Privacy Policy
Who we are
Yomp is a dog-friendly places finder for the UK. This policy covers both the Yomp website and the Yomp Android app, and explains what personal data we collect, why, and what rights you have over it.
What we collect and why
We collect the following data to provide and improve the service. Each item is listed with the lawful basis we rely on under UK GDPR.
| Data | Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account data — name, email address, username, and profile photo, from Google or email sign-in | Identify your account, sign you in, and personalise your experience | Contract — Art 6(1)(b) |
| Dog profile — your dog's name, breed and date of birth | Personalise greetings and recommendations | Contract — Art 6(1)(b) |
| Approximate location — the area you are in | Show dog-friendly venues near you. Venue searches are cached against a coarse grid of roughly 1.1 km, and that cache is not linked to your account. | Consent — you grant location permission |
| Photos you upload — member and dog avatars, and venue photos if you manage a venue listing | Display your profile and dog avatars in the app, and show your venue's photos on its listing | Contract — Art 6(1)(b) |
| Community contributions — per-attribute votes (dogs inside, enclosed garden, water bowls, dog treats, on-lead only), and saved places and walks | Improve venue data for the community and keep your saved places and walks. Legitimate interests assessment conducted — low privacy impact; users expect in-app actions to improve the product. | Legitimate interest — Art 6(1)(f) |
| Venue reports (the venue, the reason you selected, and the time) | Flag venues that have closed or are no longer dog-friendly, and flag a listing for review once enough separate people report the same thing | Legitimate interest — Art 6(1)(f) |
| Venue claims (your name, your role at the venue, and a business email address) | Verify that you are entitled to manage a venue listing | Contract — Art 6(1)(b) |
| Aggregated venue attribute scores (derived from votes — not directly linked to your account) | Display community-verified dog-friendly attributes on venue listings | Legitimate interest — Art 6(1)(f) |
| Sign-in audit log (timestamp, truncated user-agent) | Security monitoring and abuse prevention. Legitimate interests assessment conducted — minimal data collected (timestamp and truncated user-agent only); no overriding prejudice to user rights. | Legitimate interest — Art 6(1)(f) |
| Technical data — IP address and short-lived rate-limit keys | Protect the service from abuse and enforce fair-use limits | Legitimate interest — Art 6(1)(f) |
| Crash and error diagnostics (no user identifiers) | Detect and fix crashes and errors on the website and the app | Legitimate interest — Art 6(1)(f) |
| Device preferences (category, season theme) | Persist your preferences across devices | Contract — Art 6(1)(b) |
Your location is approximate. We use the coarse area you are in to find nearby venues; we do not collect your device’s exact position, we do not store your location history, and we do not track your movements in the background.
Any profile photos you upload (your own avatar and your dogs’ avatars) are stored under a private, account-scoped path, limited to image files of up to 5 MB each, and are readable only by signed-in users. They are deleted when you delete your account.
If you manage a venue listing, any photos you upload to it are stored under a separate account-scoped path, limited to image files of up to 2 MB each. Unlike avatars, venue photos are publicly readable — they appear on the venue’s listing to anyone using Yomp. They are deleted when you delete your account.
Who we share your data with
We use the following third-party processors to operate the service. Their locations are set out below and in the next section.
| Processor | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Firebase Firestore (Google) | Primary database — profiles, dogs, votes, reports, claims | UK — europe-west2 (London) |
| Firebase Storage (Google) | Member, dog and venue photo storage | UK — europe-west2 (London) |
| Firebase Authentication (Google) | Sign-in and identity | USA |
| Sentry | Crash and error monitoring — no user identifiers | EU |
| PostHog | Product analytics — no user identifiers | USA |
| Vercel-managed Redis (Upstash) | Venue-search cache (coarse grid, not linked to you) and rate-limiting (short-lived IP and account keys) | Dublin, Ireland (EU) |
| Vercel | Hosting and anonymised website analytics | Global (USA) |
| Google Places API | Venue data — server-side only, no personal data transmitted | Global |
| Resend | Transactional email — account and deletion confirmations | USA |
| Stadia Maps | Map tiles on the website | USA and EU |
Where your data is stored
Most of your personal data stays in the United Kingdom. Firebase Firestore (our database) and Firebase Storage (your photos) are both hosted in Google’s europe-west2 region in London.
Firebase Authentication data is processed in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs). This is the only part of your account data that is processed outside the UK and EU by default.
Some processors operate outside the UK. Sentry processes crash and error data in the EU. PostHog processes analytics data in the USA. Resend transfers the email address used for account and deletion emails to the USA under SCCs, in line with its data processing addendum (resend.com/security/gdpr). Vercel and the Google Places API operate globally, and Stadia Maps serves map tiles from servers in the USA and EU. Where a processor is outside the UK, the transfer is covered by the appropriate safeguards required by UK data protection law.
