Privacy policy

What stays on your device

Your pet's name, and cat or dog. If you type your pet's name to see it on the maps, printables and books, it is kept only in this browser tab, and normally forgotten when you close it. If you pick cat or dog, that choice is kept in your own browser (local storage) so the right guides open next time; clearing your browser's site data erases it. Neither ever reaches us.

Printables are made in your browser. When you print the map, a checklist or the five decisions, the page builds it on your device. Nothing is uploaded.

Calendar reminders are a file on your own device. The reminder file is made in your browser and saved to your device. We never see it.

Who else is involved when you visit

We run no advertising, and nothing on our pages comes from an advertising, social media or data-broker company. One company is involved, because a website has to be served from somewhere: our host, Cloudflare. It also counts our visits and keeps automated attacks off the site.

Fonts. Our fonts are served from our own site, so loading a page sends nothing to Google or any other font service.

Podcast audio. Our episodes play from our own site, so pressing play sends nothing beyond what loading any page sends to our host. The show is also published through RSS.com for podcast apps; if you listen in a podcast app, that app and RSS.com handle it under their own privacy policies.

Our web host. Like any website, ours is served by a hosting company, Cloudflare, which receives your IP address when you load a page. Cloudflare's own privacy policy covers what it does.

Visit counts. Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views and measures how fast our pages load. Its small script comes from Cloudflare. Cloudflare says it uses no cookies or local storage for this and does not fingerprint visitors. It shows us totals only: which pages were read, which sites sent visitors, and broad details such as country, browser and device type. It cannot tell us who anyone is.

Bot protection. Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode screens traffic for scrapers and attacks. To do that it may run a short check that looks at ordinary browser details, and set security cookies: __cf_bm, which expires after 30 minutes of inactivity, and cf_clearance if your browser passed a check, which lasts about 30 minutes by default. Cloudflare says these cookies are strictly necessary for security and are not used to track people from site to site.

We do not use any of this to track you or to build a profile of you.

Cookies

We set no cookies of our own, and we use no tracking pixels or other identifiers for tracking, analytics or advertising. Any cookie a visit receives comes from our host's security features, such as __cf_bm and cf_clearance described above, and is used only to keep automated attacks off the site.

Links to outside sources

Many of our pages link to the sources behind a tip, a story or a quote. Those links open the other site in a new tab, and that site's own privacy policy applies there. It may see that you arrived from our page.

What we do not collect

We collect no personal information from any visitor, including children under 13. Our host receives your IP address to deliver each page, and its visit counts show us only totals, such as how many visits came from each country. Specifically, we do not collect:

• Names, email addresses, or postal addresses
• Phone numbers or contact information
• Photographs, videos, or audio recordings
• Precise location (the visit counts show only a country)
• Tracking or advertising cookies, device IDs, or other identifiers used to follow anyone
• Any information we could use to identify, contact, or locate any visitor

If you write to us

If you email us, we receive your email address and what you write. We read it and use your address to reply. We do not add it to any list.

Our commitment to children's privacy

Talking With Pets is created for children and the adults who love them. We take children's privacy seriously. Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), this website asks no child, and no one else, for personal information. Our host, Cloudflare, handles IP addresses and the short-lived security cookies above only to deliver the site, count visits, measure page speed and block attacks. We receive only totals, and we never use any of it to identify, contact, profile or advertise to anyone.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our data practices, please contact us at [email protected].

Changes to this policy

We will notify visitors of any material changes to this policy by posting an updated version with a new “Last updated” date.