Lapka Care Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Lapka Care (listed in the App Store as Lapka: Cat Care & Diary) is a diary of your cat’s life and health: notes, reminders, memories, an AI assistant that reads your notes, and a summary to take to the vet.

It is run by Anatoliy Dolinskiy (“we”, “us”), who is responsible for the personal data described in this policy. The policy covers the Lapka Care app for iPhone, the website care.lapka.online and emails you send us.

For any question or request about your data, write to lapka.admin@gmail.com.

Separate from Lapka: Cat Training. Lapka Care is a different app from our cat-training app. It has its own sign-in, its own data and its own subscription. An account in one is not an account in the other, and neither app can see the other’s data. Both use the same server, but their data is kept apart. Lapka: Cat Training has its own privacy policy at lapka.online/privacy.

2. What we collect, and where it lives

Your account

• You sign in with your email address and a password, or with Apple or Google. Sign-in is run by Clerk, set up for Lapka Care alone.
• Clerk keeps your email address, your password (our server never receives it) and your sign-in sessions. It emails you 6-digit codes to confirm your address, reset your password or, sometimes, check a sign-in. Each time the app starts, and while you’re signed in, Clerk also receives technical details: your IP address, an identifier your iPhone gives our apps (not the advertising ID), your iPhone model, iOS version and the app’s version.
• If you sign in with Apple or Google, Clerk receives what you agree to share: usually your name and email address (Apple may give a private address that forwards to yours) and, from Google, your profile picture.
• Our server keeps an internal account ID, your ID at Clerk, and when the account was created and last used. It doesn’t store your email address, name or phone number.
• On your phone, the sign-in token is kept in the iPhone Keychain. When you sign out, Clerk’s token for this device stays there.
• Your account on our server is created the first time you sign in, even before you subscribe.

Your cat’s diary

From your first sign-in, whenever the app is open and online, it backs up to our server, so you can restore your diary on a new phone:

• Cat profiles: name, life stage (kitten, adult, senior), and sex and neutering if you add them.
• Clinic contacts: the name and phone number of your vet and of a round-the-clock clinic, if you add them, for one-tap calls from the “If it’s urgent” page.
• Notes: what you write, its type (food, health, a vet visit and so on), the day it’s about, when you wrote it, and the details you add — food changes, weight, vet visits and how they went, medicines with their dose, how they’re given and who prescribed them — and your one-tap “As usual” check-ins.
• Stories of change: type, title, details, start and end, outcome, and which notes belong to them.

With each of these, our server keeps when it was created, changed or deleted, and a revision number, so your phones stay in step.

A note can hold anything you type. Please keep it about your cat, and leave out sensitive details about yourself or other people.

These stay only on your phone and are not in our backup:

• Photos: your cat’s profile photo, photos in notes and photos taken for the vet. We never upload them. A photo you add in “Notes for the vet” is also saved as a note for that day: the note is backed up, the photo isn’t.
• Memories: albums and videos made from your photos.
• Reminders: feeding, photo and care routines, “Look again” reminders you accept from the assistant, notification settings, and when you marked them done.
• Medicines and prevention: medicine reminders and the doses you mark as given or skipped; vaccinations, flea and tick treatments, worming and vet check-ups. The one exception: each question to the assistant carries up to eight medicine courses (the medicine’s name, times, how often, start and end, and whether you stopped it) and up to eight vaccinations, treatments and check-ups (product, last and next date, how often). The doses you mark aren’t sent. Our server doesn’t keep these items, except where an answer mentions them (see below).
• Drafts and settings: your “Notes for the vet” drafts (apart from the AI summary, which our server keeps; see below), language, appearance, tips, and changes waiting to sync.
• Your first answers: what you answer before signing up (your cat’s name, photo, age and coat, hairball paste, check-ups, a medicine). They’re kept only in the app on this phone. Once you’ve signed up and subscribed, they become part of your diary — your cat’s profile and a first note, for example — and the rules above apply. The answers themselves are then cleared. They’re also cleared if you log out or sign in to an existing account. Otherwise they stay on the phone until you delete the app.

