Privacy Policy

Last updated: 4 November 2026

This policy applies to the Barnaby app (iOS and Android) and the website barnaby.at. It tells you which data we process, for what purpose, on which legal basis, who receives it, how long we keep it and which rights you have.

In short

We process your data to provide Barnaby to you, to keep the app safe and stable and — only if you consent — to understand how it is used.
We only record your location during a walk that you start yourself.
Your privacy settings determine what others see. Health details about your dog are never public.
We do not sell your data and do not pass it on to advertisers or data brokers. The app contains no advertising software and no cross-app tracking.
Our database and our servers are located in the EU.

1. Controller and contact

Felix Klieber, Blumengasse 76, 1170 Vienna, Austria. For all questions about privacy: datenschutz@barnaby.at

2. Which details you must provide

For an account we need your e-mail address (or a sign-in via Apple or Google), your date of birth for age verification, a name and a username (@handle). Without these details we cannot create an account. All other details are voluntary; individual features are not available without them, however — for example, without location access no walk can be recorded.

3. Why we process data

For each purpose we state which data we use for it and on which legal basis of the GDPR we rely. The examples (“e.g.”) are not exhaustive; they show what kind of data is meant.

3.1 Your account and your profile

We manage your account, your sign-in and your profile: sign-in data (e-mail address, password only as an irreversible hash, or the identifier of your Apple or Google sign-in), date of birth, name, @handle and voluntary details such as profile picture, bio or place of residence. This also includes your settings and technical details of your device that the app needs in order to function, e.g. device language and time zone. If you take part in a test of new features, we note this on your account.

Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR); for voluntary profile details your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)), which you withdraw by deleting the detail.

3.2 Your dogs

You create profiles for your dogs (e.g. name, breed, date of birth, photo, bio) and can voluntarily store health and care details (e.g. weight, vaccination and care appointments, medication, allergies, heat cycle, microchip number, vet). You can share a dog profile with other owners: anyone who has the join code or QR code joins immediately; the existing owners are informed about this, and owners with an admin role can remove members. Co-owners see and edit the dog’s data including the health details — details you have previously maintained separately are merged by the app in a one-time step. Co-owners also see all your walks, even if your profile is private, including walks without this dog. Therefore only pass the code on to people you trust. If you leave a shared dog, you no longer see its health details; they remain with the other owners.

Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); for voluntary health and care details your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)).

3.3 Recording walks (location)

If you start a walk and have granted your device’s location permission, the app records your precise location with timestamps — in the background too, for as long as the walk lasts, so that the walk continues when your phone is in your pocket. From this we calculate, e.g., distance, duration, pace and elevation gain, statistics, goals and achievements. When you are not on a walk, we do not record any location history; the app then only uses your current location to show you the map and weather details for your surroundings.

A walk also includes the map image, weather details and photos you add. With home zone protection, the app trims the start and end of the route before others see it; only you see the untrimmed route.

For the map and the weather, the app retrieves map data and weather values from providers (section 4). In doing so, they receive your IP address and the requested map section or a rounded location, respectively, but no details about your account.

Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) — recording your walks is the core service of Barnaby. Your operating system’s location permission is the technical prerequisite for this; you can revoke it at any time in your device settings.

3.4 Community: posts, feed and interaction

You can share walks and photos, comment on and like them, follow dogs and tag others as co-walkers. Other users see this content within the scope of your settings (section 5).

The feed shows you posts from dogs you follow and posts from your region. We roughly estimate the region from the starting point of your last walk or, if there is none, from your device’s time zone; for this purpose, each post is assigned a rough area that is never more precise than the route that others can see anyway. The app calculates the order on your device, e.g. by recency, distance, reactions from others and what has interested you so far.

We downscale photos before uploading and remove embedded metadata such as the capture location. If this does not succeed, we do not upload the photo.

