Barkbook Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 21, 2026 · plain-language summary of how Barkbook handles data, with extra care for kids under 13.
The short version
Barkbook is a game where you collect the dog breeds you meet in real life. You need a free account to use the scanner, and your collection is stored in your account so it's safe if you lose your phone. We don't sell your data, we don't show ads, and we never use your photos to train AI. For kids under 13, nothing is stored in the cloud until a parent says yes.
What we collect
- Account: your email address and birthdate (used to know whether you're under 13). We also keep a count of your weekly scans to enforce the free scan limit.
- Parent email (kids under 13 only): collected solely to ask a parent/guardian for consent. If consent isn't given, we delete the parent email after 14 days and store nothing else.
- Your collection: the dog breeds you've logged, your notes and progress, where you met each dog if you add a location, and any dog photos you chose to save. Photos are private to your account, never public, never sold, and never used to train AI — anyone's, any age.
Scan photos
When you scan a dog, the photo is sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) to do two things in one step: identify the breed, and check that the picture is a dog and is safe. It's processed transiently for that request — it isn't retained or used for training.
If a photo isn't a dog, or looks unsafe, you'll just see "that's not a dog" and the scan won't count against your weekly limit. We record that it happened so we can keep the app safe. Repeated unsafe photos pause scanning on the account — the rest of the app keeps working, and you can email us to sort it out.
One exception to "not retained": if a photo appears to sexually exploit a child, we keep a copy in private storage so a person can review it, and we pause the account immediately. That copy isn't visible to you or to anyone but us, and we may be required to report it to the authorities.
Feedback you send us
If you send feedback ("Send a Bark"), we receive your message, and — only if you choose to include them — a screenshot and basic app info (app version, browser, theme, how many breeds you've met). Screenshots are stored in our private storage and used only to understand and fix problems. Feedback text and app info are managed in our issue tracker (hosted by GitHub). Email us to have your feedback deleted.
What we never do
No selling data. No advertising trackers. No making your collection or photos public. No using any photo — including one kept for safety review — to train AI. No sharing with third parties except the infrastructure needed to run the app: our database and hosting (Supabase), the AI breed-identifier (Anthropic), our email provider (Resend), and our issue tracker for feedback (GitHub). We may use and share aggregated, de-identified statistics that can't identify you or your dogs — like "which breeds are spotted most" — to understand and improve Barkbook.
If Barkbook changes hands
If Barkbook is ever acquired or merged into another company, your data may transfer as part of that change — the new owner has to honor this policy or notify you before doing anything different with your data.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account from inside the app, at any time: Profile → Delete my account. You don't have to email anyone and you don't have to ask.
Deleting is permanent and it can't be undone. It removes, everywhere:
- your account itself, and your email address;
- every dog you've logged, with your notes, locations and photos;
- your collection, badges, streak and level;
- your parent's email address, if one was given for consent.
Two things are kept, and neither can be traced back to you: the count of scans your account made (we pay for those, and our totals shouldn't change because somebody left) and the record that a photo was flagged as unsafe, with its date. Both have the account identifier stripped out, so they become numbers in a total and nothing more.
One exception. If an account has a photo that appeared to sexually exploit a child, that safety record and the retained copy of the photo are kept, and the account is disabled rather than erased, for as long as the law requires. Everything else above is still deleted. If you're a parent, we'll email you to confirm the deletion either way.
How long we keep things
- Delete your account and its data any time, from inside the app — see above.
- Unconfirmed parent emails: deleted after 14 days.
- Children's accounts inactive for 18 months are deleted.
- Safety records (that a photo was flagged, and when) are kept while the account exists, and afterwards as a count with no account attached. A retained unsafe photo is kept until it has been reviewed, and for as long as the law requires us to keep it.
Parents' rights (COPPA)
If you're the parent/guardian of a Barkbook user under 13, you can review the information we've collected from your child, revoke your consent, and have their cloud data deleted. The account itself can be deleted from inside the app at any time (Profile → Delete my account), and we'll email you to confirm when that happens. For anything else, email privacy@barkbookapp.com. Revoking consent turns cloud backup off; the app keeps working on the device.
Contact
Privacy questions or requests: privacy@barkbookapp.com. For help with the app itself — or to report a photo or a result — email support@barkbookapp.com or see Support.