Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Pawlee AI is an adoption application pre-screening platform operated by Pawatics ("we," "us," or "our"). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect information when you submit an adoption application through our platform or interact with our services on behalf of an animal shelter.

By using our services, you agree to the data practices described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with any part of this policy, please do not use our services.

2. Who We Are

Pawatics operates the Pawlee AI platform, which provides automated adoption application screening services to animal shelters. Our platform collects applicant information, performs automated screening using artificial intelligence, and facilitates communication between applicants and shelter staff.

For privacy-related questions or requests, contact us at admin@pawatics.com.

3. Information We Collect From Applicants

When you submit an adoption application through our platform, we collect the following categories of personal information:

• Contact information: Full name, email address, phone number, and mailing address
• Housing information: Type of residence, whether you rent or own, landlord name and contact details
• Household information: Number of adults, children, and current pets in the home
• Veterinarian information: Clinic name and contact details for reference verification
• Lifestyle information: Activity level, work schedule, daily routine, and prior experience with pets
• Adoption preferences: Preferred animal type, breed, age, energy level, and compatibility considerations
• Application responses: Written answers to open-ended screening questions
• Documents: Any supporting materials you voluntarily upload in connection with your application

4. Adoption Application Data — Special Handling

When you submit an adoption application through a shelter using Pawlee AI, we collect and process sensitive personal information as part of the pre-screening workflow. This includes:

• Government-issued identification documents uploaded for identity verification
• Residential address and housing information including landlord contact details
• Veterinarian contact information and pet care history
• SMS interview transcripts containing your responses to pre-screening questions
• Property verification data obtained through third-party sources including mapping services

This information is collected on behalf of and shared with the shelter to which you are applying. Pawatics processes this information as a service provider to the shelter. The shelter is the data controller responsible for your application data.

Adoption application data is retained for a period not to exceed 24 months from the date of application unless a longer retention period is required by applicable law or requested by the shelter. You may request deletion of your application data by contacting admin@pawatics.com. Deletion requests will be honored subject to the shelter's data retention requirements and applicable legal obligations.

Pawatics does not use adoption application data to train AI models without your explicit consent. Aggregate and anonymized statistics derived from application data may be used to improve the Pawlee AI pre-screening system.

5. Information We Collect Automatically

When you access our platform, we may automatically collect certain technical information, including:

• IP address and general geographic location derived from it
• Browser type, version, and language settings
• Device type and operating system
• Pages visited, links clicked, and time spent on our platform
• Referring website or source
• Session identifiers and access timestamps

This information helps us maintain platform security and improve the user experience.

6. How We Use Your Information

We use the personal information we collect for the following purposes:

• Processing and evaluating your adoption application
• Conducting automated pre-screening and generating an advisory score
• Verifying information you provide, including landlord and veterinarian references
• Communicating with you via SMS and email about your application status
• Scheduling meet-and-greet appointments with shelter staff
• Sharing your application details with the animal shelter you are applying to
• Maintaining platform security and detecting fraudulent activity
• Complying with applicable legal obligations
• Improving the accuracy and fairness of our screening models

7. Automated Screening and AI Processing

Pawlee AI uses artificial intelligence to analyze your application responses and generate a preliminary screening score. This score is designed to help shelter staff prioritize and review applications more efficiently — it does not constitute a final adoption decision.

Our AI processes your text responses to evaluate factors such as housing suitability, prior pet experience, and lifestyle compatibility with available animals. Our screening does not consider protected characteristics such as race, religion, national origin, sex, or disability.

8. Information Sharing and Disclosure

We share your personal information only in the following circumstances:

• Animal shelter partners: The shelter you applied to adopt from receives your complete application, screening results, and associated communications.
• Service providers: We engage third-party vendors to help operate our platform. These providers are contractually required to protect your data and use it only for the services they provide to us.
• Legal compliance: We may disclose information when required by law, regulation, court order, or to protect the rights and safety of Pawatics, our partners, or others.
• Business transfers: If Pawatics is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction.

We do not sell your personal information to third parties for marketing or advertising purposes.

9. Animal Shelter Partners

Your adoption application and all related information is shared directly with the animal shelter you apply to. Each shelter is an independent organization that operates under its own privacy and data-handling practices. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of the shelter you are applying to if you have questions about how they handle your information once it is shared with them.

Pawatics is not responsible for the privacy practices of individual animal shelter partners.

10. Third-Party Service Providers

We use the following categories of third-party services to operate our platform:

• Our AI infrastructure provider: AI processing for application analysis and scoring
• Our SMS and communications provider: SMS delivery, phone number verification, and inbound messaging
• Our email delivery provider: Transactional and notification email delivery
• Our cloud database provider: Database storage, file storage, and user authentication
• Google Fonts: Web font delivery (subject to Google's privacy policy)

Each provider has its own privacy policy governing how it handles data. We encourage you to review those policies if you have concerns about specific providers. Pawatics evaluates all service providers for security and compliance standards before engagement and maintains data processing agreements with providers who process personal information on our behalf.

11. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for the following periods:

• Active applications: Retained for the duration of the adoption process plus one year following conclusion
• Incomplete applications: Deleted after 90 days of inactivity
• Audit logs: Retained for three years for compliance and dispute resolution purposes
• SMS and email records: Retained for two years
• Government-issued identification documents: Retained for the duration of the application review period plus 90 days, then securely deleted. Where applicable biometric privacy laws impose shorter retention requirements, the shorter period controls.

After the applicable retention period, your data is securely deleted or anonymized. You may also request earlier deletion as described in Section 13.

12. Legitimate Interests

Where we process personal information based on legitimate interests, those interests include:

• Platform security: Detecting and preventing fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access
• Service improvement: Analyzing aggregated usage patterns to improve accuracy and fairness of our screening models
• Legal compliance: Maintaining records necessary to comply with applicable laws and respond to legal claims
• Business operations: Processing necessary to operate and administer the Pawlee AI platform

When we rely on legitimate interests, we conduct a balancing test to ensure our interests do not override your fundamental rights and freedoms. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests by contacting us at admin@pawatics.com.

13. Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you are located, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Correction: Request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete information
• Deletion: Request that we delete your personal information, subject to applicable legal obligations
• Portability: Request your data in a portable, machine-readable format
• Objection: Object to certain uses of your information
• Opt out of SMS: Reply STOP to any SMS message we send you
• Opt out of email: Click the unsubscribe link in any email we send you

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at admin@pawatics.com. We will respond to verifiable requests within 30 days.

If you have previously provided consent for any data processing activity, you may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us at admin@pawatics.com. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing that occurred before you withdrew consent. In some cases, withdrawal of consent may limit our ability to process your application.

14. Automated Decision Making and AI Scoring Rights

Our platform uses automated processing to generate a preliminary screening score for your adoption application. You have the following rights with respect to this automated processing:

Right to Explanation

You may request an explanation of the factors that influenced your automated screening score. We will provide a plain-language description of the primary inputs considered and how they affected your score, to the extent practicable given the nature of the AI system.

Right to Human Review

You have the right to request that a human shelter staff member review your application independently of the automated score. This request must be made directly to the shelter you applied to. Pawatics will flag your application for human review upon receiving your request.

Right to Contest

If you believe your screening score is based on inaccurate information, you have the right to contest it by submitting a correction request to admin@pawatics.com. We will review the underlying data and correct any verified inaccuracies.

Note: Certain state privacy laws, including those applicable in Colorado, Connecticut, and Virginia, provide additional rights with respect to automated decision-making. Residents of those states may contact us to exercise any additional rights provided under applicable state law.

15. California Residents — CCPA

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) provides you with additional rights, including:

• The right to know what categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you
• The right to know whether your personal information has been sold or disclosed, and to whom
• The right to request deletion of personal information we have collected from you
• The right to opt out of the sale of your personal information (we do not sell personal information)
• The right not to be discriminated against for exercising your privacy rights

To submit a verifiable consumer request, email admin@pawatics.com with the subject line "CCPA Request." We will respond within 45 days.

Virginia Residents — VCDPA

If you are a Virginia resident, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) provides you with additional rights, including:

• The right to confirm whether we are processing your personal data and to access that data
• The right to correct inaccuracies in your personal data
• The right to delete personal data provided by or obtained about you
• The right to obtain a copy of your personal data in a portable format
• The right to opt out of the processing of your personal data for purposes of targeted advertising, sale, or profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects

To submit a VCDPA request, email admin@pawatics.com with the subject line "VCDPA Request." We will respond within 45 days. You may appeal a denial of your request by contacting us at admin@pawatics.com with the subject line "VCDPA Appeal" within 60 days of receiving our response. We will respond to your appeal within 60 days.

16. Biometric Data

When adoption applicants upload government-issued identification documents as part of the Pawlee AI identity verification process, Pawatics stores the document image in encrypted form for identity verification purposes. Pawatics does not extract, analyze, or process biometric identifiers such as facial geometry, fingerprints, voiceprints, or retinal scans from uploaded documents. However, to the extent that applicable state biometric privacy laws including the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (CUBI), and the Washington My Health MY Data Act may apply to our document handling practices, we comply with those requirements as described below.

We comply with applicable biometric privacy laws to the extent they apply to our services. Specifically:

• We collect biometric data only with your informed written consent
• We do not sell, lease, or trade biometric identifiers or biometric information
• We store biometric data using reasonable security standards
• We destroy biometric data when the purpose for collection has been fulfilled. In all cases, government-issued identification documents are deleted within 90 days following conclusion of the application review period as described in Section 11. Where applicable biometric privacy laws impose shorter retention requirements, the shorter period controls.

To submit a biometric data inquiry or deletion request, contact us at admin@pawatics.com with the subject line "Biometric Data Request."

17. International Users and GDPR

Pawlee AI is intended for use within the United States. If you are accessing our services from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your country.

If you are a resident of the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or Switzerland, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or equivalent legislation may apply to our processing of your personal data. In addition to the rights described in Section 13, GDPR residents have:

• The right to restrict processing of your personal data
• The right to object to processing based on legitimate interests or for direct marketing
• The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority in your country of residence
• The right not to be subject to solely automated decision-making with legal or similarly significant effects without human review

Our legal bases for processing personal data under GDPR include:

• Contract performance: Processing necessary to deliver the adoption pre-screening services you requested
• Legitimate interests: As described in Section 12
• Legal obligation: Processing required by applicable law
• Consent: Where you have given explicit consent, including for SMS communications and certain optional features

Where we transfer personal data outside the EEA, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission or other lawful transfer mechanisms. To request a copy of the applicable transfer safeguards, contact us at admin@pawatics.com.

18. Data Processing Agreements for Shelter Partners

Animal shelters that use Pawlee AI to process adoption applications act as data controllers with respect to applicant personal data. Pawatics acts as a data processor on their behalf. We enter into written Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) with all shelter partners that:

• Define the scope, nature, and purpose of data processing
• Require shelters to provide a lawful basis for processing applicant data
• Obligate Pawatics to process data only on documented shelter instructions
• Set forth security requirements applicable to both parties
• Establish procedures for responding to data subject requests
• Address subprocessor relationships and international data transfers

Shelter partners who require a Data Processing Agreement, including those subject to GDPR or other data protection frameworks, may request one by contacting admin@pawatics.com with the subject line "DPA Request."

19. Children's Privacy

Our services are not directed to individuals under 18 years of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected information from a child under 18, we will promptly delete it.

If you believe we have collected information from a child under 18, please contact us immediately at admin@pawatics.com.

20. Data Security

We implement industry-standard technical and organizational security measures to protect your personal information, including:

• Encryption of data in transit using TLS/HTTPS
• Encryption of data at rest in our database systems
• Access controls limiting who can view or process your information
• Secure authentication requirements for all shelter staff accounts
• Regular review of our security practices and third-party provider certifications

21. Data Breach Notification

In the event of a data breach that affects your personal information, Pawatics will notify affected users as required by applicable law. Notification will be provided via email to your registered email address and, where required by law, via additional means.

Our breach notification will include, to the extent known at the time of notification: a description of what happened, the types of information involved, steps we are taking to address the breach, steps you can take to protect yourself, and contact information for questions.

For adoption applicants whose government-issued identification documents were involved in a breach, we will provide enhanced notification and guidance on protective steps, including credit monitoring recommendations where appropriate.

To report a suspected security incident, please contact us immediately at admin@pawatics.com with the subject line "Security Incident Report."

22. Cookie Policy

Pawatics uses cookies and similar tracking technologies to operate and improve the Services. This section explains what cookies we use and why.

Essential Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the Services to function and cannot be disabled. They include session authentication cookies set by our database infrastructure provider that keep you logged in to your dashboard account. Without these cookies, the Services cannot function.

Analytics Cookies

We may use analytics tools to understand how users interact with the platform. Analytics data is aggregated and anonymized where possible. You may opt out of analytics tracking through your browser settings.

Third-Party Cookies

Our service providers may set their own cookies as part of delivering their services. These cookies are governed by the privacy policies of those providers. Our infrastructure providers maintain their own privacy policies governing their use of any data processed through their systems.

Managing Cookies

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Most browsers allow you to refuse cookies, block specific cookies, or delete existing cookies. Note that disabling essential cookies will prevent you from accessing your dashboard account.

We do not use cookies for advertising or cross-site tracking purposes.

Do Not Track

Some browsers transmit "Do Not Track" (DNT) signals to websites. Because no universal standard exists for how companies should respond to DNT signals, our Services do not currently respond to DNT browser signals. You may still opt out of analytics tracking through your browser settings or by contacting us.

23. SMS and Email Communications

When you submit an adoption application, you consent to receive transactional SMS messages and emails from Pawlee AI at the contact information you provide. These communications may include:

• Application receipt confirmations and status updates
• Requests for additional information or documentation
• Landlord and veterinarian verification outreach
• Appointment scheduling and reminders

Message and data rates may apply for SMS communications. You may opt out of SMS at any time by replying STOP. You may opt out of email by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email. Opting out may slow down processing of your application but will not affect its status.

24. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable law. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy on this page and updating the Effective Date at the top. If you have an active application, we may also notify you directly by email.

Your continued use of our services after any changes take effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated Privacy Policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us:

Pawatics, Inc.
251 Little Falls Drive
Wilmington, DE 19808

Email: admin@pawatics.com

For specific privacy requests, please use the appropriate subject line:

• Data access or portability requests: "Privacy Request — Access"
• Deletion requests: "Privacy Request — Deletion"
• CCPA requests: "CCPA Request"
• GDPR requests: "GDPR Request"
• Security incident reports: "Security Incident Report"
• General privacy questions: "Privacy Policy Inquiry"

For general inquiries and support:
Raleigh-Durham, NC