If you tag co-walkers — only people you share a dog with can be tagged — their name, with a reference to their profile, becomes part of your post. It is visible to everyone who is allowed to see the post, even if the person tagged has a private account themselves, and the co-walkers can see the walk itself. The strictest home zone setting of everyone involved then applies to the route. Anyone who does not want to be tagged can contact us.

Posts you hide in your feed are stored in your private area; the person whose post you hide is not told about it.

Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); for tagging co-walkers, our legitimate interest in jointly documented walks among co-owners (Art. 6(1)(f)).

3.5 Notifications, e-mails and messages to us

We inform you about events relating to your account and your content (e.g. new likes or comments) and occasionally send you messages from the Barnaby team, for example about new features or as a thank-you. For this we store a push token for your device and, in order to avoid too many notifications, the time we last sent you something. We send e-mails for your account (e.g. confirming your address, resetting your password) and for notices we are legally obliged to send (section 3.6).

In the app, you choose which notifications you receive; you can switch off push notifications altogether in your device settings. We still deliver notices about the security of your account and about reports or moderation decisions even if you have switched off other notifications.

If you write to us — in the app, by e-mail or in another way — we process your message together with the details we need to handle it (e.g. account, app version, device) in order to deal with your request and improve Barnaby.

Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) for account e-mails and your requests; our legitimate interest in informing you about your account, your content and news from Barnaby and in improving the app (Art. 6(1)(f)). You can object at any time, most easily via the settings.

3.6 Security, abuse prevention and moderation

To keep Barnaby a safe place, we process:

reports about content and accounts together with the reporting person’s details, in order to review them, communicate the outcome and be able to document how they were handled. We do not pass the reporting person’s name on to the reported person.
moderation decisions (trigger, measure, reasoning, time, suspension status) and the notices we send about them.
blocks you set up.
Automatic text check: texts you publish or enter in profiles are automatically checked before they are saved for hateful terms and for anyone posing as Barnaby (details in the Terms of Use).
Protection against abuse: e.g. counters against mass requests, a truncated checksum of the IP address, technical server logs with a pseudonymous account identifier, the check whether requests come from a genuine Barnaby app (Apple App Attest/DeviceCheck, Google Play Integrity) and, for suspended accounts that are deleted, an irreversible checksum of the e-mail address against immediate re-registration.
Preservation of evidence: if we remove content we suspect to be criminal, we preserve it separately together with the associated account details so that we can report it to the authorities.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in protecting our users and in enforcing the Terms of Use (Art. 6(1)(f)); to the extent the Digital Services Act or other laws oblige us to do so, the legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)).

3.7 Stability and troubleshooting

If the app crashes or an error occurs, we receive a report (e.g. error message, device model, operating system and app version, pseudonymous user identifier and the last interactions before it). For a small, randomly selected share of sessions we also measure loading times and stuttering screens. The app regularly checks for updates; when it does, your IP address and technical device details are transmitted.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in a stable, secure app (Art. 6(1)(f)).

If you consent, we capture pseudonymously (linked to an identifier, not to your name) how the app is used, in order to improve it:

which features you use, which screens you open and for how long, which buttons you tap (as a technical label, never as text);
rough characteristics of your usage, only as a size bracket or yes/no (e.g. how many dogs you have, how active you are, whether you share a dog), as well as account type (public/private), app language, the status of your permissions and the month of your registration;
technical device and app details and the IP address, which we use only for transmission and never to determine your location.

Location data and texts you write are never part of it. We can also use it to compare variants of a feature (A/B tests) and to ask you optional short questions with preset answers. We offer product analytics only to adult users.

Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time in the settings; we will then also delete the analytics data collected so far.

3.9 Features on your device

Some features work only on your device: e.g. caches for maps and the feed so that the app works faster and also on a weak network, your search history, or an invitation code from a link that the app remembers until after the installation. Such data is not transmitted to us. A walk and its photos are first stored on your device and uploaded as soon as a connection exists. On your device we only store what is strictly necessary for the feature you use or what you have consented to (§ 165(3) TKG 2021).

