Privacy policy

1. In short

Najdimo helps lost animals get home again. Everything that brings animals home is free for everyone. To do that we need some personal data. Here is a summary; the details follow.

• We use data to run the service: account, reports, matching, chat, alerts and payments.

• We show publicly only photos, the animal's attributes, an approximate area, the date and the circumstances. We never show a chip number, phone number, email address, the stored point of a report or the place where a found animal is kept.

• Only you can see the stored (approximate) point of your report, unless you share it in a chat yourself.
• We switch on Google Analytics only with your consent. If you decline, we send nothing to Google.
• We only count ads, without cookies and without any marker that could reveal who you are.

• The main database is in the EU (Frankfurt), and so are our servers and photos. Some providers are in the United States; safeguards apply (chapter 13).

• You can export your data and delete your account. Use your rights at [email protected].

2. Who is the controller

The controller of your personal data is the company SIGNAPPS, grafična in digitalna agencija, d.o.o., Kolomban 34B, 6280 Ankaran – Ancarano, Slovenia, registration number 6575536000. In this text "we" means that company as the operator of Najdimo.

For questions about privacy and to use your rights, write to [email protected] or call 040 975 210 (+386 40 975 210).

Shelters and other organisations are responsible for data they collect outside Najdimo (for example when taking in an animal).

Grammatically masculine terms in this text (for example "user", "controller", "moderator") apply to persons of all genders.

3. What data we process

You give us most of the data yourself: when you create an account, publish a report or write in a chat. Some data arises when you use the service, for example technical logs.

Do you have to provide data? Without an account you can browse and report a found or sighted animal anonymously. For an account we need an email address or sign-in with Google or Apple. Other fields, such as the phone number, are optional. If you do not provide data that a feature strictly needs, we cannot provide that feature.

4. Why we process data and on what legal basis

Where the legal basis is "legitimate interest", we have assessed that your interests and rights do not override our interest in keeping the service safe and free of abuse. You can object to such processing (chapter 15).

Where processing rests on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing before it.

5. What others can see

• Anyone, even without an account, sees: photos, the animal's attributes, the approximate area, the date and the circumstances you described.

• Nobody sees: the chip number, phone number, email address, the stored point of a report and the place where a found animal is kept.

• Only you see: the approximate point of your report (shifted by 20 to 30 m). We show it to the other person in a chat only if you share it there yourself.

• The two people in a chat see the aliases and messages. Moderators read messages only if someone has reported the chat as abuse.

• Shelters and vets: when they enter a chip number that is registered with us, we notify the person who is looking for the animal. We show the shelter or vet no personal data.

Please do not enter other people's personal data in free text (circumstances, notes). Please also do not publish photos in which people can be recognised.

6. Photos and location

Photos. Photos can contain metadata (EXIF), for example the time and position of the shot. On your device we can use it to suggest a place and time for the form. We remove the metadata from the copies we show publicly. The originals are private.

Report location. We never store the raw GPS point. When you save, we randomly move the point you mark by 20 to 30 m: first on your device, and again on our server. The shift is made once and does not change between views. The stored point is therefore approximate and only you can see it (labelled "Approximate location · visible only to you"). The public sees a wider area calculated from that point: at least 500 m radius for a lost animal, at least 150 m for a found or sighted one. We do not write coordinates to logs. 30 days after a report closes, we blur the stored point further, so only the blurred point and the area name remain.

Device location. We use your device location only when you choose to, for example to set the place of a report. We do not track or store your device location; we store only the shifted report point you confirm.

Alerts when you are nearby (mobile app). If you turn this feature on and allow the app to use your location in the background, your phone itself checks whether you have entered an approximate area where a lost pet was last seen. These areas are public and approximate. The check happens only on your phone: your location is never sent to us or to anyone else. You can turn the feature off at any time in the app settings, and we then remove all areas from your phone.

Data on your phone. So that the app also works offline, it keeps public reports from your area on your phone: approximate areas and small photos, for at most 7 days. It never keeps report points, chip numbers, contact details or chats. When you sign out, we delete this data.

