Privacy Policy

Who Poop? (the "app") is made by Jerry Lin ("we"). This policy explains what the app does with your data. We've tried to keep it short and specific. If something here is unclear, email privacy@whopoop.com and we'll fix it.

The short version

• We don't run servers. Your pets, events, walks, and photos live in your own iCloud, under your Apple ID. They sync to your other Apple devices and to anyone you explicitly share with. We can't read any of it.
• We don't have accounts, logins, or profiles. Your identity in the app is whatever Apple ID you're signed into.
• We don't sell your data. We don't run ads. We don't include tracking SDKs. (We do collect anonymized crash and usage reports — see below.)
• Sharing a pet is peer-to-peer through iCloud. When you invite a co-parent or friend, Apple's CloudKit handles the sharing. The data still lives in iCloud, not in any of our infrastructure.

What's stored, and where

Everything you enter or record in the app is written to your iCloud private database via Apple's CloudKit. That includes:

• Your pets: names, photos, settings, personalities
• Events: poops, meals, medications, oopsies
• Walks: GPS paths and distances during recording. Walks can also be stored in your Apple Health as an outdoor workout.
• Likes and reactions you send
• Your in-app preferences

We chose iCloud specifically so we wouldn't have to operate user data ourselves. Apple stores and syncs it across your devices under the terms of your iCloud account. If you delete just the app, your data remains in iCloud. If you delete the app and delete its iCloud storage, the data is removed according to Apple's iCloud rules.

Sharing pets with other people

Two kinds of sharing exist, both through Apple's CloudKit sharing:

• Co-parents can read and write a pet's data (record events, send likes). Co-parents can see the live location of whoever is recording a walk. This is appropriate for family members who jointly care for the pet.
• Friends see a limited, 7-day feed of recent pet events. With your permission, they may also see the live location of whoever is recording a walk.

When you invite someone, you're using Apple's CloudKit sharing. We do not maintain a friend graph, contacts list, or invite history on a server. You can revoke a share at any time from inside the app.

Permissions the app asks for

Each is asked for the first time you use the relevant feature, and you can change them later in iOS Settings.

• Location (When In Use, plus background during active walks): captures the spot of an event so it can show on the map, traces walk paths, and figures out which timezone and weather to display. Coordinates are written to your iCloud private database. Background location is only used while a walk is actively recording.
• Camera and Photo Library: optional. Used to take, submit, or save a pet's profile image (pupmoji).
• HealthKit: optional. While recording a walk, the app can start an HKWorkoutSession and write a workout + route so the walk shows up in the Health app and counts toward your rings. We only read distance during the walk to combine it with GPS. HealthKit data stays local to your device per Apple's rules.
• Notifications: the app generates notifications locally on your device when new events sync in. We do not run a push notification server.

Things that do leave your device

A few features call third-party services. Each has a specific scope:

AI-generated notification messages and image touch-ups

To make the app feel personal, we generate playful notification copy and occasionally enhance a pet image using large language and image models from Anthropic (Claude Haiku) and Google (Gemini). Requests are routed through AIProxy, which holds the API keys server-side so they never ship inside the app. We deliberately disable AIProxy's stable per-user ID (useStableID: false), so requests can't be tied back to you across sessions.

What the model sees: the pet's name and personality parameters you set, plus (for image touch-ups) the image you chose to enhance. What the model does not see: your name, your Apple ID, your location, your event history, or anything about other pets.

Weather and map tiles

We use Apple WeatherKit and Apple Maps for the weather backdrop and map rendering. These are Apple services governed by Apple's privacy terms.

Diagnostic analytics (PostHog)

We send a small set of diagnostic events to PostHog Cloud (US region) to debug issues and understand usage. We don't capture pet names, event content, locations, walk paths, photos, contacts, or message text.

PostHog assigns an anonymous installation ID. We don't call PostHog's identify or attach an Apple ID, email, or name.

Crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics)

When the app crashes, Google Firebase Crashlytics sends us an anonymized report so we can fix the bug. Each report contains a stack trace, the device model, the OS version, and a randomly generated installation identifier. It does not contain your pet's data, your location, your photos, your event history, or anything that identifies you personally.

Children

Who Poop? isn't designed for or directed at children under 13.

Your data, your control

• Export: Settings → Export Data writes a ZIP of your pet's events.
• Delete a pet: removing a pet removes its records across iCloud, including any zones shared with co-parents or followers.
• Stop using the app: delete it from your device. Local copies are removed.
• Delete all iCloud data: Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → Who Poop? → Delete Data from iCloud. This removes everything across all your devices, including any zones you'd shared with others.

Your rights

Depending on where you live (the EU, UK, California, and others), you may have rights to access, correct, port, or delete your personal data. Because Who Poop? stores your data in your own iCloud, most of those rights are exercised through iOS Settings. For anything requiring our involvement, email privacy@whopoop.com.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that materially expands what leaves your device, we'll update this page and surface it in the app before the change takes effect.

Contact

privacy@whopoop.com — Jerry Lin