With your consent, the app can also save photos to your device’s gallery or add care appointments to your device calendar; at your request it creates files for sharing or exporting (e.g. data export, routes as GPX). You manage these copies yourself; they remain even if you delete content in Barnaby or your account. You can switch off the features in the settings and revoke the permissions in your device settings.

Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) for the caches; your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) for the gallery and the calendar.

3.10 Your content on our channels

Occasionally we ask you whether we may show one of your public posts on Barnaby’s channels (e.g. Instagram, Facebook or our website), usually with your @handle as the name credit. We only do this if you agree to the specific request; if you do not respond, nothing happens. On third-party platforms the post is accessible worldwide, and their privacy policies additionally apply. You can withdraw your consent at any time; we will then remove the post insofar as we are able to. We retain the request and your answer as evidence.

For the statistics of our pages on Facebook and Instagram we are joint controllers together with Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (Art. 26 GDPR). We only see aggregated numbers there; the agreement and your rights are available from Meta.

Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a), Art. 7 GDPR); for the page statistics our legitimate interest in the reach of our pages (Art. 6(1)(f)).

3.11 Businesses and partners

We show businesses that cooperate with us in the app (e.g. name, type of business, logo, location and website). For contacting businesses we process publicly available business data. If you tap a business’s website in the app, it opens in your browser; we do not pass on any data about you to the business.

Legal basis: for partners the contract with them (Art. 6(1)(b)); for making contact our legitimate interest in making Barnaby known (Art. 6(1)(f)) — businesses can object at any time.

3.12 Website barnaby.at

When you visit the website, our hosting server stores log files (truncated IP address, time, page accessed, browser) in order to provide the website and to fend off attacks. If you open the website via a link with a campaign label (e.g. via the QR code on a flyer), we pass the label on to the App Store or Google Play when we forward you and evaluate the log files only in aggregated form; from Apple and Google we only see aggregated download figures per label. If you choose a language, the website remembers it in a necessary cookie. Analysis of website usage with cookies only takes place with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time via “Cookie settings”. The pages for resetting your password load the components needed for this from Google.

Legal basis: our legitimate interest in providing and securing the website and in seeing through which channels Barnaby is found (Art. 6(1)(f)); contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) for the account pages; your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and § 165(3) TKG 2021) for the analysis with cookies.

3.13 Features in preparation

The following features are prepared but not currently active. As soon as we switch them on, the following applies:

Direct messages: messages between two users are seen only by the two of them; they are encrypted in transit but not end-to-end, so that we can review reported messages. Users who do not follow each other can initially only send a request. Legal basis: contract (Art. 6(1)(b)).
Live location: only if you explicitly switch it on during a walk can other signed-in users see your current position and your dog on the map; the data is deleted when the walk ends. Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)).
Weekly recap by e-mail: a summary of your activity, which you can unsubscribe from at any time with one click. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in informing you in connection with your use of Barnaby (Art. 6(1)(f)).

4. Who receives your data

Other users — what you share, within the scope of your settings (section 5).
Service providers working on our behalf (processors within the meaning of Art. 28 GDPR), in particular for sign-in, database, file storage and servers (Google Firebase, locations in the EU), error reports (Sentry), product analytics (PostHog), delivery of push notifications and app updates (Expo), as well as website and e-mail delivery (an IT agency in Austria with servers in Germany).
Providers whose services the app or our servers call directly, e.g. sign-in, device verification and push delivery via Apple and Google, map data, elevation data, route calculation and weather values. In doing so, they receive technically necessary details such as your IP address and decide for themselves how they are processed.
Authorities and courts, where we are legally obliged to do so, or in order to report criminal content.

The annex at the end of this policy names all service providers and other providers with name, registered office, purpose and the basis for transfers abroad. We keep it up to date.