Map and place search. Your browser or app loads map tiles directly from OpenFreeMap servers. They can see your IP address and use no cookies. Place search and the area name for a point on the map run on our own servers, using open data from the Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia. We send the search text and the point to no one else and do not store them.

7. Reports without an account

You can report a found or sighted animal without an account. This creates an anonymous session. When you submit the report you receive a private link that you use to manage the report and to chat. We store only a hash of the link, not the link itself. For that reason we cannot restore it unless you optionally entered an email address.

To limit abuse we keep a random device identifier and a hashed IP address. We delete the hashed IP address after 48 hours. You can delete the report and its data at any time through the private link.

8. Matching, artificial intelligence and automatic hiding

Matching

When you publish a report, we compare it with other reports: by chip number, area, time and the animal's attributes. Later we will also compare how similar the photos are. The result is only a suggestion. The person looking for the animal decides: they confirm or reject the suggestion. A suggestion has no legal or similarly significant effect on anyone.

AI assistance

When this feature is switched on, we will send the photos you upload to a report or pet profile to two providers:

• Anthropic PBC (USA), the Claude model with image reading: suggests species, breed, colours, size, collar and distinguishing marks, and gives a safety signal about the content of the image.

• Voyage AI (USA): computes a numerical representation of the image (a vector) that we use to find visually similar photos.

We do not send the providers any user identifiers, EXIF metadata or location data. The results are suggestions: you confirm or correct them before publishing. We store the result against a hash of the image so that we do not process the same image twice. Images flagged by the safety signal are held for review by human moderators before publication.

Automatic temporary hiding

If three independent people report the same listing for abuse, we hide it temporarily until a moderator reviews it. The moderator then decides whether to restore or remove it. If you think a report was hidden unnecessarily, write to [email protected]. A person will review the decision again.

9. Payments

Current status. Payments in Najdimo are at present in test mode only. No real money moves and no card is charged. These chapters on payments apply once we enable live payments.

How a payment works. Payments are processed by Stripe Payments Europe, Limited (Ireland) through Stripe Checkout. When you pay, we redirect you to Stripe's page. We never see or store your card details. We keep the payment ID, purpose, amount, status and timestamps. For part of the processing (for example fraud prevention and legal obligations) Stripe is an independent controller and its own privacy policy applies.

What is always free. Reporting a lost, found or sighted animal, the map and alerts, matching (chip, photo, attributes), chat, the printable PDF poster with a QR code, sharing and chip lookup are free for everyone, forever. Shelters and municipalities use everything for free. Paid options never restrict this. The QR code on the poster leads only to the public listing.

What you can pay for. Now: a thank-you contribution after a reunion with your animal (at least €2) and an optional contribution after reporting a lost animal (€2–5). Later: a boost for a report's visibility, the Premium Protect subscription and the monthly supporter plan Podpornik. Vet clinics can become a paying Vet Partner (below).

Rewards for finders. We do not pay out rewards and do not handle payments between users. If an owner states in a report that they offer a reward, that statement is part of the report (chapter 3). The owner and the finder arrange any reward between themselves, outside Najdimo, so we collect no payment data about it.

Contributions are voluntary payments to a company to help run the service. They are not donations.

Vet Partner (business customers)

Vet Partner is a monthly business subscription for vet clinics. It includes a verified clinic profile, featured placement in the "nearest vet" ad slots in their area, a mention in lost-pet alerts and on posters for their region (always labelled "Ad"), and a monthly report with aggregate figures (impressions, clicks, reunions in the area). The report contains no personal data.

• Data: clinic data, the contact person's name, email address and phone number, billing details and VAT ID, and invoices. Stripe Billing handles the subscription and VAT invoices; we never see card details. Stripe is in test mode only for now.

• Legal basis: contract (Article 6(1)(b)) and legal obligation for invoices (Article 6(1)(c)).

• Retention: we keep the clinic profile and the contact person's data until the subscription ends and delete them within 30 days after that, or earlier on request; invoices and payment records for as long as tax and accounting law requires (expected up to 10 years).

• Stays free: reporting a found animal, chip lookup, matches and chat work for vets exactly as for everyone else.

10. Analytics and cookies

We measure the use of Najdimo only if you allow it.

