Carefully is operated by Vakil Ventures LLC (“Carefully,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). Carefully was previously named PawCast. This policy explains the information handled by the current Carefully mobile release, how we use and disclose it, how long we keep it, and the choices available to you. 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, show third-party advertising, or use personal information for cross-company tracking. Carefully brings pet profiles, daily care, weather, tracked walks, visit follow-through, medical records, household sharing, and account controls into one service.
Information handled by the current release
- Account information: the email address used for sign-in. Apple or Google sign-in may also supply a name, profile-image URL, and provider account identifier. The Google Sign-In SDK may process linked account and technical information under Google's provider terms when invoked. Carefully stores account and session identifiers needed to authenticate you, secure the service, synchronize records, and process account deletion. Email-code sign-in uses Resend to deliver a one-time code.
- Private-beta interest: if you join the private beta list on carefully.pet, Carefully stores the email address you provide separately from app accounts so we can notify you about beta availability and launch updates. Carefully also uses a keyed digest of the request’s network address to limit abuse; the raw address is not stored in the beta request-limit record.
- Pet profile information: the pet name and profile details, including breed or mix, life stage, size, health conditions, mobility needs, routine preferences, and species (dog or cat). A selected pet photo is copied into private storage on that device. The app syncs an opaque local reference but does not upload the selected photo bytes through its profile-sync service.
- Care and Vet-question content: routine-care entries you create, including event type, date and time, meal or treat details, water, bathroom events, whether food was given with medication, play, litter care, observations, and optional notes. Carefully also collects questions you prepare for a Vet visit and whether you mark a question complete. These records synchronize with your account so they can be restored on your signed-in devices.
- Location and weather: location is optional. If you choose current-location weather, Carefully requests precise device location and keeps the most recent coordinate and place label in private app storage on that device. The coordinate is sent over HTTPS to OpenStreetMap Foundation's Nominatim service for a place label and to Open-Meteo for weather and air-quality information. If you choose a city instead, Carefully sends the city search to Open-Meteo and stores the selected coordinate and label locally. Carefully may synchronize a place-level weather snapshot for your dog; that snapshot does not include the coordinate. Weather providers receive network information such as an IP address as part of the request.
- Reminders and preferences: unit, theme, reminder, notification, quiet-hours, and permission preferences. Most notification scheduling and display preferences remain on the device. Carefully uses notification permission only after you choose to enable a reminder or alert.
- Purchase and entitlement information: product, transaction, renewal, expiration, and entitlement information supplied by Apple or Google is retained to provide Carefully+, restore purchases, maintain existing-subscriber continuity, and process renewals, cancellation, expiration, refund, revocation, and store notifications. Carefully does not receive full payment-card details.
- Technical and security information: IP address, user agent, app and platform version, request identifiers, path and timing, and security and error information used to authenticate requests, rate-limit abuse, synchronize records, diagnose failures, and protect the service. Carefully uses its own server health, TLS, backup, request-log, and alert controls; remote Sentry and PostHog telemetry are disabled. Logs omit request bodies, authorization headers, account fields, pet names, Care notes, Vet questions, visit audio or transcripts, precise location, and similar private content. Apple and Google may provide platform diagnostics under their terms.
- Support communications: messages and files you choose to send so we can respond and keep an appropriate support record.
Walk, visit, health, and sharing information
- Walks: when you start GPS tracking, Carefully processes precise route samples, timestamps, distance, duration, pause state, and available weather context. Background location is used only during a user-started tracked walk. Time-only walks remain available without route access.
- Visits: questions and answers, consent acknowledgement, audio you choose to record, transcription, processing status, generated summaries, aftercare items, and medication reminders. Recording starts only after you confirm that everyone present knows and agrees, and you remain responsible for applicable law. Carefully streams the recording to its transcription provider for the requested operation, does not write raw visit audio to its servers or object storage, and deletes the encrypted on-device copy after successful processing. If processing fails, the encrypted copy remains only on your device so you can retry or delete it.
- Medical records and conversations: documents you choose, extracted fields, your review and corrections, source citations, and record-grounded questions and answers. Carefully+ may also assign an owner-only email address to a pet so a clinic can send a message and supported PDF or image attachments into that pet's record history. Carefully stores the normalized message body, sender, subject, delivery time, and supported attachments in encrypted form; it does not retain executable HTML or transport headers. Sender authentication is a risk signal, not proof that a sender is a veterinarian, and emailed facts remain untrusted until you review them. Temporary local previews are cleaned up after use or recovery.