Depending on your settings, your iPhone may include all of this, photos too, in its own iCloud or computer backup.

When you share. You can share “Notes for the vet” as a PDF or text, and a memory as a video. They’re made on your phone from the period and photos you choose. For the vet that means your cat’s name, life stage, sex and neutering; the period; your reason for the visit; the summary (marked if the assistant drafted it) and your questions; medicines with who prescribed them and how many doses you marked given or skipped; weights, food changes and vet visits; every note from that period; the photos you picked; and how many days have no notes. They leave the app only when you share them, to wherever you send them. After that, those copies are out of our hands. Photos in the PDF are resized copies without the location a camera may store in a photo, and memory videos carry no location either.

The AI assistant

The assistant is part of the subscription. Before your first question, you see a short notice and tap “Got it”.

Each time you ask, the app sends your question through our server to OpenAI, with what the assistant needs to answer about your cat:

• your question and the app’s language;
• your cat’s name, life stage, sex and neutering;
• your cat’s latest notes from the backup (up to 80), with their text, dates, weights and details, plus up to 36 weighings and 20 medicine records, and how many notes the diary holds;
• up to eight medicine courses and up to eight vaccinations, treatments and check-ups from your phone (names, times and dates), but not the doses you mark;
• your earlier questions and answers about this cat (up to 50);
• general cat-care facts from our own reference base.

It doesn’t send photos, voice recordings, clinic contacts, stories, or your email address or name. If an answer doesn’t pass our checks, or something fails on the way, our server may ask OpenAI again with the same details, a few times at most.

Our server keeps your question word for word; the answer, with any follow-up questions and suggestions in it; which notes it drew on; when you asked; the app’s language; and which version of the notice you had accepted when you first asked about that cat. For each question it also keeps a record of how it went: whether it worked, how many tries it took, when, and a fingerprint of which notes and earlier answers went with it.

Our server also keeps a usage record of every model call for questions and summaries, with no text in it: the model, the number of tokens, the cost, how long it took, whether the answer passed our checks, and a one-way fingerprint (hash) of what was sent.

Your phone keeps each cat’s last 20 questions and answers, any unsent draft, and a question still on its way. The medicine and prevention items sent with a question aren’t saved on our server as such. An answer that mentions them is kept like any other answer, and can be sent again as part of your earlier conversation.

A summary for the vet. When you open “Notes for the vet”, after you’ve tapped “Got it” on the assistant’s notice and if the period has notes, the app asks for a draft summary straight away. After that, it asks again only when you tap “Draft again for this period” or “Try again”. It sends the period, the reason for the visit as written so far, and the app’s language. Our server adds your cat’s details and that period’s notes (up to 300, without “As usual” check-ins) and sends it all to OpenAI. We keep the period, the language, the draft summary and questions that come back, which notes they drew on and when it was made, but not your reason. Each summary also gets a usage record. The copy you edit stays on your phone.

About OpenAI. We send requests with OpenAI’s storage option turned off. OpenAI may still keep them for a while under its own terms, for example to prevent abuse. AI answers can be wrong. We don’t use your data for automated decisions that significantly affect you.

Voice

You can dictate a note, the reason for a visit or a question instead of typing it.

• Live dictation uses Apple’s speech recognition. Depending on your iPhone, Apple may process the audio on the phone or on its own servers, under Apple’s privacy policy. We never receive that audio; only the text lands in the field.
• If live dictation isn’t available, including when you turn down speech recognition but allow the microphone, the app records a short clip (up to 2 minutes) and sends it to our server with its length and the app’s language. Our server passes only the clip to Groq, which turns it into text. The clip goes without your sign-in, so it isn’t linked to your account. Our server doesn’t save the audio. It keeps only a record that a transcription happened (its size and how long it took), and a short-lived count of these requests in memory to stop abuse.
• Your phone deletes the clip as soon as the text arrives, or when you tap “Never mind”. If it can’t be turned into text, the clip stays so you can try again. If you record again, leave the screen or close the app instead of tapping “Never mind”, the clip can stay in the app’s storage, and in your iPhone’s backups, until you delete the app.
• A question you say to the assistant is sent as soon as it becomes text, together with anything you’d already typed. A dictated note or reason for a visit lands in the field for you to check first.

