PawWeather
Privacy Policy
For the app PawWeather (“Pfotenwetter”) and this website. Last updated: 15 September 2026.
This English version is provided for your convenience. The German version is the legally binding one.
In short
- PawWeather requires no sign-up and no account.
- There are no advertising or tracking components — no analytics, no advertising ID, no social-network components.
- Your location leaves the device only when you request a forecast for a point. Our servers neither store nor log it — section 3.
- If you turn on notifications, we store a cell of about 15 square kilometres — no coordinates. The app computes the cell itself; your exact location is never transmitted for it.
- The map comes from our own server. Viewing the map sends no data to map providers.
1. Controller
MDDX Digital Solutions UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Address: see Legal Notice
E-mail: [email protected]
2. What the app processes
2.1 Device registration
So that the interface cannot be queried by arbitrary programs, the app registers once on first launch. This creates the following record:
| Item | Origin and purpose |
|---|---|
| Installation identifier | A random value the app generates itself. Not a device identifier: it cannot be linked to any device or person, and on the server it is not stored in plain text, only as a hash (SHA-256). It does survive a reinstall and moves to a new phone: the app keeps it in the keychain (iOS) or the Block Store (Android) so that your dog profile survives a change of device without you having to create an account. A new one is generated only after “Delete everything” in the settings. |
| Platform | “ios” or “android”. For troubleshooting and the number of installations per platform. |
| App version | So we can tell whether an error concerns an older version. After an update the app registers again, and the entry is brought up to date. |
| Operating-system major version | Only the number before the first dot, for example “18” for iOS 18.4.1 or “14” for Android 14. So we know which versions we still need to support. Brought up to date after an update, like the app version. |
| Country of your location | A country code such as “DE” or “US”. The app works it out on the device from your current location and shares only the code – when it registers and each time it renews its device access. The value is overwritten each time, so no location history builds up. Without location permission the field stays empty. So we can see in which countries PawWeather is used and where we should add weather sources. |
| Time of creation and of last access | Basis for deleting unused entries. |
Not collected: IP address, precise location or coordinates, device model, the exact operating-system version, advertising ID or any other identifier of the device.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. The legitimate interest is protecting the interface against automated retrieval and being able to block individual installations without locking out all others.
Deletion: entries without access for 180 days are removed. “Access” means the app has checked in — this happens automatically, at least every 30 days and after every update. Whoever uses the app keeps their entry alive without doing anything.
2.2 Location
The app requests your location only when you tap the locate button, and only while in use. Background location is never requested — on Android, the corresponding permission is not even declared in the app.
The location primarily serves to move the map to your surroundings. This happens entirely on the device. Coordinates are sent to the server only when you request the forecast for a specific point. They are then not stored, and the application itself does not log them. Our application and reverse proxies keep no access logs — section 3.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR (your permission in the operating system), revocable in the system settings.
We keep a record of your answer. Before the first location request the app shows a screen of its own; whether you agreed or withdrew is stored as proof — a consent nobody can show was given is not one. What is recorded: what it was about, the version of the text you were shown, whether you agreed or withdrew, when, and whether it was an iPhone or an Android device. No location, no IP address and no device identifier — the record hangs on a random number of its own that your installation carries. Delete the installation and that link falls away, leaving a number with no device. Kept: as long as your installation exists and three years after that. There is no statutory period for exactly this; it follows the standard limitation period (§ 195 German Civil Code) and Art. 17(3)(e) GDPR.
2.3 Notifications
Notifications are optional and off by default. You turn them on in the app’s settings; only then is the following record created. Without it, nothing is delivered.
| Item | Origin and purpose |
|---|---|
| Delivery token | Issued by Apple (APNs) or Google (FCM). With it — and only with it — a notification can be sent to your device. It is an access credential and is not kept in any log. |
| Cell | No coordinates. A so-called geohash of five characters, which in Germany covers an area of about 3 × 4.9 kilometres — roughly 15 square kilometres. The app computes it on the device and sends only that; the service merely checks its format. Your exact location is therefore never transmitted, not even briefly. We cannot reverse it: the inverse is not part of our software. |
| Your settings | Which notifications you want, how many per day, the minimum interval, your quiet hours and from which rain intensity. They are kept with us and not on the device because the server decides whether to send — if it sent everything and the app filtered, every suppressed notification would still have been transmitted, and quiet hours would not be quiet. |
| Time zone | So that quiet hours mean your time, not the server’s. |
| Counters | Time of the last notification and today’s count — basis for the frequency rules. No list of sent notifications is kept; that would be a record of when it rained where you are. |
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. You give consent by turning notifications on and withdraw it with “Unsubscribe” in the settings — the record is then deleted immediately.
