Privacy – Furly

Contact

• Phone: +49 174 3389049
• Email: info@simplynext.de

VAT identification number

Pursuant to Section 27a of the German VAT Act (UStG): DE463824630

Professional title and professional regulations

• Professional title: App developer
• Awarded in: Germany

Data protection officer

No data protection officer has been appointed, as the legal requirements for this are not met. For all data protection matters, you can reach us at the email address above.

1. Principles and overview

Furly is an app for pet owners: pet profiles, health record, reminders, daily routine, a places finder, emergency card and guide, an AI assistant, Lost & Found functions and the optional subscription Furly Pro. We process personal data exclusively in order to provide these functions.

Below you will find an overview. The details of each processing operation are set out in the respective sections.

2. Account and sign-in

An account is required to use Furly. You can register or sign in in three ways:

• Email and password: We store your email address and a cryptographic hash of your password (the password itself is never stored in plain text). To confirm your email address and for “Forgot password”, we send emails via our backend provider Supabase.
• Sign in with Google: If you choose this option, you are redirected to Google. Google then transmits your email address, your name and, if applicable, your profile picture to us. Google learns that you are signing in to Furly.
• Sign in with Apple: As with Google. Apple offers you the option of hiding your real email address and using an anonymous forwarding address instead.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the user contract). Google and Apple are each independently responsible for the data processing they carry out in the context of sign-in; their privacy policies apply.

3. Pet profiles, health record and reminders

You can create profiles of your pets (name, breed, date of birth, weight, photo, free description), document health entries and set reminders.

Important note on third-party data

In the health record you can optionally enter names of vets and clinics, as well as in your personal list of vets. These are personal data of third parties. Please only enter such data to the extent necessary for your own documentation, and do not publish it in the community.

This data is stored in our database and is assigned to your account. Other users have no access to it (technically secured by row-based access rules, “Row Level Security”) – unless you explicitly share a pet with your household (see below).

Sharing a pet with your household: You can share a pet with other Furly accounts via an invitation code, e.g. with your partner. The code is valid for 48 hours and can only be used once; you decide whom you give it to. All members of the household can then see and edit this pet’s data (pet profile and photo, health record, reminders, daily routine, weight, feeding, activity, training plans) and see the display names of the other members. The owner can remove members at any time, and members can leave at any time. If you as the owner delete your account, a shared pet passes together with its data to the member who has been part of it the longest; without members, it is deleted.

Photos for entries: You can attach up to six photos to health record entries, vaccinations and reminders (e.g. tick or worm treatment, food, medication), such as a note from the vet, a vaccination sticker or a medication package. The photos are stored in your private storage area for pet photos (see section 8) and are visible only to you and the members of the household with which you share the pet. Please make sure that notes and invoices do not show any third-party data you do not want to store (e.g. names or addresses of other people). If you remove a photo from the entry or delete the entry, the photo is deleted.

Vet folder (PDF): At your request, the app creates a PDF from the pet profile, health record, vaccinations and weight history. It is created exclusively on your device; you decide via your device's share dialog to whom you pass it on. We do not receive the PDF.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

4. Furly Chat (AI assistant) and AI training plans

Furly Chat answers questions about keeping, feeding, caring for and the health of your pet. The function is optional.

What data is transmitted

To generate an answer, we transmit the following data to Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (Gemini API; processing also in the USA):

• your current message and up to 20 previous messages of the same conversation,
• the profile data of the selected pet (name, breed, age, weight),
• for training plans additionally the training goal you have chosen.

Access to the AI takes place exclusively via our own server; no API key is stored in the app and your messages are not sent directly from your device to Google.

Consent

Before first use, a notice is displayed in the app explaining the transmission to Google. Transmission only takes place after your confirmation. You can withdraw this consent at any time with effect for the future by no longer using the function and deleting your chat history.

No AI training with your data

Under the applicable terms, Google does not use content transmitted via the API to train its AI models.

Storage and deletion

Your chat history is stored in our database so that you can continue it across devices. You can permanently delete individual conversations or the entire history in the app at any time; the deletion takes place immediately in the database, and there is no restore function.

