come back anytime.
• Use Export everything in the app’s Settings to save a zip file of your records on your device.
• To remove everything, including past pets, delete Pet Papers’ data from iCloud. Open the Settings app, tap your name, then iCloud, then Manage Storage.

Since we don’t hold readable personal information, we usually can’t look anything up for you. If you have a question about your data, send us a message from the support page and we’ll explain what we can.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we’ll post the new version here and update the date at the top. If a change affects how shared links work, we’ll also mention it in the app’s release notes.

Contact

Questions about privacy: send us a message from the support page.

By mail: DosSantos Systems LLC, 488 Pleasant St, Unit 1A, New Bedford, MA 02740, United States.