5. What others see about you

Visible to all signed-in users: your name, @handle, profile picture and bio, summaries of your activity (e.g. total distance, number of your posts, dogs and followers), which dogs you follow, and your dog profiles including summaries and achievements derived from the walks visible there. Dog profiles cannot be set to private.
Depending on your setting: your walks (with a trimmed route if the home zone is active), photos, goals and achievements. With a public profile, all signed-in users can see them; with a private profile only your approved followers, people you share a dog with and the co-walkers on that walk. You can additionally hide goals and achievements.
Never visible to others: e.g. your date of birth, your e-mail address, details of your place of residence, your settings and your untrimmed routes. Health details about your dog are seen only by co-owners.

We deliver photos via addresses with a key that cannot be guessed. Anyone who knows such an address, because the image was visible to them once, can retrieve it until it is deleted — even if you later set your profile to private or block the person.

6. Transfers to countries outside the EU

Some of our service providers and other providers are based in the USA or in Switzerland or access data from there. We base such transfers on an adequacy decision of the European Commission (Art. 45 GDPR — for the USA the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, for Switzerland the decision on Switzerland) or on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR). Which basis applies to which provider is stated in the annex; you can obtain a copy of the safeguards on request.

7. How long we keep data

Principle: We store your data for as long as your account exists or until you delete the data yourself, and only for as long as we need it for the respective purpose.

If you delete your account (in the app under Settings → Manage account → Delete account), we delete your profile, your dogs, walks, photos and messages. Comments are retained without any link to you (“Deleted user”). For a shared dog, the dog’s shared data remains with the other owners. We delete residual technical data and copies in data backups within 30 days.

Exceptions with maximum periods:

Reports, moderation decisions and the notices about them: up to 12 months after completion, then anonymised (for statistics).
Abuse prevention: counters and codes up to 10 days, server logs up to 30 days; your previous username remains blocked for up to 30 days after an account deletion so that nobody else can use it; the suspension record of deleted suspended accounts for up to 12 months; evidence of an account deletion for up to 12 months.
Shared dogs: deleted shared dogs can be restored for up to 30 days; join codes are valid for up to 7 days.
Preserved evidence for suspected criminal content: up to 90 days after the report to the authority, at most one year — longer only if an authority requires it.
Error reports up to 90 days; product analytics up to 12 months.
Messages to us: for as long as we need them for your request; messages and feedback from the app at most two years.
Businesses: contact data without a partnership for up to 12 months; a partner’s entry in the app for up to 7 days after the end of the partnership; the agreement for up to 3 years after its end.
Records of consent: for as long as we must be able to demonstrate consent.
Website log files: up to 60 days.

Statutory retention obligations take precedence.

8. Your rights

You have the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and objection (Art. 21).

Objection: you can object at any time, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to processing based on our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)); you can unsubscribe from notifications and news in the settings without giving reasons.
Withdrawal: you can withdraw consents at any time with effect for the future, mostly directly in the settings of the app or of your device.
Data export: in the app you can download your data as a file. We will provide information about what the export does not contain (e.g. analytics data and error reports) on request.
Delete account: at any time in the app.

Requests to datenschutz@barnaby.at; we respond within the statutory period.

Complaint: you can lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR) — in Austria with the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Datenschutzbehörde), Barichgasse 40–42, 1030 Vienna, dsb@dsb.gv.at, www.dsb.gv.at, or with any other supervisory authority in the EU or the EEA, in particular at your place of residence or work. If you live in Switzerland, you can contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (EDÖB, www.edoeb.admin.ch).

9. Automated decisions

We do not take decisions that produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you solely by automated means (Art. 22 GDPR). Statistics, achievements and the order of the feed are simple calculations without such effect. The automatic text check (section 3.6) only rejects individual texts; decisions about account suspensions are made by a human.

10. Minimum age

Barnaby is for persons aged 16 and over. If, as a parent or guardian, you find that your child is younger and has an account, write to us at datenschutz@barnaby.at; we will delete the account.

11. Security

We transmit data encrypted, restrict access via server-side security rules and protect our servers against abusive requests. No one can guarantee complete protection; we fix vulnerabilities as quickly as possible.