Limits of the function

Furly Chat does not make diagnoses and does not replace veterinary advice, examination or treatment. If indications of an emergency are detected in your message, no AI answer is generated; instead, you are referred directly to veterinary help. You can object to AI-generated answers via the report function.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR (consent); for storing the history additionally Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

4a. Furly Pro (subscription) and payment processing

Furly Pro is an optional subscription (see section 3 of the Terms of Use). If you do not take it out, the following processing only takes place to the extent necessary to display the offers.

• Google Play (payment): The purchase is made via the Google Play billing system. Google processes your payment data under its own responsibility; we do not receive any payment data such as card numbers, only confirmation of the purchase (product, time, term, order ID).
• RevenueCat (subscription management): We use the RevenueCat service for purchase, renewal, cancellation and restoring. The app transmits your Furly account ID (a random identifier, not your email address), the Google Play receipts and technical information about the device and the app (e.g. operating system, app version, language, store country, IP address). RevenueCat verifies the receipts with Google and reports the subscription status to us.
• Our server: We store the subscription status (active yes/no, product, term, expiry date) with your account so that the Pro functions are unlocked on all your devices. For the daily quota in Furly Chat, we count the number of your messages per calendar day; the content of the messages is not evaluated for this. Emergency messages are not counted.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the subscription contract). Retention obligations under tax and commercial law (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR) concern billing at Google; insofar as receipts are held by us, section 15 applies.

4b. Usage statistics (Google Analytics for Firebase, only with consent)

Provider: Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland / Google LLC, USA

Purpose: We count anonymously how Furly is used – above all how often the Furly Pro page is opened and a subscription is bought or cancelled – in order to improve the app and our offer.

On first launch the app asks whether you agree. Without your consent nothing is collected and nothing is sent to Google. You can withdraw your consent at any time under Profile → Settings → “Usage statistics”; collection then stops immediately, and the analytics data collected on the device until then is reset.

Data transmitted (only after consent): events such as app start, opening the Pro page, start, completion, cancellation or failure of a purchase (with subscription type monthly/yearly, on completion also price and currency) and restoring a purchase – in each case only the fact, never content. In addition device and app information (device model, Android version, app version, language), a random app instance ID and the approximate region. No data on your pets, places, photos, chats or messages and not your account ID or e-mail address is transmitted; the advertising ID is not collected, and advertising features and personalized advertising are switched off.

Storage period: Event and user data are deleted in Google Analytics after 2 months.

Transfer to third countries: USA, safeguarded by the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and the EU Standard Contractual Clauses; the basis is Google's data processing terms.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and Section 25(1) TDDDG (consent).

5. Community and Lost & Found

In the community you can publish posts and mark posts by others with “Like”. Your display name and the content of your post are shown.

Lost & Found – please decide consciously

When you create a missing or found report, you actively publish the contact details you enter (e.g. phone number or email address), a location, the date and optionally a photo and location coordinates. This information is visible to all signed-in users and can be copied or passed on by them. Therefore only provide contact details whose publication you knowingly accept.

You can delete your own posts at any time or mark a missing report as “resolved”. When your account is deleted, all your posts are also removed.

Poison bait alert: You can report a poison bait find. We store your description, an optional location note and the coordinates of your current location at the time of the report. The report is visible to all signed-in users for seven days (without your name) and no longer afterwards; you can mark it as removed or delete it before then. You can optionally attach a photo; it is stored in a separate, non-public storage area and, like the report, is accessible to all signed-in users for seven days. After submitting, the app asks whether you would like to share a warning poster. The poster is created on your device from your report (description, location, place/city, photo if any). Whether and where you share it (e.g. Instagram, Facebook, Messenger) is up to you via your device's share dialog; the poster contains neither your name nor your account ID, but once shared it is no longer under our control outside Furly. The app determines the city of the location via the OpenStreetMap geocoding service (see section 6 c). Each account can submit at most five reports per day. Other users can flag reports and block the reporting account.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR — publication takes place when you actively submit the post.

