Privacy Policy

The short version

This policy covers pawlabs.org. Everything below describes what the site actually does, not a template of what sites in general might do.

What we collect

Just browsing

If you read pages and do nothing else, we do not collect anything that identifies you personally. Google Analytics records the visit — page viewed, approximate location derived from a truncated IP address, device and browser type, and the site you arrived from. Our hosting also keeps standard server logs, which include IP addresses, for security and diagnosing faults.

If you subscribe to the newsletter

We store the email address you type in, which page you subscribed from, and — where relevant — the breed you were reading about, so the emails are less generic. That goes to Brevo, who send the emails on our behalf. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe.

If you take the Breed Match quiz

This one collects the most, so it is worth being precise:

• Your answers — which option you picked for each question, plus anything you typed into the free-text box at the end.
• Your result — the breeds we recommended and the write-up we generated.
• Your email address, only if you give it. The quiz works fine if you skip that step, and skipping it does not change your result.
• Your IP address, briefly. We hold it in memory for up to an hour to stop one person running the quiz hundreds of times, because each run costs us an AI request. It is not written to the database and not linked to your answers.

Your answers are sent to our AI provider (xAI, the Grok API) along with a shortlist of breeds, so it can write your match. Do not type anything into the free-text box you would not want processed by a third party — it is there for things like "I'm allergic to dander", not for anything sensitive.

We read the free-text notes to work out which questions the quiz is missing, and we use them to write new ones. If you would rather your note was not kept, email us and we will remove it.

If you email us

We keep the message and your address so we can reply and, for corrections, so we have a record of why a page changed.

Cookies and local storage

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and Google publishes a browser add-on that opts you out of Google Analytics entirely. Blocking any of the above will not stop you reading the site. Clearing local storage only means the quiz forgets a part-finished run.

Who else sees it

We do not sell personal information, and we do not hand it to data brokers. These are the services that necessarily receive some data in order for the site to work:

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the site against abuse.

Why we are allowed to (GDPR)

If UK or EU data protection law applies to you, our lawful bases are:

• Consent — the newsletter, and sending your quiz result by email. You gave us the address for that purpose and can withdraw it at any time.
• Legitimate interests — analytics, security logging and quiz rate limiting, so we can understand what is read and keep the site standing up. We have balanced this against your interests and use the least identifying option available in each case.
• Legal obligation — where we have to keep or produce something by law.

How long we keep it

• Newsletter subscription — until you unsubscribe. After that Brevo keeps a suppression record so we do not email you again by accident.
• Quiz submissions — until you ask us to delete them, or until they stop being useful for improving the quiz, whichever comes first.
• Analytics — controlled by Google's retention settings; currently 14 months for event data.
• Emails to us — kept while the conversation is live, and afterwards where it records why a page was changed.
• Rate-limiting IP addresses — held in memory for one hour, then gone. Never written to disk.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• Show you what we hold about you.
• Correct it if it is wrong.
• Delete it.
• Stop using it for a particular purpose, or restrict how we use it.
• Hand it over in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent you previously gave, without that affecting anything done before you withdrew it.

Email contact@pawlabs.org and we will action it. Send it from the address you gave us if you can — that is the easiest way for us to confirm the request is really yours, and it saves us asking you for anything further.

If you are in the UK or EU and you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your national supervisory authority — in the UK, that is the Information Commissioner's Office. We would rather you came to us first, but it is your right either way.

US state privacy rights

If you are a California resident, the CCPA as amended by the CPRA gives you the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to have it deleted, to have it corrected, to opt out of its sale or sharing, and not to be treated worse for exercising any of that. Several other US states now grant comparable rights, and we apply the same process to everyone rather than checking which state you are in.

We do not sell your personal information for money. Note that some US privacy laws define "sharing" broadly enough to cover analytics and advertising cookies of the kind described above. If you want none of that, use the Google Analytics opt-out linked earlier or block third-party cookies in your browser, and email us to have anything already stored deleted.

Children's privacy

This site is meant for adults choosing a pet. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13 (or under 16 where local law sets the bar there). If you believe a child has given us their details, email us and we will delete it.

International transfers

The services listed above are operated by companies based in the United States, so data processed through them may be stored or handled there. Where UK or EU law requires a transfer safeguard, we rely on the mechanisms those providers put in place, such as Standard Contractual Clauses and, where applicable, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

Changes to this policy

When we change what we collect or who processes it, we update this page and move the date at the top. There is no archive of previous versions; if a change matters to you, the current page is the one that governs.

Questions about any of this go to contact@pawlabs.org.