How long we keep it
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Location | Not stored. Processed transiently to query nearby venues and immediately discarded. |
| Venue-search cache (coarse grid) | Not linked to your account. Held for up to 180 days, then refreshed. |
| Account and dog profile | Held while your account is active. Deleted immediately when you delete your account. |
| Photos (member and dog avatars, and venue photos) | Held while your account is active. Deleted when you delete your account. |
| Community contributions | Your individual vote records are deleted immediately when you delete your account. Aggregated venue attribute scores are derived from votes and are not recalculated on account deletion — your contribution to a venue's aggregate scores is retained in the aggregate and is no longer linked to your account. |
| Venue reports | Kept after you delete your account, because Yomp counts reports to work out when a venue has closed. The account reference on the report is removed, so the report no longer identifies you. One residual remains: the report's internal document identifier still contains your account ID. |
| Venue claims, and venue listings you manage | Held while your account is active. Deleted immediately when you delete your account — including the name, role and business email address given with a claim. |
| Sign-in audit log | Held while your account is active, then deleted when you delete your account. |
| Technical data (IP address, rate-limit keys) | Short-lived. Rate-limit keys are held for 7 to 14 days and then expire. |
| Cookie consent record | Until you clear your browser data for yomp.dog. |
| Local storage preferences | Until you clear your browser data, or immediately on account deletion. |
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Access your personal data
- Rectify inaccurate data
- Erase your data
- Restrict how we process your data
- Portability — receive a copy of your data in a machine-readable format
- Object to processing where our lawful basis is legitimate interest
- Withdraw consent at any time, where consent is the lawful basis
To exercise any of these rights, use the Me tab in the app or email hello@yomp.dog. We will respond within one calendar month.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the ICO at ico.org.uk or by calling 0303 123 1113.
Deleting your account
You can delete your Yomp account, and everything stored with it, at any time — in the app (open the Me tab and choose Delete account), or at www.yomp.dog/delete-account, which also works by email with no app and no sign-in needed.
Deletion removes your sign-in account, your profile and dogs’ profiles, your username, your photos, your saved places and walks, your individual votes, your venue claims and listings, and your sign-in audit log. Two things are kept, and neither identifies you: aggregated venue attribute scores (your individual votes are deleted, but the totals they contributed to are not recalculated), and venue reports you submitted (the account reference is removed, though the report’s internal document identifier still contains your account ID). How to delete your account sets out both routes and lists exactly what is removed and what is kept.
Children
Yomp is intended for users aged 18 and over. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, email hello@yomp.dog and we will delete it.
Cookies and local storage
Essential (always on)
These are strictly necessary for Yomp to work. Under UK PECR Regulation 6(4)(b), no consent is required.
- Firebase Authentication session — keeps you signed in across page loads.
- Cookie consent record (
yomp-cookie-consent) — remembers your choice so we don’t ask again. - Local preference cache — temporary local copies of your dog profile, preferred category, season theme, and recently seen place IDs.
Error monitoring (always on, legitimate interest)
We use Sentry to capture crashes and errors so we can fix bugs, on both the Yomp website and the Yomp Android app. Legal basis: UK GDPR Art 6(1)(f). Session replay is disabled. Sentry does not receive user identifiers — error reports contain crash, diagnostic, and stack-trace context only, not linked to your identity. On the Android app, Sentry additionally attaches a random per-install identifier so crashes from the same device can be grouped; it is not linked to your account or identity.
Analytics
We use analytics to understand how Yomp is used so we can improve it. Analytics data is not linked to your identity — we do not attach your name, email address or account ID to any analytics event or analytics profile.
- Vercel Analytics — page-view metrics, not linked to your identity.
- Vercel Speed Insights — Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS), not linked to your identity.
- PostHog — product-usage events (page views and in-app actions such as searching, saving a venue, or voting on dog-friendliness), keyed to an anonymous device identifier and not linked to your identity. PostHog holds a profile against that anonymous identifier so events from the same device can be grouped; no name, email address or account identifier is ever attached to it. Session replay is disabled, but a small number of app events are recorded automatically, rather than only as named actions: the app being opened, the app being sent to the background, and a deep link being opened. Data is processed on PostHog’s US Cloud.
On the Yomp website, analytics are on by default under the UK Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 statistical-purposes basis. You can opt out at any time in Me › Account › Analytics.
On the Yomp Android app, PostHog analytics are off by default and are enabled only if you give explicit consent when prompted. You can withdraw that consent at any time in the app’s Me › Account › Analytics settings.
Withdrawing consent
You can turn off analytics at any time in Me › Account › Analytics.
Local storage keys
Yomp stores a copy of your preferences locally on your device for faster loading. These are not used for tracking or analytics.
| Key | Contents |
|---|---|
yomp_onboarding | Temporary copy of your dog's name, breed, and age. Enables instant loading without a network round-trip. |
yomp_seen_places_v1 | Recently viewed place IDs (up to 500). Prevents the same place appearing repeatedly. |
yomp_preferred_category_v1 | Your preferred browse category (e.g. Pubs, Parks). |
yomp_theme_mode_v1 | Your chosen season theme (auto, spring, summer, autumn, or winter). |
yomp:lastLocation | Your most recent search location. Used to restore results without a network round-trip on next open. Cleared when you clear your browser data. |
yomp-cookie-consent | Records your analytics opt-out preference, if you have turned analytics off. |
Automated decision-making
Yomp does not use automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.
Changes to this policy
We will update this page if anything changes and revise the date at the top. We will notify you of any material changes via email or in-app notice.