Vets nearby

On the “If it’s urgent” page and in “Find a vet”, the app can show the clinics nearest to you.

• The app asks for your location the first time you tap “Allow location”. After that it reads your location each time you open those pages — only while you use the app, never in the background.
• Your phone rounds your position to about 100 metres and sends it, with the app’s language, to our server. The request goes with your sign-in, so our server knows which account is searching. Our server asks Google for vet clinics nearby and sends you the list. For this search, Google gets the rounded position from our server, not from your phone. We don’t store your location, except that it may end up in our web server’s logs (see “Technical logs”).
• Opening either page loads a Google map (blurred until clinics are found), even before you allow location. Google’s map software in the app sends Google your IP address, a device identifier, and crash, performance and usage data about the map, under Google’s privacy policy. Once clinics are shown, the map also shows where you are, so Google may receive your phone’s location. Directions and searches open in Google Maps.

Subscription

• You buy and manage the subscription through Apple. We never see your card details.
• When the app already knows it, Apple’s purchase record carries our internal account ID. Either way, the app sends Apple’s signed record to our server under your sign-in, so the subscription belongs to your Care account.
• Our server receives Apple’s signed purchase records and keeps your plan, the transaction IDs, trial and renewal dates, whether it renews automatically, any refund or cancellation, and Apple’s purchase details, including your App Store country, the price and the currency.
• The app checks your subscription with Apple each time you open or return to it and, while you have one, sends Apple’s signed record to our server once each time the app starts. From time to time our server also checks your subscription status with Apple, and Apple sends it notices about renewals and cancellations; we keep a log of those notices.
• Your phone keeps a copy of your subscription status, so the app also works offline.

Notifications

Reminders are scheduled by iOS on your phone. They can show your cat’s name, the titles of your reminders (including a hairball remedy you named in your first answers), that it’s time for a medicine, which kind of care is due (a vaccination, flea and tick treatment, worming or a vet check-up) with its date and the visit’s time, and, in the evening after a visit, “How did the vet visit go?”. They never show which medicine or dose, the product of a vaccination or treatment, or what a “Look again” reminder is about. We don’t use push notifications: nothing is sent from our server, and the app never asks for a push token.

Feedback and email

• A day after you first open the diary, the app may ask whether you’re enjoying Lapka Care. Once you answer, it never asks again; if you close it without answering, it asks again three days later. Your phone remembers the answer. If you say “Yes”, it offers to rate the app in the App Store.
• If you say “Not really”, it asks what we should improve. When you tap “Send”, your mail app opens a draft to lapka.admin@gmail.com with your words. Nothing is sent unless you send it. If you do, we receive your email address and message in our mailbox, which Google hosts (Gmail).

App updates

Each time the app starts, it checks Expo for updates. Expo receives a random install ID, the app’s version details, your IP address and, if the app crashed, a short error message (up to 1,024 characters). The app doesn’t send diary data, though an error message can occasionally include a fragment of the data involved.

Technical logs

Our server keeps technical logs to run and fix the service: errors, and events such as an account deletion (with the sign-in ID and how many cats and notes were removed), a failed deletion of a sign-in at Clerk (with the sign-in ID and Clerk’s reply) or a refused purchase (with the internal account ID). They don’t record what you send or your IP address, though an error message can occasionally include a fragment of the data involved. To stop abuse, it also keeps short-lived counts of each account’s requests in memory, such as how many vet searches it made today. The web server in front of it may keep standard request logs — IP address, time and the address requested; for “Vets nearby”, that address contains your rounded position.

Permissions on your iPhone

The app asks for the camera, microphone, speech recognition and location the first time you use something that needs them, and for notifications once, on the Today screen. Photos you add come through Apple’s picker, so the app gets only the photos you choose; saving a memory video to Photos asks for add-only access. You can say no and keep using the rest of the app, and change your mind any time in iPhone Settings. The app doesn’t access your contacts, Health data, calendar, motion and fitness data, Bluetooth or Face ID.

