Privacy policy

We collect only what the site needs to work, we never sell your data, nothing non-essential is set before you consent, and you can see, fix or delete your data at any time. Feed Me Hooman is published by a Belgian company, so the GDPR (one of the strictest privacy laws in the world) applies to everyone who uses the site, wherever you live. The details follow.

Webedia SRL, 367 Avenue Louise, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. Company no. 0771.506.524, VAT BE 0771.506.524.
For any question about your data: privacy@webedia.be.

Data protection officer (DPO): Thomas Timmermans (privacy@webedia.be).

We only collect what each feature needs:

• Account and sign-in: email, display name, avatar and sign-in identifiers, including Google or Facebook sign-in (no password to remember). The avatar those services provide is copied to our servers. Purpose: creating and managing your account. Legal basis: performance of the service.
• Public profile and contributions: your username, bio, your cats' profiles, and everything you publish (comments, questions, forum posts, photos, videos, votes, polls). Purpose: running the community. Legal basis: performance of the service; profile visibility is configurable from your dashboard.
• Private messages: the content of your conversations with other members. These are never read by the team unless a participant reports the conversation to moderation. Legal basis: performance of the service; for reviewing a report: legitimate interest (community safety).
• Search area (alerts): if you enable proximity alerts (available kittens), the city and postal code you provide are converted to coordinates to compute distances. This information is never displayed publicly. Legal basis: your request to enable the feature; you can turn it off at any time.
• Moderation: uploaded images go through automated screening (inappropriate-content detection via Google Cloud Vision) before or after publication, plus human review; reports and moderation decisions are logged. Videos are not sent to any automated analysis, which cannot read moving images: a member of the team watches each one instead, and nothing is used before that. Content that may constitute an offense can be preserved separately and handed to the authorities. Legal basis: legitimate interest (safety), legal obligations.
• Newsletter: your email address, collected with an unticked consent checkbox and confirmed by email (double opt-in), sent via Resend, with a sending log (welcome, sequence emails, issues). Purpose: sending you our newsletter. Legal basis: your consent, withdrawable from every email (unsubscribe link).
• Service emails: confirmations and notifications tied to how your account works (for example, approval of a directory listing). Legal basis: performance of the service.
• Analytics: usage data via Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, enabled only after you agree. We also count certain events (account created, newsletter signup, partner link clicked) without identifying data. Legal basis: your consent.
• Advertising: the site may display ads (Google AdSense). Ad consent is managed through the IAB Transparency & Consent Framework; our vendor list is deliberately short and viewable in the consent banner. Legal basis: your consent.
• Payments (once paid features open): payments are processed by Stripe; we never store your card details. We keep the history of your subscriptions, Paws purchases and gifts. Legal basis: performance of the contract, accounting obligations.
• Share links: when a visitor follows a member's share link, we count the visit using a salted, non-reversible technical fingerprint with no cookie, which cannot identify you. Legal basis: legitimate interest (community rewards).
• Form security: bot protection via Google reCAPTCHA on public forms. Legal basis: legitimate interest.
• Verified veterinarians: to verify status, the license or registration number is checked against public professional registers; we keep no copy of diplomas. Legal basis: performance of the service, legitimate interest (trustworthy reviews).
• Affiliate links: if you click a labeled partner link, the partner may set a tracking cookie to attribute a potential commission. Legal basis: your consent.

Your data is never sold. It may be processed by our technical providers, strictly for the purposes above:

• Hetzner Online GmbH (Germany): hosting.
• Cloudflare, Inc.: content delivery and security (CDN).
• Google: analytics, advertising (AdSense), image screening (Cloud Vision), form security (reCAPTCHA) and social sign-in.
• Microsoft: usage analytics (Clarity), with your consent.
• Meta (Facebook): social sign-in, if you use it.
• Resend: email delivery (newsletter and service emails).
• Stripe: payment processing (once paid features open).
• Cookiebot (Usercentrics): cookie consent management.
• Geocoding services: converting a town into coordinates for proximity alerts (only the address you type is sent, no other account data).
• Our affiliate partners: only if you click a labeled link.

Some providers (notably Google, Microsoft, Meta, Cloudflare, Stripe and Resend) may process data outside the European Union, including in the United States. These transfers are covered by appropriate safeguards: the European Commission's standard contractual clauses and, where applicable, certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

• Account and contributions: until you delete your account (which also removes your related content), or after a long period of inactivity preceded by a warning.
• Private messages: as long as the conversation exists for its participants.
• Newsletter: until you unsubscribe; the address is then kept on a suppression list so your choice sticks.
• Photos and videos you share: until you remove them or delete your account. A file refused in moderation is deleted, along with the thumbnail generated from it.
• Moderation logs and material preserved for the authorities: as long as needed for processing, then per legal obligations.
• Billing data (paid features): statutory accounting periods.
• Analytics: 14 months at most in our tools.

The site sets cookies and trackers for core functionality, analytics and advertising. On your first visit, a consent banner (Cookiebot) lets you accept, decline or customize by category; for advertising, the banner applies the IAB TCF and lists our partners. No non-essential cookie is set before you agree.

You can change or withdraw your choice at any time via the "Cookie settings" link in the footer.

The detailed, automatically updated list of cookies is available below:

We apply reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data against loss, unauthorized access or disclosure: encrypted connections (HTTPS), strict admin access control, isolation of content awaiting moderation, removal of location metadata from uploaded photos and videos (a phone video records where it was filmed exactly as a photo does), and trusted providers.

Under the GDPR you can access, correct, delete, restrict, object to and port your data, and withdraw consent at any time. We extend these rights to every user of the site, wherever you live, including if you are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. Most of them work directly from your dashboard (edit profile, unsubscribe, delete account).

For anything else, write to privacy@webedia.be. We may ask for proof of identity.

If you believe your rights are not being respected, you can lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority, rue de la Presse 35, 1000 Brussels (dataprotectionauthority.be), or with the supervisory authority of your country of residence.

If you live in California or another US state with a consumer privacy law (Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas and others), those laws give you rights very close to the GDPR rights above, and we honor them the same way: the right to know what personal information we hold about you, to access it, to correct it, to delete it, and to opt out of targeted advertising.

We do not sell your personal information, in the everyday sense or in the CCPA sense of exchanging it for money. Advertising cookies and ad personalization only run after you agree, and you can refuse or withdraw at any time through the cookie settings link in the footer; when ads serve in the concerned states, ad requests are limited to Google's restricted data processing.

To exercise any of these rights, use your dashboard or write to privacy@webedia.be; an authorized agent may submit a request on your behalf if you give them written permission. We answer within the deadlines your state's law sets, and exercising your rights never degrades the service you get (no discrimination).

Creating an account requires being 16 or older. Below that age, permission from a parent or legal guardian is required.

We may update this policy to reflect legal or technical changes. The last-updated date appears at the top of the page. See also our full legal notice and our terms of service.