12. Changes to this policy

We adapt this policy when our processing or the legal situation changes. We inform you about material changes — e.g. a new purpose, a new kind of data or a new kind of recipient — in the app before they take effect. We keep the annex with the service providers continuously up to date; there, a change is only material if a new kind of recipient or a new third country is added. You will always find the current version in the app and on barnaby.at. This policy is available in German, English, Spanish and French; the German version is authoritative.

Annex: Service providers and recipients

This annex is part of the privacy policy (sections 4 and 6). It names all service providers and other providers that receive personal data in the operation of Barnaby. We keep it up to date.

Google Ireland Ltd. / Google LLC (Firebase) — Purpose: sign-in, database, file storage, server functions, verification of genuine app requests (App Check); data: all data stored in Barnaby; location / basis for third-country transfer: database and servers in the EU (multi-region eur3, Belgium and the Netherlands); access from the USA possible: EU-US Data Privacy Framework, supplemented by standard contractual clauses.
Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry), USA — Purpose: crash, error and performance reports; data: error data, device details, pseudonymous user identifier, last interactions; location / basis for third-country transfer: error data in Frankfurt; administrative data USA: Data Privacy Framework, supplemented by standard contractual clauses.
PostHog, Inc., USA — Purpose: product analytics (only with consent), reach measurement on the website (only with consent); data: usage events, device details, pseudonymous identifier; location / basis for third-country transfer: EU cloud Frankfurt (AWS); sub-processors incl. Cloudflare, Inc.; Data Privacy Framework, supplemented by standard contractual clauses.
650 Industries, Inc. (“Expo”), USA — Purpose: delivery of push notifications, app updates; data: push token, notification content, IP address, device details; location / basis for third-country transfer: USA: Data Privacy Framework, supplemented by standard contractual clauses.
IT agency based in Austria (name on request) — Purpose: hosting of the website, e-mail delivery; data: website log files, e-mail address and content of the e-mail; location / basis for third-country transfer: servers at Mittwald CM Service GmbH & Co. KG, Germany (sub-processor).

Independent providers (whose services the app calls directly)

Apple Inc. / Apple Distribution International Ltd. — Purpose: Sign in with Apple, push delivery (APNs), device verification (App Attest/DeviceCheck); data: sign-in identifier, push token, device details; location / basis for third-country transfer: standard contractual clauses.
Google LLC / Google Ireland Ltd. — Purpose: Google Sign-In, push delivery (FCM), device verification (Play Integrity), older Google profile pictures, components of the website’s account pages, passing on of invitation and campaign labels via Google Play; data: sign-in identifier, push token, IP address, label; location / basis for third-country transfer: Data Privacy Framework.
Apple (App Store) — Purpose: passing on of campaign labels when forwarding to the App Store; data: label, IP address; location / basis for third-country transfer: standard contractual clauses.
FOSSGIS e.V. (“OSRM”, Germany) — currently not active — Purpose: route calculation in the route editor (called via our servers); data: waypoints, no account details; location / basis for third-country transfer: EU.
Hyperknot Software Kft. (“OpenFreeMap”), Hungary, via Cloudflare, Inc., USA — Purpose: map display; data: IP address, requested map section; location / basis for third-country transfer: EU; Cloudflare: Data Privacy Framework.
Amazon Web Services, Inc., USA — Purpose: elevation data for the “Terrain” map type; data: IP address, requested map section; location / basis for third-country transfer: Data Privacy Framework.
OpenMeteo GmbH, Switzerland — Purpose: weather data; data: rounded location, IP address; location / basis for third-country transfer: adequacy decision for Switzerland.
Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. — Purpose: statistics of our Facebook and Instagram pages (joint controllership, Art. 26 GDPR); data: aggregated page statistics; location / basis for third-country transfer: EU (Ireland); transfers to the USA are Meta’s responsibility (Data Privacy Framework).