6. Location data

Furly processes location data for three different purposes:

a) Active use

When you open the map or the radius search in Lost & Found, your current location is determined in order to show results near you and to centre the map. The Google Maps service is integrated for the map display.

b) Radius notifications

If you have granted location permission, your last known position is transmitted to our server and stored there on each sign-in and session renewal (overwritten each time; no movement profile is created). We need this information in order to be able to notify you when a missing or found animal or poison bait is reported in your area. You only receive these notifications if you have explicitly switched them on for the respective area (Profile → Notifications). The notification radius is 25 km by default.

c) Places finder

When you search in the places finder, the app sends your current location and the selected categories to our server. From this, the server determines the matching map sections (grid of about 25 km) and returns the places with their distance. Your exact position is not stored; only the public place data per map section is cached. We keep the OpenStreetMap place data as our own copy, which is renewed weekly from the public extract of Geofabrik GmbH (Karlsruhe); no user data is transmitted in the process.

The place data comes from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL licence). If it is missing from the cache, our server requests it from the Overpass service, using only the boundaries of the map section – neither your position nor your account ID is transmitted to Overpass. Places you save are stored by the app only on your device.

Direct query from the device: If our server cannot fetch the place data from Overpass (e.g. because the service is overloaded or rejects requests from data centres), the app queries the place data itself from public Overpass servers. This transmits the boundaries of the map section around your search point (not your account), and for technical reasons the operator of the respective server sees your IP address. The app stores the result on your device for up to 24 hours so that it does not have to ask again.

Searching for a city: In the places finder you can search for a city or address and show the places around it. The search text you enter is sent from your device to the Nominatim geocoding service of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, which converts it into coordinates; here too the operator sees your IP address. The search is not linked to your account and is not stored by us. For the city on the poison bait warning poster, the app asks Nominatim for the place name using the coordinates of the location. When you add a place and when you use “Add details”, the app asks Nominatim for the street, postcode and town using the coordinates of the pin or of the place in order to suggest the address; the coordinates are not linked to your account.

Ratings of places: You can rate places with 1 to 5 stars and a short comment (up to 500 characters). We store the place identifier, stars, comment, time and your account ID. The rating is visible to other signed-in users, without your name; you can change or delete it at any time, and other users can report it (section 11). It is deleted with the account. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

Supplemented by Google Places: If pet owners and OpenStreetMap know fewer than two vets nearby, our server additionally queries the Google Places service (Google Ireland Limited) for vets; with Furly Pro also for other place types (e.g. dog parks, pet supplies, dog schools, pet boarding, animal shelters, swimming spots, hiking areas, dog-friendly restaurants and accommodation) if pet owners and OpenStreetMap know fewer than three such places nearby. Whether you have Furly Pro is checked by the server using your subscription status in our database; this information is not passed on to Google. The server transmits the search point (your location at the time of the search), the search radius and the category or a fixed search term such as “dog school” – not your account ID or other account data. Google results are stored neither on our server nor on your device; the server only retrieves the phone number, website and opening hours of a Google place when you open the details of that place. To keep costs under control, we count the number of these queries per account and day (without the search point); the counter is no longer needed after a short time and is deleted with the account.