Deletion: immediately on unsubscribing, otherwise together with the device registration after 180 days without use (section 2.1).
2.4 Dog profile and walk times
A subscription feature and likewise optional. If you set up a dog and its usual walk times, the app can remind you before a walk when moving it earlier or later is worthwhile. Without these details everything else works unchanged.
| Item | Origin and purpose |
|---|---|
| Dog’s name | For addressing you in the notification and nothing else. Stored encrypted — what that protects and what it does not is explained below. |
| Breed and size | Pre-set the two sensitivity switches the walk light depends on. |
| Walks | Weekdays, time and duration. Basis of the reminder. |
| Walk location | No separate location. The walk uses the same cell as your registration from section 2.3. The reason is explained below. |
Why there is no separate location per walk
A walk says: Tuesdays at 5 pm, 45 minutes. Every week. If each walk had its own location, the result would be a recurring movement pattern — something categorically different from a rough whereabouts, and something we do not want to keep.
Therefore every walk inherits the one cell of your registration. Our database then holds “this cell, Tuesdays 5 pm” instead of a map of your whereabouts. For the forecast it is the same value: nothing computes finer than this cell anyway, because the radar grid resolves one kilometre and a shower is rarely smaller than a few kilometres.
There is also no free-text field for the location, no owner’s name, no e-mail address and no date of birth of the animal.
What the encryption does — and what it does not
The dog’s name is stored encrypted in the database. Times, weekdays and cell are not: the service must be able to ask every hour which walks start soon, and an encrypted field cannot be searched.
This protects against a lost database dump. It does not protect against someone taking over our server — they would have the key too. We write this here instead of selling “stored encrypted” as a promise that does not hold. The real protection is how little sits next to it: a cell of 15 square kilometres, no owner’s name, no coordinate.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR. Withdrawal at any time via “Delete profile” in the app.
Deletion: immediately at the tap of a button in the app, otherwise together with the device registration after 180 days without use. Thirty days before we point this out by notification, provided you have them turned on — so that nobody loses their profile without having had the chance to open the app once.
One period for everything, not three: the push registration hangs on the device registration, and three numbers would be three numbers that would have to be right here.
2.5 Sharing your subscription
Only if you share it. With Premium or Ultra you can take further people into your subscription. You create an invitation code for that; whoever redeems it is listed as a device in your group and uses your entitlement until you remove them or your subscription ends. Nobody needs an account for this — it stays with the identifier from section 2.1.
| Item | Origin and purpose |
|---|---|
| Group membership | Which devices belong to your group, with platform (iPhone or Android) and the date they joined. The basis for unlocking. |
| Invitation code | Six characters, valid for seven days, redeemable once. It is kept only as a check value in the cache and disappears when redeemed. |
| Label (optional) | It stays on your device. You can name a member in your list — a word of your choosing such as “Grandma”, so you recognise them. That name is never sent to us and is in none of our databases. It lives only in the app and disappears with it, or with the member. Until 13 September 2026 we stored it; no longer. |
| Copied dog profile (optional) | At your explicit tap we copy the name, breed, size and the two sensitivity switches of one of your dogs to the devices in your group. Walk times do not come along. Each device receives its own copy, which its owner can change or delete. |
What the others see of you
A member only sees that they belong to a group and until when the entitlement is valid — neither the other members nor any names given to them — those never reach us in the first place. Only whoever pays for the subscription sees the list.
A copied dog profile is a copy, not a shared record: whoever later changes the name or removes the dog does so only on their own device. We do not reconcile anything and do not deliver anything afterwards.