- Household sharing: invitation token, invited email, access status, and the pet data made readable to an accepted viewer. Viewers cannot edit, create AI output, buy a subscription for the owner, or view owner-only precise routes and medical source files.
Carefully+ gates only new AI creation: visit summaries, medical-record import and extraction, and new record-grounded questions. Cancellation or a runtime safety switch does not hide owned summaries, records, citations, or conversations.
How we use information
- Authenticate and manage accounts; save and synchronize pet profiles, Care entries, walks, visit data, reviewed medical records, sharing relationships, and entitlement state.
- Provide local weather, air-quality, PawScore, Outlook, route tracking, visit processing, source-grounded record tools, and reminders you enable.
- Respond to support, prevent abuse, diagnose failures, protect the service, and maintain reliable synchronization.
- Send private-beta availability and launch updates you requested.
- Comply with law, enforce our Terms, and respond to valid legal requests.
Carefully provides informational pet-care and weather context. It is not veterinary advice, does not diagnose or treat any condition, and is not a regulated medical device.
Location and weather
Carefully uses location for local outdoor context you request and, with separate permission, during a user-started tracked walk. Android displays a persistent foreground-service notification while route tracking is active. You can deny or revoke location and use visits, Care, profiles, records, and time-only walks without it. Carefully never uses location for advertising, cross-company tracking, or tracking people.
When we disclose information
Carefully discloses information only as needed to provide requested functionality, operate and secure the service, or comply with law. Service providers include:
- Hosting and database providers for account, synchronization, and security services.
- Apple, Google, and Resend for sign-in, purchases, store services, email-code delivery, and Google Workspace receipt of owner-directed medical-record email. Resend is not used for inbound medical-record email.
- OpenStreetMap Foundation's Nominatim service and Open-Meteo for place labels, city search, weather, and air-quality information.
- AI, transcription, and document-processing providers for the visit or record operation you request, subject to Carefully’s configured data controls.
These providers process information under their applicable agreements, terms, and privacy policies. Carefully does not disclose personal information to data brokers and does not share it for third-party advertising or cross-company tracking.
Storage, security, and retention
Carefully uses HTTPS in transit, access controls, app-private storage, encrypted local sensitive storage, and appropriate administrative and technical safeguards. No method is completely secure. Account-created records are kept while your account is active unless deleted. Operational, security, and support records are kept only as long as reasonably needed for their purpose, disputes, fraud prevention, or law. Carefully does not retain raw visit audio on its servers. For the current provider, the audio transcription endpoint is documented with no content retention. Later text-generation requests may be retained in abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days under default controls; Carefully does not use API content to train its own models.
Private-beta email addresses are retained until beta and launch notices are complete or you ask us to remove your address. Keyed request-limit digests are retained only for abuse prevention and are not used to identify or contact you.
If Carefully+ ends, existing reviewed records and timelines remain readable, but new record email is held encrypted without AI processing for up to seven days. Restoring Carefully+ within that period resumes processing; otherwise the message body and source attachments are purged and only a content-free expired-delivery receipt remains. Google mailbox copies are permanently deleted only after an encrypted, replay-safe Carefully receipt commits. Rotated pet inbox addresses are never reassigned; only a non-reversible lookup digest is retained after retirement.
Deleting an individual Care entry or Vet question removes its content from the active service after deletion synchronizes, while minimal identifiers and deletion timestamps may remain long enough to prevent an older device from restoring it. Deleting your account removes or de-identifies active account data and revokes active sessions. Encrypted backups age out within 14 days, except information that must be retained for security, fraud prevention, dispute resolution, or law. A pseudonymous deletion receipt may be retained temporarily so the app can confirm completion without recreating the deleted account.
Your choices and rights
- Edit pet profiles, Care entries, Vet questions, reviewed health details, and preferences in Carefully; delete supported records and conversations.
- Deny or revoke location, microphone, notification, camera, photo, and document permissions in device settings. Carefully requests each permission when its feature is first used.
- Delete your account in Carefully's account settings or request deletion without the app at carefully.pet/delete-account.
- Manage a store subscription through Apple or Google. Deleting Carefully does not automatically cancel store billing.
- Leave the private-beta list at any time by emailing [email protected].
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.
International use and changes
Carefully is operated from the United States, and information may be processed in the United States or other places where providers operate. We may update this policy as the service changes and will update the effective date and provide other notice when appropriate.
Contact
Email [email protected] with privacy questions or requests. Carefully is operated by Vakil Ventures LLC.