Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-09-08

This policy explains what PetNest stores, why, and who can see it. It covers the PetNest web and mobile apps. Using PetNest is also subject to the Terms & Conditions.

PetNest is operated by SoftenAI Global Private Limited, registered at 7th Floor, East Tower, 7ES6A, Mani Casadona, AA II, Newtown, Kolkata, Chakpachuria, West Bengal 700160, India. SoftenAI is responsible for the personal data described in this policy. For privacy questions or a data request, email hello@softenai.com.

1. What we store

  • Account. Your email address, and the owner profile you fill in — name, handle, photo, and a location if you choose to add one.
  • Pets. Everything you record about a pet: name, species and breed, photos, milestones, health records and reminders, and the pet’s privacy setting.
  • Social. Posts, comments, likes, stories, follows and group membership.
  • Commerce. Marketplace listings, business accounts, directory places and bookings you create.
  • Discovery. Adoption listings, lost & found reports and events, each with a location.
  • Messages and notifications. Direct message threads and their contents, your notification preferences, and the notifications and reminder emails we send you.
  • Media. Photos and videos you upload, together with the processed versions we generate for display.
  • Technical. Sign-in tokens stored in your browser, and ordinary server logs of requests to the service.
  • Usage. Anonymous statistics about which pages are visited and which parts of PetNest are used.

2. Signing in and your session

Sign-in is by one-time code sent to your email — there is no password to store. Once you are signed in, an access token and a refresh token are kept in your browser’s storage so you stay signed in between visits. Signing out clears them from the device.

3. Location

PetNest asks for your location explicitly, and only uses it if you allow it — to show what is near you and to place what you post on a map. You can refuse, and you can withdraw the permission in your browser or device settings at any time. Lost & found reports deliberately publish an approximate area rather than exact coordinates, so a report does not pinpoint a home address.

To turn a map point into an address, or to find a place you search for, we send those coordinates or your search text to OpenStreetMap’s lookup service. That request is made by our servers, not by your device, so OpenStreetMap does not receive your IP address or anything that identifies you.

4. Who can see your pets and posts

Visibility is decided per pet and per post, and it is enforced on every read — not just hidden in the interface.

  • Public pet. The profile is visible to everyone, including people who are not signed in, and can be indexed by search engines.
  • Followers pet. Approved followers see the full profile. Everyone else sees a preview — name, breed, photo, follower count and the pet’s public posts — and the profile is not indexed by search engines.
  • Private pet. Only you can see it. It is not indexed, and it is not visible even to people who already follow it. Changing a pet back to public or followers restores access; a privacy change never deletes your followers.

A post takes its visibility from the pet by default and can be set individually to public, followers, or only me. Comments and likes are visible only to whoever can see the post. Stories follow the pet’s setting, and a private pet cannot post stories. Follows are always a request that you approve — nobody follows a pet instantly.

5. What is public by design

Some parts of PetNest are meant to be found. Wiki breed and care pages, public pet profiles and public posts, directory places, marketplace listings, adoption listings, events and lost & found reports are published for everyone and may be indexed by search engines. Think of anything you set to public as being on the open web.

6. Messages and notifications

Direct messages are visible to the people in the thread. We store them so the conversation works across your devices. We send in-app and email notifications about activity and reminders; you control which ones you get in your notification settings.

7. Media

Photos and videos you upload are processed — resized, transcoded, thumbnails generated — and delivered through a content delivery network so they load quickly. Where a piece of media is attached to something public, the media is public too.

8. AI features (NestAI)

When you use NestAI — the assistant, breed identification from a photo, or the name generator — what you send is processed to produce the answer. That includes the photo you upload for a breed guess and the text of your question. Do not send anything to NestAI that you would not want processed.

9. Who else sees this data

We do not sell your data. Other PetNest users see only what your privacy settings allow. Beyond that, data is handled by the infrastructure that runs the service — hosting, storage and the content delivery network, email delivery for sign-in codes and notifications, and the AI processing described above. We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to protect people or animals from harm.

We use Google Analytics, loaded through Google Tag Manager, to count page views and see which parts of PetNest get used. We ask before we store any analytics cookie. Until you accept, no analytics cookie is stored on your device; if you accept, Google Analytics sets its own cookies — _ga and _ga_C3QWR3VY1E, which last about two years unless you clear them — to recognise a returning visit. We also keep your answer itself on your device, so we do not ask again. You can change your answer at any time in Settings. We never turn on advertising or personalisation cookies. Whether or not you accept, Google receives your IP address, basic details about your browser, and which pages you visit. We do not send Google your name, your email, or anything about your pets. The place lookups described in section 3 are handled by OpenStreetMap.

10. Your choices

  • Set each pet’s privacy, and each post’s visibility, at any time.
  • Approve or reject every follow request.
  • Edit or delete your posts, pets, listings and profile from within the app.
  • Choose which notifications you receive, and who can message you.
  • Grant or withdraw the location permission in your browser or device settings.
  • Accept or refuse analytics cookies when we ask, and change that answer at any time in Settings.
  • Sign out to clear your session tokens from a device.

11. How long we keep it

We keep your data for as long as your account exists. Deleting content removes it from the app; some things you shared with other people, such as a message you sent, remain visible to them.

You can ask us to delete your whole account from within the app. Asking starts a grace period. Your account is hidden from other people straight away, and you can cancel at any point before the period ends. When it ends, we erase your data, and it cannot be brought back. Your account settings page shows how long the grace period lasts, and when yours ends.

We keep your account data for as long as your account exists. Content you delete leaves the app immediately and rolls out of our backups on our normal backup cycle. You can ask for a copy of your data, or for it to be deleted entirely, by emailing hello@softenai.com from the address your account signs in with — we answer within 30 days. We keep records for longer only where Indian law requires it.

12. Children

PetNest is for adults. You must be 18 or over to hold an account, and we do not knowingly let anyone under 18 create one.

We know that children look at pets with their parents. A child may use PetNest through a parent or guardian’s account, with that adult present and responsible for what happens on it. The account, and everything done through it, belongs to the adult.

13. Child safety

PetNest has no tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation. Child sexual abuse material, and any content that sexualises a minor, is prohibited outright — there are no exceptions and no warnings.

If you see anything of the kind, report it. Every post, comment, story, profile, pet, listing and report carries a Report control in the app; choose Abuse or harassment and describe what you saw. For anything urgent, contact SoftenAI directly at hello@softenai.com, or by post at 7th Floor, East Tower, 7ES6A, Mani Casadona, AA II, Newtown, Kolkata, Chakpachuria, West Bengal 700160, India, or by phone on +91 97484 40373.

When we find such content we remove it, close the account behind it, preserve the evidence, and report it to the relevant authorities — in India under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, including the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, and elsewhere to the national authority responsible.

14. Changes to this policy

We will update this page as PetNest changes. The date at the top always shows the current version.

15. Grievance officer

If you have a complaint about how we handle your data, contact our grievance officer:

  • Email: hello@softenai.com
  • Address: 7th Floor, East Tower, 7ES6A, Mani Casadona, AA II, Newtown, Kolkata, Chakpachuria, West Bengal 700160, India
  • Phone: +91 97484 40373

We aim to respond within 30 days, as the Information Technology Rules require.

16. Contact

For any question about this policy, or to make a request about your data, contact SoftenAI Global Private Limited:

  • Email: hello@softenai.com
  • Address: 7th Floor, East Tower, 7ES6A, Mani Casadona, AA II, Newtown, Kolkata, Chakpachuria, West Bengal 700160, India
  • Phone: +91 97484 40373