3. Why we use it, and on what legal basis

Where data-protection law such as the GDPR asks for a legal basis, these are ours:

• Your account and sign-in — to give you an account. Basis: our contract with you.
• Backup and restore — to keep your diary safe and bring it to a new phone. Contract.
• The assistant and the vet summary — to answer what you ask. Contract.
• Subscription — to unlock the app and check payment. Contract.
• Voice to text — when you choose to dictate. Your consent (the microphone and speech-recognition permissions).
• Vets nearby — when you look for clinics. Your consent (the location permission).
• Reminders — on your phone, once you allow notifications. Your consent.
• Emails and feedback — to answer you and improve the app. Our legitimate interest.
• Security and limits — sign-in checks, request limits, technical logs and usage records, to keep the service safe and fair and its costs in check. Our legitimate interest.
• App updates — to deliver fixes. Our legitimate interest.
• What stays after deletion (usage records and Apple’s notices, no longer linked to you) — to prevent fraud, settle disputes and track costs. Our legitimate interest.
• The law — to meet legal duties and answer lawful requests. Legal obligation.

You can withdraw consent any time by turning the permission off in iPhone Settings. That doesn’t affect what happened before.

4. Who processes data for us

These companies help us run Lapka Care. Each gets only what it needs:

• Clerk — sign-in and account security: your email address, password, Apple or Google sign-in details, sessions, IP address and device details (a device identifier for our apps, model, iOS and app version).
• Hetzner — hosts our server, database and website in Finland: everything our server stores, and its logs.
• OpenAI — writes the assistant’s answers and the vet summary: what’s listed under “The AI assistant”.
• Groq — turns a voice clip into text when live dictation isn’t available: the clip, not linked to your account.
• Google — Places finds vet clinics (the rounded position and language, from our server); the Google Maps software on your phone draws the map (IP address, a device identifier, and crash, performance and usage data); Google sign-in, if you use it; Gmail hosts our mailbox.
• Apple — App Store purchases and subscription notices; Sign in with Apple, if you use it; live dictation; App Store ratings; your iPhone’s own backups.
• Expo — app updates: install ID, version details, IP address, crash message.

When you use Apple’s and Google’s services directly, they also handle data under their own privacy policies.

The person who runs Lapka Care can access our server, and looks at stored data only to run and support the service, or when the law requires it. We may disclose data when the law requires it, to protect people’s rights and safety, or as part of a sale or transfer of the service, with the same protection.

Some of these companies process data outside the European Economic Area, for example in the United States. Where the law requires safeguards for that, we rely on appropriate contractual safeguards or other lawful transfer mechanisms. Write to us to learn more.

5. What we never do

• Sell your data.
• Show ads, use an advertising ID, or track you across other companies’ apps and websites.
• Put advertising tools or our own analytics in the app.
• Train AI models on your data, or let our AI providers do so.
• Upload your photos.
• Let Lapka: Cat Training see your Care data.

6. How long we keep it

• Your account and backed-up diary: until you delete your Care account. We don’t delete inactive accounts on our own, including ones that never subscribed.
• Deleted notes, stories and cats: they leave your diary at once, but our server keeps their last version, marked as deleted, until you delete your account, and a phone that restores your diary receives it too, hidden. Deleting a cat also deletes its assistant conversations and vet summaries from our server straight away. Your phone keeps deleted notes and earlier versions of edited notes, hidden, until you delete that cat (if it isn’t your only one) or your account. If you want any of it gone sooner, write to us.
• Assistant questions and answers, and vet summaries: until you delete that cat or your account. You can’t delete a single question in the app.
• Subscription records: until you delete your account. The log of Apple’s notices stays afterwards, no longer linked to you.
• Usage records (no text, only a one-way fingerprint of what was sent): kept, and no longer linked to you once you delete your account.
• Technical logs: until our server overwrites them.
• Backup copies of our server: until they’re replaced or deleted.
• Emails: in our mailbox until we delete them.
• On your phone: until you delete them, the cat, your account or the app.
• Our providers keep data under their own terms.