The legal basis for group membership, shared access and copying a dog profile at your explicit request is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. We keep the invitation code for no more than seven days or until it is redeemed once. The legal basis for this is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is securely providing the sharing function you requested and preventing abusive redemption attempts. The code contains only a reference to the group. We receive no contact details of the person to whom you pass the code outside the app, and we do not send an invitation ourselves.
2.6 Map, radar and forecast data
Map tiles, fonts and symbols are served from our own server. There is no connection to a map provider. Radar and forecast data come from the national weather service responsible for your location — in Germany the Deutscher Wetterdienst, in Austria GeoSphere Austria — and official warnings via MeteoAlarm. All of it is processed on our server — your app queries none of these services itself. The route to our server runs through Cloudflare, see section 4.
2.7 Feedback on our rain and weather calls
Now and then the app asks whether what it said about rain was right — it said “dry”, and outside it was drizzling. If you answer, we store: the moment you judged, what the app had claimed for that moment (dry or rain, the intensity and the reading in millimetres per hour), how old the radar run behind that claim was, which radar product it came from (an identifier such as “RV” for the German Weather Service radar or “EU+FR” for the European grid with the French radar — it reveals the country at most), what you saw (dry, drizzle, rain, heavy rain), the platform and the app version.
The app also asks whether the weather matched (say “mostly sunny” at 17 degrees). If you answer, we store what the app showed (weather word, weather code, cloud cover, temperature, day or night, the forecast hour), the weather service without the station name, a rough distance class to the station, the age of the forecast run, and your view of sky and temperature (colder, about right, warmer), along with the platform and the app version.
Location only if you send it. Only if you answer “Yes” when the app asks “Send approximate location?” at the end of a feedback do we also store an area cell of roughly 3 × 5 km, never coordinates. It is linked to your installation, so it is pseudonymous rather than anonymous, deleted with it, and included under “Export my data”. Legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), given anew for each feedback and withdrawable by deleting your data. Without your yes no location travels — neither coordinates nor area cell. No free text: there are only the buttons. Why: the thresholds at which we call rain “rain” or the sky “mostly sunny” are a choice, not a measurement — only someone standing outside knows whether they are right; the cell helps us tie deviations to an area. Legal basis for the feedback itself is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. The feedback belongs to your installation, is deleted with it (section 2.1) and appears in the export under “Export my data”.
2.8 Improving the service
We evaluate the data described in this section, which is stored anyway, in aggregated form to make PawWeather better — for example how many installations run on iOS and Android, which app and operating-system versions are still in use, in which countries PawWeather is used, which notifications are turned on, or how often our rain call is right.
- Nothing extra is collected for this.
- We look at totals and shares, not at individual installations.
- Never part of such evaluations are the notification cell, the time zone, the push token and your dog's name.
- No external analytics service: the counts run on our own servers.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. The legitimate interest is finding errors, planning support for older versions and focusing the service on what is actually used. You can object under Art. 21 GDPR (section 8) or delete your data in the app.
2.9 What explicitly does not happen
- No third-party analytics or statistics services (no Google Analytics, no Firebase Analytics, no comparable service).
- No advertising networks and no advertising ID (IDFA, GAID).
- No social-network components.
- No sale and no sharing of data.
- No automated decision-making and no profiling.
3. What accrues when the server is accessed
Cloudflare's network (section 4) and our own reverse proxies sit in front of the API. Our servers keep no access logs: they do not store the IP address, requested address, coordinates or selected breed as a visitor log. Technical domain logs may contain errors and processing steps, but no IP address, request path or coordinates.
In addition, to limit registrations per network address, a hash of the IP address is held briefly in memory. It is discarded after one hour and never combined with a record from section 2.1.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, operation and prevention of abuse.
4. Where the data is kept
Account, consent, notification and dog data are processed exclusively on our main server in Germany. This infrastructure is operated by netcup GmbH, Karlsruhe, as processor under Art. 28 GDPR. This server processes weather requests for places in Europe; our weather-only server at OVH SAS, Roubaix (France), in the Beauharnois data center in Canada processes weather requests for places in North America. Coordinates are sent there only for the individual weather request and are not stored. The North American server is technically unable to accept account or personal data.