Places added by pet owners: You can add places yourself (e.g. a swimming spot where dogs are allowed). We store the information you provide (type, the position you set and, depending on the type of place, name, address, phone, website, opening hours, dog rule, note and up to three photos), your account ID and the time. For places such as dog park, waste bag dispenser, drinking water or hiking trail, giving a name is not necessary. The photos are stored in a separate, non-public storage area (section 8) and, like the entry, are visible to all signed-in users; please do not photograph people or vehicle licence plates. Adding without reception: If you have no signal when adding (e.g. on a hiking trail), the app temporarily stores the entry including photos only on your device and sends it automatically as soon as a connection is available again; the local copy is then deleted. Until then, the entry does not leave your device. The entry is immediately visible to all signed-in users, without your name. You can change or delete it at any time. If you delete your account, the place and its photos remain visible to everyone but become anonymous: the link to your account (the account ID of the person who added it) is removed. Your votes confirming other places are deleted. Other users can report entries and block the person who added them (see section 11). Confirmation by other users: A newly added place counts as “not confirmed” (yellow pin) until another account taps “Place exists”. For this, we store the vote per place and voting account (account ID, yes/no, time); the vote is not visible to others. Unconfirmed places are no longer shown after 90 days and are deleted together with their photos after 270 days. If you are near an unconfirmed place, you may receive a reminder to confirm it when you open the app; for this, the location determined anyway is sent to the database to find places within about 300 m, and is not stored. When a place is newly added, users whose last stored location (see radius notifications) is no more than 2 km away receive a push notification asking them to confirm it, at most one per day; for this we only store the time of the last request per account. Both can be switched off under Profile → Notifications (“Confirm places nearby”); no location query takes place in the background. Please only add places that are publicly accessible and no information about private individuals. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (provision of the function you use).

Before the system prompt, we explain in the app what the location is used for. You can withdraw the permission at any time in your device's settings; Furly then continues to work, only the map and radius functions and radius notifications are no longer available.

No background tracking: Furly does not record your location permanently in the background. The app does not request background location permission.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR (consent via the permission prompt).

7. Push and local notifications

For push notifications (Lost & Found and poison bait reports near you), a device-specific token is generated via Firebase Cloud Messaging, which we assign to your account and store. This token enables notifications to be delivered to your device; Google receives technical delivery information in the process.

Reminders of appointments, vaccinations, deworming and medication, the daily routine and calendar notes are additionally scheduled as local notifications directly on your device. No data leaves your device for this. So that scheduled reminders survive a device restart, the app uses the permission RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED; so that they arrive on time, optionally the permission “Alarms & reminders” (SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM).

The app asks for your consent separately for each area (daily routine, appointments, health, calendar, missing pets, poison bait). You can switch each area on and off at any time under Profile → Notifications or in the system settings. When you sign out, the app removes the scheduled notifications and unregisters the device from push notifications.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR (consent via the notification permission).

8. Photos, camera and photo library

You can upload a profile picture, photos of your pets and photos for Lost & Found reports, poison bait reports and entries in your pet records. They are selected either from your photo library or via your device's camera. For photos, the app starts the system camera app or your device's photo picker; selected images are processed only after your selection. The same applies to photos for health record entries, vaccinations, reminders and poison bait reports.

QR code scanner: To join a shared pet via QR code, the app accesses the camera directly with your permission. The camera image is evaluated only on your device to read the code; it is neither stored nor transmitted. The QR code contains only the invitation code (see section 3).

The images are stored in separate storage areas that are not publicly accessible:

Photos for health records, vaccinations and reminders are stored in the pet-images area (subfolder “attachments”) and are therefore visible, like pet photos, only to you and your household.

Please note that photos may contain additional technical information (e.g. the location where they were taken in the EXIF data). Check this before you publish photos in Lost & Found.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR; when publishing in Lost & Found Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR.

9. Data stored locally on your device

Entries on weight, feeding and activity, the daily routine (tasks and ticks), calendar notes, training entries (“exercise completed” with your rating, from which the app creates statistics, the weekly review and the weekly plan of the Furly Coach) and the saved-articles list in the guide are stored in our database and assigned to your account, so that they are kept when you change devices and can be shared with your household. The device only holds a copy as a cache, which is removed when you sign out. Saved places, favourite vets and app settings (e.g. language, design) remain exclusively on your device.

The emergency card, poison hotline numbers and guide articles are built into the app and work without an internet connection; no data is transmitted when reading them. The fonts are also contained in the app; no fonts are loaded from Google Fonts or other servers.

Via the function “Backup & restore” in the settings, you can export this data yourself. The export only takes place on your express action; you alone decide where you save or pass on the exported file.

When you sign out or delete your account, the app removes the local copies. They are also removed from the device when the app is uninstalled.

10. Server log data

When our server infrastructure is accessed, connection data is processed for technical reasons, in particular IP address, time of the request, endpoint called and status code. This data serves secure operation, the detection of abuse and error analysis and is only kept for a short time.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in secure and functional operation).