• On the web we use Google Analytics 4 and in the app Google Analytics for Firebase. Both tools send data to the same Google property, each through its own stream. The provider is Google Ireland Limited.

• Until you decide, we do not load any Google script, send any request to Google or set any Google cookie.

• All four Google consent settings (analytics_storage, ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization) are denied by default. If you accept, we grant only analytics_storage. The advertising settings stay denied.

• Events contain only the event name and parameters such as municipality, statistical region, species, report type, ad slot and ad ID, and amount range. They never contain names, email addresses, phone numbers, chip numbers, coordinates, free text, or report or user IDs.

• Google signals are off, data sharing is off, and we keep data in Google Analytics for 14 months.

• We store your choice (choice, version and time) in the zz_consent cookie for 12 months, and in the app in the device's secure storage. We ask you again after 12 months or when providers or purposes change.

• You can withdraw consent at any time through "Cookie settings" in the page footer or in the app settings. Withdrawal takes effect at once and we delete the Google cookies.

The list of all cookies and similar storage is in the cookie policy.

11. Ad counting

Ads are always labelled "Ad". There are no ads in the report-lost and report-found flows, at sign-in, in chat or at payment.

We count impressions and clicks in our own database, aggregated by ad, ad slot, day and region. We use no cookies, store nothing on your device and record no identifiers that could reveal who you are. For that reason we do not need consent for this counting. We choose an ad by context, for example the region and species, not by who you are.

A click goes through our redirect to the advertiser's page. From there the advertiser's rules apply. Advertisers receive only aggregated reports from us (impressions and clicks).

12. Who we entrust data to

We do not sell data. The providers we need to run the service are:

We also share data with:

• other users, to the extent described in chapter 5;

• authorities (courts, police, inspectorates) where the law requires us to;

• advertisers, only aggregated data without personal data (chapter 11).

13. Transfers outside the EU

The main database is in the EU. Some providers in chapter 12 are based in the United States or may process data there. For such transfers we use:

• the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, where the provider is certified under it;
• otherwise, the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

You can ask for a copy of the safeguards at the email address in chapter 2.

14. How long we keep data

Deleting your account. When you delete your account, we disable it at once, close open reports, and delete or anonymise the data within 30 days. The exception is payment records, which we must keep by law. Organisations must transfer or delete the organisation first.

15. Your rights

You have the right to:

• access your data and receive a copy;

• rectification of inaccurate data;

• erasure of your data;

• restriction of processing;

• portability: you receive your data in a common machine-readable format;

• object to processing based on legitimate interest;

• withdraw consent at any time.

You can export your data (a JSON or ZIP file) and delete your account in your account settings. Anonymous finders can delete their report and data through the private link. For anything else, write to [email protected].

We reply within one month at the latest. For complex requests the law allows us to extend this period; we tell you within the first month. Using your rights is free of charge. If we cannot confirm your identity, we may ask you for further information.

Complaint. If you think we are acting unlawfully, you can complain to the supervisory authority: Informacijski pooblaščenec Republike Slovenije (Information Commissioner of the Republic of Slovenia), Dunajska cesta 22, 1000 Ljubljana, www.ip-rs.si. You may also complain to the supervisory authority in the country where you live or work.

16. Security

We protect data with organisational and technical measures, including:

• connections are encrypted;

• the database cannot be reached directly from a browser or the app: data is accessed only through our server, which checks that you are allowed to see it;

• administrator access requires strong authentication;
• backups are encrypted;
• the number of requests is limited, and anonymous forms are protected by a "not a robot" check;
• copies of photos shown publicly carry no EXIF metadata.

If a personal data breach occurs that could put your rights at risk, we will act as the law requires, including by notifying the Information Commissioner and, where necessary, you.

17. Children

You can create an account if you are at least 15 years old. If we learn that a younger person created an account, we delete it. Paid options are intended for adults. If you are a parent or guardian and think a child has entered data with us, write to [email protected].

18. Changes to this policy

We may change this policy, for example when we add a new feature or provider. We will tell you about important changes in advance in the app, on the website or by email. The date of the last update is at the top of the page.