7. Deleting your data

In the app: open the tab with your cat’s name → Settings → “Delete Care account” (without a subscription, “Delete Care account” at the bottom of the subscription screen), type your cat’s name (or the word “delete” if there is no cat yet) and tap “Delete my Care account”. This deletes:

• on our server: your account and everything linked to it — cats, contacts, notes and stories (deleted ones too), assistant conversations, vet summaries and subscription records;
• at Clerk: your sign-in (if our server can’t remove it, the app asks Clerk directly);
• on this phone: your diary, its photos and memory videos, and pending reminders.

Our server goes first. If it can’t be reached, nothing is deleted anywhere, and you can try again.

Without an active subscription the app shows only the subscription page, so write to us and we’ll delete your account (see “By email”).

What stays:

• records with no text that are no longer linked to you: usage records of the assistant and of voice-to-text (with their one-way fingerprints), and the log of Apple’s subscription notices (which keeps Apple’s transaction ID);
• a line in our server’s log noting the deletion, with your sign-in ID and the number of cats and notes, until the log is overwritten;
• backup copies of our server, until they’re replaced or deleted;
• what Clerk, OpenAI, Groq, Google, Apple and Expo keep under their own terms. If your account was made before 3 October 2026, copies of your sign-in may also remain in our earlier test setups at Clerk; write to us and we’ll remove them;
• on your phone: anything you’ve already shared (PDFs, videos, emails); a temporary copy of the last PDF and the last video you shared; copies of photos in the app’s cache, made when you pick or take a photo, build a vet PDF or view a photo, until iOS clears that cache; a voice clip that never became text; and your iPhone’s iCloud or computer backups. Deleting the app removes the app’s files, but iOS can keep Clerk’s token for this device in the Keychain even then.

If you can still sign in after deleting your account, write to us and we’ll remove the sign-in.

Your subscription doesn’t stop by itself. Cancel it in iPhone Settings → your name → Subscriptions. Apple keeps its own purchase history. Until the subscription ends, Apple keeps sending us notices about it, which we log without linking them to anyone. If you start a new Care account with the same Apple ID, the subscription is linked to the new account.

Your Lapka: Cat Training account isn’t affected.

By email: write to lapka.admin@gmail.com with the subject “Delete my Lapka Care account” and tell us the email address you sign in with. We may ask you to confirm it’s you; never send us your password. We’ll delete the same things the app deletes and confirm by email, normally within one month.

Signing out isn’t deleting. Your diary stays on this phone for when you sign back in, and reminders stop.

To delete a single note or story, or a cat (when you have more than one; the last one goes only with your account), use the app; what stays after that is in “How long we keep it”.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can ask us to:

• give you a copy of your data, including in a portable format;
• correct it;
• delete it;
• restrict how we use it, or stop using it if you object.

You can also withdraw your consent at any time.

Write to lapka.admin@gmail.com. We may need to confirm it’s you. We answer within one month, or explain if we need longer or can’t do something. You can delete your account in the app at any time. While your subscription is active, you can also edit or delete notes and delete a cat there (when you have more than one; the last one goes only with your account).

You can complain to the data protection authority where you live. Using your rights never changes how we treat you. Some data is needed for the app to work; without it, some features may stop working.

9. Children

Lapka Care is for adults aged 18 or over and isn’t directed at children. We don’t knowingly collect personal data from children. If you think a child has given us personal data, write to us and we’ll remove it.

10. Security

The app talks to our server only over encrypted connections, and the server gives each signed-in account only its own records. No online service can guarantee perfect security.

11. This website

care.lapka.online uses no cookies, analytics or ads, and loads nothing from other companies. It remembers a couple of display choices (light or dark theme, paused animation) in your browser; they never reach us. Like any website, our server receives the technical details of each visit, such as your IP address, your browser and the page you open.

12. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change matters, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, where the law requires it.