Privacy Policy
Last updated: 28 October 2026
The short version: we don't want your data. We don't have accounts, we don't ask for your email, and the app never keeps your photos. The single exception is the Pet of the Week poll on this website: if you choose to enter it, you are deliberately handing us a photo to publish. That is opt-in, it happens on the website rather than in the app, and it is explained in full below.
Who we are
ReadMyPetsMind ("we", "us") operates this website. If you want to contact us about privacy, email [email protected].
What happens to your photo
This is the part most people want to know, so here it is in order:
- You choose a photo. It is resized inside your own browser first, so a smaller copy is sent than the one on your phone.
- That copy is sent to our server, which passes it to our AI provider, Anthropic, to be looked at and captioned.
- The caption comes back and is shown to you.
- We do not save your photo. (This section is about captioning. The one place a photo is kept is a Pet of the Week entry you deliberately submit — see that section below.) It is not written to any database or storage of ours. Once the caption is generated, our copy is gone.
Anthropic processes the photo in order to produce the caption. Under Anthropic's API terms, content sent through their API is not used to train their models. They may retain it briefly for safety and abuse monitoring. Their privacy policy is at anthropic.com/legal/privacy.
Please don't upload photos with people in them, or anything you'd mind a third party processing. The service is for pictures of animals.
What is stored on your own device
We use your browser's local storage — a small notepad that stays on your device and is never sent to us as a whole. It holds:
- The captions you've been shown, so the AI can be told not to repeat itself. The most recent 15 are sent with each new request for that purpose.
- A count of how many captions you've had, for the free limit.
- If you've paid, a signed token proving it, and your payment reference so it can be renewed.
You can wipe all of it any time by clearing your browser's site data. Nothing is lost that we hold a copy of, because we don't hold a copy.
We do not use cookies for tracking or advertising, and we do not use analytics.
Who else is involved
| Who | What they get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Your photo and the chosen personality | To write the caption |
| Supabase | The request passes through their servers; error logs may record that a request failed, but not your photo | Runs the small program that holds our API keys |
| Cloudflare | Standard web server records, including your IP address | Hosts and protects the website |
| ElevenLabs | The caption text only — never your photo. Only if you use the premium voice | Reads the caption aloud |
| Stripe | Your payment details, name and email, entered on their page | Takes payment. We never see or store your card details |
| Amazon | Only if you click a product link, at which point you're on their site under their rules | Product recommendations |
Pet of the Week (the poll on this website)
This section applies only to the Pet of the Week poll on this website. It does not change anything about the app, which still sends your photo to be captioned and keeps no copy.
Entering the poll is entirely optional, and nothing is collected unless you fill the form in and tick the consent box. If you do enter, here is exactly what happens.
- We store the photo you upload. Unlike the app, this photo is kept, because the whole point is to show it to other people. It is held in private storage and is not readable by anyone until we approve it.
- A human reviews every entry before it appears. Nothing is published automatically. We may decline an entry without giving a reason.
- What is published: the photo, your pet's name, the species, and — only if you fill them in — the caption and the credit name you chose. Leave the credit blank and the entry is anonymous.
- We do not ask for your email and there is still no account.
- Votes: to stop one person voting repeatedly we store a one-way salted hash of your IP address. We do not store the address itself, and the hash cannot be turned back into one. The same applies to limiting how many entries one person can submit per day.
- Please only upload photos of animals that are yours. Do not upload photographs of people.
Removing an entry. Email [email protected] and we will delete the photo and the entry. You do not need to give a reason, and we will not ask you to prove anything beyond enough detail to find it.
Entries and their photos are deleted once they are no longer needed to run the poll, and in any case within 12 months, unless you ask us to remove them sooner.
Affiliate links
Some product links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy something after clicking one, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This is disclosed next to the links themselves.
Payments
Payments are handled entirely by Stripe. Your card details are entered on Stripe's own page and never reach us. We receive only confirmation that a payment succeeded. Stripe's privacy policy is at stripe.com/privacy.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct or delete personal data we hold about you. In practice we hold almost nothing: no account and no email. We hold no photo either, unless you chose to enter the Pet of the Week poll — in which case email us and we will delete that entry and its photo. The data on your device is already under your control and can be cleared in your browser settings. For anything held by Stripe about a payment, contact us at the address above and we'll help.
Children
This service isn't intended for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes
If we change how any of this works, we'll update this page and the date at the top. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept it.