Privacy Policy

Operators are pet cremation and aquamation businesses, and their staff, that have an account with us. We are the data controller for information about Operators and their staff.

Pet ownersare end customers of an Operator. An Operator enters a pet owner's contact information into Gently Traced so we can send tracking-link and status notifications about that owner's pet. For that information, the Operator is the data controllerand AltiType LLC acts as a data processor under the Operator's instructions. If you are a pet owner and have questions about how your information is used, please contact the Operator who provided it to us.

From Operators

• Account identity — name, email address, organization name, and role. We use this to authenticate you, personalize the application, and contact you about your account.
• Authentication credentials — a salted hash of your password. We never store passwords in plain text.
• Billing information — when in-app billing is enabled, payment card details are submitted directly to our payment processor and do not hit our servers. We retain a record of the transaction (including the last 4 digits of the card and the billing address) for account history, invoicing, and fraud prevention.
• Support correspondence — if you email us for help, we keep that thread so we can reference it in the future.

About pets and pet owners, on behalf of Operators

• Pet owner contact details — name, phone number, email address, and mailing address. We use these to deliver tracking links and status notifications and to display them to authorized Operator staff.
• Pet records— species, name, weight, service type, cremation type, and any notes the Operator records. We display these inside the Operator's account and to the pet owner on the tracking page.
• Chain-of-custody events — timestamped records of who did what and when (intake, scans, status transitions, transport, release). These are the audit trail the Services exist to provide.

Technical and usage data

• Logs — IP addresses, user agents, request paths, and response codes, for security, fraud prevention, and troubleshooting.
• Session cookies — used to keep Operators signed in. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. We do not currently run third-party web analytics on the marketing site or the application.

• To provide, maintain, and improve the Services.
• To send transactional messages — magic links, status notifications, receipts, and important service announcements.
• With your consent, to send product updates and other non-essential messages. You can opt out at any time.
• To investigate and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents.
• To comply with legal obligations.

We will never sell your personal information, and we will not use Operator or pet-owner data to train third-party machine-learning models.

We use a small set of trusted service providers to run Gently Traced. Each processes personal data only as needed to provide their service to us.

• Neon (United States) — PostgreSQL database hosting.
• Vercel (United States) — application and marketing-site hosting.
• Twilio (United States) — SMS message delivery for magic links and status notifications to pet owners.
• Resend (United States) — transactional email delivery.

We'll update this list when it changes. If a change adds a new category of personal data being processed, we'll notify Operators.

Gently Traced sends SMS messages to pet owners on behalf of the Operator that intook their pet. By entering a pet owner's phone number, the Operator represents that they have collected the owner's consent to receive automated text messages from the Operator (delivered through Gently Traced) about the disposition of their pet. Message and data rates may apply. Recipients can reply STOP to opt out of further messages, or HELP for help. We register messaging campaigns under A2P 10DLC requirements where applicable.

Email notifications follow the same model and can be turned off from the footer of any non-essential message. Transactional messages (such as the magic link a pet owner needs to view the tracking page) cannot be turned off while the pet is in process, because they are necessary to deliver the Service.

• To provide the Services. We disclose data to the subprocessors listed above to the minimum extent needed.
• With your direction. If an Operator authorizes an integration with a third-party service, we share what that integration requires.
• To investigate abuse or troubleshoot a bug. Our staff do not look at your content except in narrow, reasoned circumstances — generally with your express consent, or to safeguard the Services and their users.
• When required by law. We only respond to government requests for user data when compelled by a valid US legal process. Where permitted, we will notify the affected account before disclosure.
• In a corporate transaction. If AltiType LLC is acquired, merges with another company, or sells assets, we will notify you before personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
• Aggregated or de-identified data. We may use aggregated or de-identified data — data that cannot reasonably be linked back to you — for any business purpose.

We aim to provide the same data rights to all our users, regardless of location. Depending on the laws that apply to you, those rights may include:

• Right to know and access — request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Right to correction — ask us to correct inaccurate personal information.
• Right to deletion — ask us to delete personal information we hold about you, subject to legal exceptions (for example, retention of billing records or audit logs).
• Right to portability — receive your information in a portable format.
• Right to object or restrict processing — including the right to opt out of any sale of your personal information. (We do not sell personal information.)
• Right to non-discrimination — we will not charge you a different price or provide a different level of service because you exercised a privacy right.
• Right to complain — to an appropriate supervisory authority.

If you are an Operator, you can exercise most of these rights directly from your account settings or by contacting us. If you are a pet owner, please start with the Operator that provided your information to us; we will work with them to respond.

Email privacy@gentlytraced.com to make a request. We may need to verify your identity before responding.

We keep personal information for as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy.

• Operator account data is retained while the account is active. When an account is canceled, account content is removed from active systems within 60 days and from backups within 90 days, with the limited exceptions noted in our Terms of Service.
• Chain-of-custody records — because the purpose of the Service is to provide a verifiable audit trail, event-log entries (timestamps, actor, action) may be retained indefinitely while the associated Operator account is active. Operators may request deletion of a specific pet record on behalf of the pet owner; we will honor reasonable requests, subject to our legitimate interest in retaining anonymized audit data.
• Billing records are retained as required by tax and accounting law.
• Support correspondence is retained for as long as it is useful to support you.
• Logs are retained for up to 90 days, except where a specific incident requires longer retention.

All data is encrypted in transit between your browser and our servers using TLS. Data at rest is encrypted by our hosting and database providers. Operator passwords are stored as salted hashes. Access to production systems is limited to a small number of staff and is logged. We work to limit and monitor access; no system, however, is perfectly secure.

The Services are not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Gently Traced is operated in the United States, and all of our data infrastructure is located in the United States. If you are located outside the United States, please be aware that any information you provide will be transferred to and stored in the United States.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make a material change, we will refresh the "Last updated" date and, where appropriate, notify Operators by email. Continued use of the Services after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Questions, comments, or concerns? Please reach out: