← Legal Centre

Privacy Policy

Effective 1 August 2026 · Last updated 2 August 2026

Wanees (ونيس) is a bilingual (Arabic and English) pet‑care companion app made for pet owners across the Arab world and beyond. It's there to help you log walks, keep an eye on your pet's wellbeing, and spend time with a community of fellow owners. This policy is our plain‑language promise about your data: what we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices that stay in your hands. The short version — we only collect what the app actually needs, and we never sell your personal data or use it for cross‑app advertising.

The organisation responsible for your personal data (your "data controller") is Wanees. Have a privacy question or request? We're here for it — reach us at support@wanees.app (see Contact us).

1. Information we collect

Account

• Your email address, name, and a securely hashed password.
• Your language preference and basic profile details you add.

Your pets

• Pet names, species/breed, birthdate, weight, photos, and the activity, meal, mood, and health entries you log.

Location & walks

• Precise GPS location while you are recording a walk, so we can map your route and calculate distance and pace.
• Background location — only while a walk is actively recording — so tracking continues with the screen off. If you switch on walk detection (off by default), the app also keeps a home‑area coordinate on your device so it can notice when a walk begins. We never use your location for advertising or profiling, and we never sell it. You can set privacy zones that clip the start/finish of any route you share.

Health & fitness (optional)

• If you choose to connect a wearable, Apple Health, or Android Health Connect, we read the metrics you grant — such as steps, active minutes, sleep, resting heart rate, and heart‑rate variability — to relate your activity to your pet's wellbeing. You grant each permission explicitly and can disconnect at any time.
• These metrics leave your device: they are sent to Wanees servers and stored against your account so the bond insights can be computed over time. When you ask for an insight, a summarised form (daily totals and averages — never raw samples, never your name or e‑mail) is sent to our AI provider to generate the wording. Health data is never used for advertising and is never sold. Disconnecting stops the collection; deleting your account deletes what was collected.

Photos & camera (optional)

• Photos you select from your library or capture with the camera for your pet's profile, posts, and meal analysis. The app accesses your camera/library only when you ask it to.

Social activity

• Posts, comments, likes, follows, group memberships, and reports you submit. Content you post publicly is visible to other users; your private logs stay private to you and anyone you explicitly invite.

Caregivers

• If you invite a caregiver (e.g. a sitter or co‑owner), they receive the access you grant to the pet(s) you share.

Device & technical

• A push‑notification token (to deliver reminders/notifications), device and app version, and diagnostic logs used to keep the app running and secure.

Website analytics & cookies

• On our public website (wanees.app), we use a privacy‑respecting web analytics service (Google Analytics 4) to understand aggregate traffic — such as pages visited, approximate region, referrer, device/browser type, and similar usage signals — so we can improve the site. This may involve cookies or similar identifiers set by that provider.
• We use analytics only for our own understanding of site usage. We do not use it to sell your data or to serve you cross‑app advertising. Where required by law, we will ask for your consent to non‑essential analytics/cookies and honour your choice; you can also use your browser or device controls (and any "Do Not Track"/opt‑out signals) to limit tracking.
• The in‑app experience is not used for advertising analytics; app diagnostics are covered under "Device & technical" above.

Payments (if you subscribe)

• If you purchase a subscription, payment is handled by our payment processor. We do not store your full card number.

2. How we use your information

• To provide the core service — logging, maps, reminders, and your profile.
• To compute your Bond / Sync Score, which is a reflection of the time and activity you log together — not a judgment of how much you care.
• To generate AI insights and meal analysis (see section 3).
• To send transactional emails (verification, password reset) and notifications you've enabled.
• To keep the community safe (content moderation) and to support you.
• To meet legal obligations and protect against fraud or abuse.

3. AI processing

To create your insights and meal analysis, we send the relevant content — including a meal photo and related pet/activity context — to a specialist AI processing provider working on our behalf. That data is used only to generate your result, and it is never used to train general AI models. AI guidance is general information, not veterinary advice. And if the AI service is ever unavailable, the app will tell you honestly rather than dress up a made‑up answer.

4. How we share information

We share data only with service providers that process it on our behalf, and only as needed to run the app:

These providers act as our processors under contract and may process data only on our instructions. A current list of the specific providers we use is available on request at support@wanees.app.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for cross‑app advertising or tracking. We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the rights and safety of our users.

5. Data retention & deletion

We keep your information only for as long as we need it. In general, we keep your account and the content you create while your account is active. You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete account; this removes your personal data from our active systems. After deletion, residual copies may persist briefly in encrypted backups and logs before being purged (they are overwritten as our backup rotation cycles). We may keep limited information for longer where we are required to by law (for example, tax or accounting records for a subscription) or to resolve disputes and enforce our agreements, and we keep aggregated or anonymised data that no longer identifies you.

6. Your rights & choices

• Access, correct, export, or delete your data — edit in‑app or delete your account from Settings; for a copy (export) of your data or a formal access request, contact us.
• Withdraw consent — where we rely on your consent (for example, health/wearable data, photos, or non‑essential website analytics), you can withdraw it at any time; this does not affect processing already carried out.
• Object or restrict — you can ask us to stop or limit certain processing, and you can opt out of non‑essential website analytics/cookies.
• Permissions — revoke location, health, photo, or notification access at any time in your device's system settings.
• Privacy zones — hide the start/finish of shared routes.
• Wearables / Health — disconnect any connected source at any time.

We will respond to rights requests within the time required by applicable law. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under laws such as the UAE Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), other Arab‑region data‑protection laws (for example in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, or Jordan), or the EU/UK GDPR — including the right to lodge a complaint with your local data‑protection authority. Contact us to exercise any of these rights.

7. Security

We protect your data in transit with HTTPS/TLS, store any wearable access tokens encrypted (AES‑256‑GCM), hash passwords, and restrict access to your data. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we work to protect your information.

8. Children

Wanees isn't meant for children under 13 (or the minimum age in your country), and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you think a child has shared information with us, just let us know and we'll delete it.

9. International transfers

We operate across the Arab world and beyond, and your information may be processed on servers and by service providers located outside your country of residence — including countries whose data‑protection laws differ from your own. When we transfer personal data internationally, we use appropriate safeguards required by applicable law (such as standard contractual clauses or an equivalent mechanism) and require our providers to protect it under contract. You can contact us for more information about these transfers and safeguards.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We'll revise the "Effective" / "Last updated" dates above and, for material changes, give you additional notice in the app or by email before they take effect. Your continued use of Wanees after an update takes effect means you accept the revised policy.

11. Language

This policy is written in English, which is the authoritative and governing version. Any Arabic translation is provided for your convenience; if there is any discrepancy, the English text prevails.

12. Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy? We'd genuinely like to hear from you — email support@wanees.app and a person will read it.