11. Reports of content (moderation)

You can object to community posts, Lost & Found reports, poison bait reports, places added by pet owners and AI answers via the report function. We store the reported content, the reason given, the time and your account ID in order to detect multiple reports and abuse of the report function. Reports are not visible to other users.

Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in a safe platform).

12. App permissions at a glance

Furly does not request microphone, contacts, calendar, phone or SMS permissions or access to call logs.

13. Recipients and processors

Data processing agreements pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR are in place with the providers acting as processors.

14. Transfers to third countries

Insofar as data is transferred to the USA, this takes place on the basis of appropriate safeguards under Chapter V GDPR:

• Google Ireland Limited (Ireland/USA): Transfer of chat content and pet profile data on the basis of your express consent (Art. 49(1)(a) GDPR) and additionally on the basis of the EU Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR).
• Google LLC (USA): Transfer on the basis of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, under which Google is certified, and additionally the Standard Contractual Clauses. This also applies to the usage statistics (section 4b), which only take place with your consent.
• RevenueCat, Inc. (USA): Transfer of subscription data (section 4a) on the basis of the EU Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR).
• Supabase Inc. (USA): Your data is stored in a data centre within the EU. Access from the USA (e.g. in the context of support and maintenance) cannot be ruled out and takes place on the basis of the Standard Contractual Clauses.

Despite these safeguards, it cannot be completely ruled out that US authorities access data on the basis of US law and that there is no legal protection against this that corresponds to the European level. If you wish to avoid this, please do not use the Furly Chat and training plan functions.

15. Retention periods

Where statutory retention obligations exist, the data concerned is blocked instead of deleted until the respective period expires.

16. Deleting your account and data

• You can delete your account yourself and completely at any time:
• App → Profile → Settings → Delete account

The following is irrevocably deleted:

17. Your rights under the GDPR

You have the following rights:

• Access to the data stored about you (Art. 15 GDPR)
• Rectification of inaccurate data (Art. 16 GDPR)
• Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR) — see section 16
• Restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
• Data portability in a common format (Art. 20 GDPR)
• Objection to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21 GDPR)
• Withdrawal of consent given with effect for the future (Art. 7(3) GDPR) — for example for Furly Chat, location or notifications

An informal email to info@simplynext.de is sufficient to exercise these rights.

Irrespective of this, you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR), in particular in the member state of your place of residence, your place of work or the place of the alleged infringement.

The supervisory authority responsible for us is:

Der Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Baden-Württemberg

Lautenschlagerstraße 20, 70173 Stuttgart, Germany

https://www.baden-wuerttemberg.datenschutz.de

18. What Furly does not do

• We do not sell your data and do not pass it on for advertising purposes.
• Furly contains no advertising and no advertising SDKs.
• Furly creates no usage profiles and contains no crash reporting SDK. The only usage statistics (Google Analytics for Firebase, section 4b) run only with your consent and without an advertising ID.
• We do not see any payment data: the Furly Pro subscription is handled entirely via Google Play (see section 4a).
• No automated decisions with legal effect or similarly significant impairment within the meaning of Art. 22 GDPR are made.
• Fonts are built into the app; no fonts are loaded from external servers (e.g. Google Fonts).
• No advertising IDs or cross-device identifiers are collected for marketing purposes.

19. Children and young people

Furly is aimed at adults and is not intended for children. In particular, the AI assistant and Lost & Found with publicly visible contact details require an adult understanding. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 16. Should we become aware that an account has been created without the required consent of the legal guardians, we will delete it.

20. Data security

Transmission between the app and the server is always encrypted (TLS/HTTPS). Access to database content is secured by row-based access rules so that each account can only access its own data. File storage areas are not publicly accessible. Passwords are stored exclusively as a cryptographic hash. The access key to the AI interface is held exclusively on the server side and is not contained in the app.

21. Changes to this policy

We adapt this policy when our data processing changes. The current version is always available at the address linked in the app. In the event of significant changes, we will also inform you in the app.