Privacy Policy

PetBond is a Malta-based pet-care service operating through the PetBond brand and petbondmalta.com. For the personal information described in this policy, PetBond acts as the data controller and decides why and how that information is used.

Depending on how you use PetBond, we may collect:

• Customer details: first and last name, email address, phone number and locality.
• Pet details: pet name, type, breed and age description.
• Care details: requested service, dates and times, medication needs, behavioural information, safety concerns, special requirements and additional notes.
• Operational records: request and booking references, status history, meet-and-greet records, agreed schedule, estimated and final prices, cancellation information and internal administrative records.
• Communications: information you provide when discussing a request, booking, complaint or other enquiry.
• Technical information: basic logs and network, device and security information that may be generated when the website and its supporting services are used, including information needed to assess and limit abusive submissions.

The website does not currently collect payment-card details or process online payments.

• Review care requests and assess whether a service is suitable and available.
• Contact you about your request, arrange a meet and greet, and agree care instructions.
• Create and manage confirmed bookings, schedules, prices and service records.
• Provide safe, appropriate care and respond to welfare or safety concerns.
• Send transactional messages about requests and bookings.
• Operate, secure and improve PetBond’s systems and prevent misuse.
• Maintain records, handle disputes and comply with applicable obligations.

We rely on different legal bases according to the purpose:

• Contract and steps before a contract: reviewing your request, discussing availability and price, arranging care, managing a booking and communicating about the service.
• Legitimate interests: administering PetBond, keeping proportionate operational records, protecting animals and people, securing systems and preventing misuse. We consider these interests against your rights.
• Legal obligations: retaining or disclosing information where applicable law requires it, including accounting, tax or legal requirements.
• Consent: only where we specifically ask for it and consent is the appropriate basis. You may withdraw it at any time, without affecting earlier lawful processing.

Information about an animal’s medication, behaviour and safety needs is important operational information. It is not automatically special-category health information about the customer. We nevertheless treat it carefully, collect only what is reasonably needed to assess or provide care, restrict access to authorised administrators, and avoid placing detailed care information in routine emails.

We share information only where reasonably necessary, including with:

• Supabase, which supports PetBond’s database and administrator authentication.
• Resend, which delivers transactional request and booking emails.
• Cloudflare Turnstile, which helps assess public care-request submissions and administrator login attempts for automated or abusive activity and may process the network, device and security information needed to perform that assessment.
• Upstash Redis, which supports request and login rate limiting using short-lived pseudonymous identifiers derived from source-network and contact information.
• Vercel, which hosts and delivers the PetBond website.
• Professional advisers, emergency veterinary providers or public authorities where reasonably necessary or legally required.

We do not sell customer personal information.

Some service providers may process information outside Malta or the European Economic Area. Where data-protection law requires it, we expect appropriate transfer safeguards to be used, such as an adequacy decision or approved contractual protections. Provider locations and arrangements may change, so this policy does not claim that all processing occurs in one country.

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, including providing services, maintaining business records, resolving disputes and meeting legal obligations. Different records may need different retention periods.

Subject to the conditions and limits in data-protection law, you may have rights to:

• access your personal information;
• correct inaccurate or incomplete information;
• request erasure or restriction;
• object to certain processing;
• receive certain information in a portable format; and
• withdraw consent where processing relies on consent.

We may need to verify your identity and may lawfully retain information where an exception applies.

We use reasonable technical and organisational measures intended to protect personal information. Access to customer and booking records is restricted to authenticated, authorised administrators. For request and login rate limiting, PetBond sends pseudonymous hashed identifiers rather than raw IP addresses or contact details to the rate-limit store, and does not add raw IP addresses to customer, request or booking records for this purpose. No online system can be guaranteed completely secure, and we will review our safeguards as the service develops.

PetBond does not currently use advertising, marketing or analytics cookies. Technically necessary cookies may be used where required to operate and secure functionality; for example, authentication cookies support the private administrator area. We will update this notice and, where required, introduce consent controls before adding non-essential tracking.

We send service messages such as care-request acknowledgements, booking confirmations and request updates. These are transactional communications, not marketing subscriptions. Our email provider processes the information needed to deliver and monitor those messages.

PetBond’s request and booking service is intended for adults who can arrange pet care. Please do not submit personal information about a child unless it is genuinely necessary and you are authorised to provide it.

We may update this policy when our services, suppliers or legal obligations change. The latest version will be published on this page with an updated date. Material changes may also be communicated directly where appropriate.

To ask a privacy question or exercise a right, email petbondmalta@gmail.com or call +356 7909 0702.

You may also lodge a complaint with Malta’s Information and Data Protection Commissioner. Visit the IDPC’s complaint page for current guidance. Your right to seek another administrative or judicial remedy is not affected.