Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 3, 2026
1. Introduction
HappyPetz is a monitoring service that uses AI to detect when a tortoise has flipped onto its back, and alerts its keeper. The service is operated by HappyPetz, a business owned by Anna Yona, a licensed sole proprietor in Israel.
This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and what rights you have over it. It applies to our website, our web application, and the alerts we send you. If you have questions, you can reach us at privacy@happypetz.ai.
2. What we collect
Information you give us
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your phone number, if you choose to receive alerts by SMS or WhatsApp
- Information about your tortoise, such as its name and species
- Your camera connection settings
Information collected automatically
- Your country and time zone, so we can show alerts in your local time
- Basic usage data such as when you log in and when your camera last sent an image
Images and video from your camera
- Still images uploaded by your camera
- Short video clips, where your camera provides them
- The results of our analysis, including whether a flip was detected
Analytics
We use privacy-friendly analytics to understand how our website is used — page views, referral sources and country. This does not use cookies and does not identify you personally.
Payment information
We do not collect or store payment card details. When paid plans become available, payments will be handled by Paddle, who act as merchant of record and process payment information under their own privacy policy.
3. How we use your information
- To detect whether your tortoise has flipped, and to alert you
- To send you service messages, such as a warning that your camera has stopped sending images
- To provide customer support
- To improve the accuracy of our detection models (see section 5)
- To operate, secure and maintain the service
- To meet legal obligations
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your images or video for advertising.
4. Who we share it with
We use third-party providers to run the service. Each processes data only as needed to provide their part of it, under contract, and none of them may use your information for their own purposes.
| Purpose | What's involved |
|---|---|
| AI processing | Images from your camera are analysed by a third-party AI provider to detect whether your tortoise has flipped. Your images are not used to train that provider's own models. |
| Storage and hosting | Images, video and account data are stored with cloud infrastructure providers on servers in the United States and Europe. |
| Email and messaging | Your name, email address and — if you enable SMS or WhatsApp alerts — your phone number, used to deliver alerts and service messages. |
| Payments (planned) | When paid plans launch, payments will be handled by Paddle, who act as merchant of record and process your billing details under their own privacy policy. |
We may also disclose information where we are legally required to do so.
Business transfers. If HappyPetz is sold, merged, or its assets are transferred, information covered by this policy — including de-identified image data used for model training — may be transferred as part of that transaction. We would notify you of any such change.
5. Images, video and model training
This section matters, so we've set it out plainly.
While your account is active
Images and video from your camera are stored and linked to your account. You can see them in your dashboard. We use them to detect flips and to show you what happened.
How we use them to improve detection
We use images and video from the service to train and improve our AI detection models, and to develop other products and services. This is how the system gets better at recognising flips across different tortoises, enclosures and lighting conditions.
Images used for training are stored separately from your account data, labelled only with information such as the species of tortoise. They are not labelled with your name, email address or account.
If you delete your account
When you delete your account, we delete your account details and the link between you and your images.
Images and video previously collected are de-identified and may be retained indefinitely for the purpose of improving our detection models. Once de-identified, we will not attempt to re-link them to you.
If you would prefer your images not to be retained for this purpose, contact us at privacy@happypetz.ai. Note that removing your images entirely may mean we can no longer provide the service to you.
How data reaches us
Your camera uploads images to our server over an encrypted FTPS connection.
6. How long we keep things
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Your account and everything linked to it, including images and alert history | Until you delete your account |
| De-identified images and video | Indefinitely, to improve detection |
| Billing records | As required by law |
7. Security
We take reasonable measures to protect your information, including:
- Encrypted upload from your camera (FTPS)
- Encrypted connections to our website and application
- Access controls limiting who can view stored data
- Credentials held in secure environment configuration, not in code
No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, please report it to security@happypetz.ai rather than disclosing it publicly.
8. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete the personal information we hold about you, to object to or restrict certain processing, to receive a copy of your data, or to withdraw consent where processing is based on it.
You can delete your account at any time from your account settings. For anything else, contact us at privacy@happypetz.ai. We will respond within 30 days.
If you are in the UK or EU and are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.
Legal basis for processing (UK/EU users). We process your information to perform our contract with you (providing the service), on the basis of our legitimate interests (improving detection accuracy, securing the service), and where required to meet legal obligations.
9. International transfers
Your information may be processed and stored in countries outside the UK and European Economic Area, including the United States. Where that happens, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.
10. Children
HappyPetz is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a significant change, we will notify you by email or through the service before it takes effect.
12. Contact us
Questions about this policy or your information: privacy@happypetz.ai