Privacy policy

This policy explains how Kennelworks handles personal data on getkennelworks.com, in the Kennelworks trainer apps (kennelworks.app and the Kennelworks mobile app) and in Handlr (handlr.kennelworks.app and the Handlr mobile app). “Kennelworks”, “we” and “us” mean the company named above.

Who is responsible for your data

We play two roles, depending on whose data it is.

• We are the controller for: accounts of everyone who signs in (trainers, staff and Handlr users), your Handlr profile, dogs, posts, follows, likes, comments, your private album and messages you send, enquiries and launch waitlist sign-ups sent through our website, and subscription billing for businesses.
• A business is the controller for: the records a dog training, kennel or breeding business keeps about its own clients, dogs, bookings, stays, invoices, forms, training grades and buyers. We process that data on the business’s behalf under our data processing agreement. If you’re a client of a business that uses Kennelworks and have a question about the records they keep about you, contact them first; we’ll help them answer.

Where the two overlap, for example a message between you and your trainer, both of you can see it, and the business and we are each responsible for our own use of it.

What we collect

• Account details: name, email address, phone number, profile photo, and your sign-in identifier from Auth0.
• Business details: business name, address, staff, roles, plans and subscription billing details. We don’t see or store full card numbers; Stripe handles them.
• Dogs: names, breeds, dates of birth, photos, microchip numbers, vaccination and vet details, the health wallet (worming, flea and tick, vet visits, weight and insurance), titles, badges, training programmes and grades. Owner self-grades are kept separate from trainer grades.
• Content you create: posts, comments, likes, follows, photos and videos, messages, homework submissions and comments, training logs, lost-dog alerts and sightings, place ratings, group posts, reviews, and the photos and videos in your private album.
• Bookings and payments: sessions, classes, stays, deposits, invoices and payment status. Card payments to a business go through Stripe.
• Location: addresses you give us; the area you choose to watch for lost-dog alerts, stored to about 100 m; where a missing dog was last seen and where sightings were made; the places you add; and, only when you choose “near me” when searching for trainers, events, dogs, groups or places, your device’s approximate location for that search. We don’t track your location in the background.
• Device and usage: push notification tokens, app version, IP address, and server logs of requests and errors.
• Enquiries: what you send through our contact and Enterprise forms.
• Launch waitlist: your email address, name if you give it, and whether you’re interested in Kennelworks or Handlr.

How we use it, and our lawful basis

Purpose	Lawful basis
Providing the apps: accounts, dogs, training, bookings, messages, the community feed and your album	Contract
Subscription billing, invoices and accounting records	Contract and legal obligation
Service emails, texts and push notifications (bookings, messages, homework, account and security notices)	Contract
Keeping the service secure, investigating abuse, handling reports and blocks, and fixing faults	Legitimate interests
Support and debugging, including the staff access described below	Legitimate interests and contract
Understanding how the website is used, without cookies	Legitimate interests
Answering enquiries	Legitimate interests
Emailing you when Kennelworks or Handlr opens, if you join the waitlist	Consent, which you can withdraw with the unsubscribe link in any of those emails
Meeting legal, tax and regulatory requirements	Legal obligation

We don’t sell personal data, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models.

What other people can see

• Your trainer or business sees the records it keeps about you and your dogs, the messages you exchange with it, and the dog details and progress you share with it. You can revoke a business’s access to your dog from Handlr.
• Other Handlr users see your public profile, badges, posts, comments and likes, depending on the visibility you choose. Blocking someone stops them seeing your posts and messaging you.
• Your private album is visible only to you, and to Kennelworks staff as described below.

Staff access to your content

A small number of Kennelworks staff can see everything held about any account, for debugging, support, safety and legal reasons. That includes messages, all photos and videos (including the private album), dogs, bookings, invoices, posts and the records businesses keep about their clients.

• Staff use this access to investigate faults, answer support requests, look into reports of abuse or illegal content, and meet legal obligations. They don’t browse content for any other reason.
• Access goes through our separate admin tools with their own sign-in. Staff are bound by confidentiality.
• The admin tools can read data but not change it, except through specific support actions such as resending an invite or suspending an account, which are recorded.

Who we share it with

We use these suppliers (sub-processors) to run the service. Each acts on our instructions under a data processing agreement.

Supplier	What for	Where
Microsoft Azure	Hosting, database, file storage, backups and monitoring; the website and its waitlist and enquiry forms are served from Microsoft’s global network	UK (UK South), with the website served worldwide
Azure Maps (Microsoft)	Address lookup, distance and maps for directory search	UK and EU
Auth0 by Okta	Sign-in and account security	EU
Cloudflare Turnstile	Checking that a new Kennelworks sign-up is a person, not a bot	Worldwide
Stripe	Subscription billing and card payments to businesses	UK, EU and US
Resend	Service email, and the launch waitlist and website enquiries	US
Twilio	Text messages (SMS), on plans that include them	US
Expo, Apple and Google	Push notifications to the mobile apps	US
Sentry	Error reports from our servers, to find and fix faults	EU and US
Xero and Intuit QuickBooks	Only when a business connects its accounting software: invoices and the client names and addresses on them	UK, EU and US
Plausible Analytics	Cookie-free website visit statistics	EU

We may also share data when the law requires it, to protect people’s safety, or with a buyer of our business, who would be bound by this policy.

International transfers

Our databases and files are hosted in the UK. Where a supplier processes data outside the UK, we rely on UK adequacy regulations (including the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the supplier is certified) or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

• Your account: while it’s open. When you close it (see below), we erase it after a 30-day grace period.
• Records a business keeps about you: for as long as that business keeps them, under its own retention policy. When a business closes its Kennelworks account, it can export its data for 30 days, after which we delete it.
• Invoices and billing records: six years after the end of the financial year they relate to, as UK tax law requires.
• Backups: encrypted database backups are kept for up to 35 days and then overwritten, so deleted data leaves our backups within 35 days of leaving the live system.
• Server logs and error reports: up to 90 days.
• Enquiries: up to two years after we last hear from you.
• Launch waitlist: until we’ve told you the product you asked about is open, or you unsubscribe, and no more than a year.

Downloading your data and closing your account

• Download your data: from your Handlr profile or your Kennelworks account page, request a copy of your data. We prepare a file with your profile, dogs, posts, messages, album and bookings, and the download link lasts for 7 days.
• Close your account: from the same page. Your account is scheduled for erasure after a 30-day grace period, and we email you a reminder a few days before it happens. You can cancel from the same page at any time during the grace period. If you’re the only owner of a business, you’ll need to hand it over or close it first.
• What erasure removes: your sign-in, profile, dogs and their photos and documents, posts, comments, likes, follows and your private album. Businesses lose access to your dogs, but keep their own records about you, such as bookings and invoices, under their own retention policy.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data erased;
• restrict or object to how we use it, including any use based on legitimate interests;
• receive your data in a portable format; and
• withdraw consent where we rely on it.

We don’t make decisions about you based solely on automated processing.

Most of these you can do yourself in the apps. For anything else, email hello@kennelworks.app or use our contact form. We’ll reply within one month. If you’re not happy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Each business’s data is kept separate by row-level security in our database, and staff access is restricted to named people.

Children

Kennelworks and Handlr are for adults. You must be 18 or over to create an account.

Cookies

See our cookie policy.

Changes

We’ll post changes here and update the date above. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we’ll tell you by email or in the app first.