Access runs through Cloudflare. To keep the service reachable and to fend off attacks, Cloudflare's network sits in front of our server. Every request from the app and every visit to this website passes through it. In doing so Cloudflare processes your connection's IP address, the time and the requested address — for a forecast, therefore, also the coordinates contained in that address. Cloudflare acts as processor under Art. 28 GDPR; the connection terminates at a location near you, while the company itself is based in the United States. Any access from there relies on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, availability of the service and defence against attacks. Cloudflare does not analyse the traffic on our behalf and sets no cookies for PawWeather.
One exception applies to support requests. If you write to us via the feedback route in the app, your message goes to our ticketing system Jira Service Management by Atlassian Corporation. Processed there are your e-mail address, your name if you give it, the text of your message and the technical details the app writes into the mail — version, build and operating-system version. Atlassian is a processor under Art. 28 GDPR. The data is stored in data centres in the European Union; Atlassian uses Amazon Web Services as sub-processor for this. Access by Atlassian staff outside the European Union is possible in the course of operation and support; it relies on the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, answering your request. You decide what you write — the app adds nothing you do not see beforehand. Location and dog’s name are never included. Retention: we generally retain support communications for 24 months after a support ticket is closed. We may retain particular records for longer where necessary to comply with law or to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
5. This website
These pages contain no scripts, no fonts embedded from third-party servers, no tracking pixels and no cookies. Only what is described in section 3 accrues.
6. Beta programmes (TestFlight and Play testing)
During the beta the app is distributed via Apple TestFlight or the Google Play testing programme. If you take part, Apple or Google, as independent controllers, process data about your store account and your participation (such as the installed version or feedback you submit there) under their own privacy policies. We receive no personal data from this — at most aggregated figures (e.g. number of testers) and crash reports, provided you consented to them with the respective provider.
7. Subscriptions via the stores
Where the app offers paid additional features, purchase and billing run entirely through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Payment data stays with the respective store; we receive no payment or account data. What we store for your installation is the store's order number (the original transaction), a purchase receipt that lets us ask the store, the product identifier, the term (monthly or yearly) and the date until which the entitlement is valid. That is how we recognise a renewal or a refund, and how we can remind you once a year about a running annual subscription. If you took out your subscription with a discount code, we also store the identifier of the offer in the store, so that each redemption is counted only once. The code itself is not stored with your installation. For your subscription we also store since when it has been running without interruption, whether the App Store or Google Play marks the purchase as a test purchase and until when a free trial runs. We receive both details from the respective store and use them only to manage the entitlement and to evaluate revenue in aggregate.
The legal basis for processing the subscription information stored for your installation is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. We need it to unlock the purchased entitlement, verify its term and take renewals or refunds into account. Where statutory retention obligations apply to records that we actually hold, their retention is based on Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR. We do not receive payment, billing, store-account or card information.
8. Your rights
You have the rights under Art. 15 to 21 GDPR: access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and objection. Contact [email protected] for this.
For access we need a reference point. The record from section 2.1 is deliberately designed so that it cannot be linked to a person — we cannot find it without your installation identifier. This is not an excuse but the consequence of data minimisation: what we cannot attribute, we cannot evaluate either.
Deleting and exporting can be done in the app itself, without writing to us and without waiting:
- Settings → Delete profile removes dog profile, walks, delivery token and device registration in one go — immediately, not on request.
- Settings → Export data delivers everything stored for your installation as a machine-readable file.
- Notifications → Unsubscribe removes only the record from section 2.3 and leaves the rest in place.
- Share subscription → Leave group ends your membership, Dissolve group the whole group. If you remove a member, the name you gave them disappears from your device with them. A copied dog profile stays with its new owner — from the moment it is copied it belongs to them and is deleted by them.
Uninstalling the app is also sufficient: the server-side registration then expires by itself.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
9. Changes
If features are added that process further data — such as accounts or shared households — this policy will be adjusted beforehand. The date above shows the current version.