Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Howl Big ("we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, and protects your information when you join our waitlist, visit our website, or use our app.

What we collect

What we collect depends on how you're using Howl Big today, since the app itself hasn't launched yet.

Right now, on our waitlist

Your email address, which you give us to join the waitlist. It's submitted through a form we use to manage sign-ups (currently Formspree) and used only to notify you when Howl Big is ready.

Once the app launches

When the app is live, using it will involve collecting:

Puppy photos you choose to upload
Pet details you provide, such as breed, age, weight, and sex
Monthly weigh-ins you log so we can track growth over time
Device identifiers, used to keep the app working correctly and to understand basic usage patterns
Purchase and subscription state (for example, whether you have an active subscription), which is handled by the App Store or Google Play

How we handle your puppy's photos

Photos are central to how Howl Big works, so here's exactly what happens to each type of image and how long we keep it.

The original photo you upload

We use your original upload to detect your puppy's breed and create a cropped, dog-only reference image. We delete the original upload once that processing is complete, and in any case no later than 30 days after you upload it — a short grace period in case anything needs to be reprocessed.

The normalized reference crop and description

We keep a cropped, background-removed reference image of your dog, along with a short text description of their appearance (like coat color and markings). We keep this for as long as your pet's profile exists, because it's what lets us generate new grown-up portraits as your puppy ages, without asking you to re-upload photos every time. Deleting your pet's profile deletes this data too.

The AI-generated grown-up portraits

The grown-up portraits Howl Big predicts for your dog are kept for as long as you have an active subscription, so you can view and revisit them. If you cancel, stored portraits may be removed, so we recommend saving any you'd like to keep to your own device beforehand.

Photos in your gallery

Any photos saved in your in-app gallery are yours to manage — view, download, or delete them anytime from within the app.

Every photo is cropped to your dog before any AI processing happens. Please only upload photos of your pet — we ask that you don't include people in the photos you upload.

Who we share data with

We share information only with the service providers that help us run Howl Big — never for advertising purposes.

AI image-generation and analysis providers (currently Google and Anthropic) — used to detect your puppy's breed and generate grown-up portraits. These providers are contractually committed not to use your photos to train their own models.
Formspree — processes the email addresses submitted through our waitlist form.
Plausible — a cookieless analytics provider that helps us understand overall site traffic without tracking individual visitors.

We do not sell your personal information.

Analytics

Howl Big uses Plausible, a privacy-first analytics tool that doesn't use cookies and can't identify individual visitors or track you across other websites. It just gives us aggregate numbers, like how many people visited a page.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights over the personal data we hold about you. We aim to honor these rights for everyone, wherever you're located, including:

Access — ask us what data we hold about you
Correction — ask us to fix inaccurate information, like a pet's details
Deletion — ask us to delete your data, including your waitlist entry, pet profiles, and photos

Once the app is live, you'll be able to request deletion directly from the app's 'Delete my data' setting. You can also reach us anytime at [email protected] for any privacy request.

Legal basis for processing (GDPR)

For users in the European Economic Area and UK, our legal bases for processing are: your consent, which you give by choosing to upload a photo or pet details for AI processing (and which you can withdraw anytime by deleting your data), and our legitimate interest in understanding how our website and app are used — which is why we rely on cookieless, aggregate analytics rather than data that identifies you.

Age requirement

Howl Big is intended for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has given us personal data, please contact us and we'll delete it.

Data location and retention

Data	How long we keep it
Waitlist email	Until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it
Original photo upload	Deleted after processing, within 30 days at the latest
Reference crop and description	Life of the pet profile
Generated portraits	While your subscription is active
Pet details and weigh-ins	Life of the pet profile, or until you delete it

We use reputable cloud infrastructure and service providers to store and process data; exact server locations can vary by provider. Wherever your data is processed, we require our providers to protect it to a comparable standard.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as Howl Big grows, for example when new features launch. We'll update the date on this page and, for material changes, do our best to let you know, such as by email or an in-app notice.

Contact us

Questions about this policy? Email us at [email protected] — we're happy to help.