Terms and Community Guidelines

Welcome to Dog Maps. By creating an account or using the app you agree to these terms. They're written to be read, so please do.

Who can use Dog Maps

You must be at least 13 years old. If you're under the age of majority where you live, you need a parent or guardian's permission. One person, one account, and the details you sign up with should be real.

Community guidelines

Dog Maps is for sharing dogs you see out in the world. We have zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive users. Don't post or do any of the following:

• Photos that aren't of a real dog you saw yourself, or that were taken from somewhere else.
• Nudity, sexual content, violence, gore, animal cruelty, or anything showing an animal being harmed.
• Hate speech, slurs, harassment, bullying, threats, or targeting anyone for who they are.
• Photos that focus on people who haven't agreed to it, children, or private details like faces, license plates or house numbers when the point is to identify someone.
• Posts meant to reveal where someone lives or to track a person or their pet.
• Spam, scams, advertising, or impersonating someone else.
• Anything illegal, or anything that infringes someone else's rights.

Please be kind to dogs and their people. Ask before photographing someone's dog up close, and never approach a dog that doesn't want attention.

How we keep it safe

• Every photo is checked before it posts. An automated check (using OpenAI) makes sure the photo contains a real dog and screens it, along with your note, for content that breaks these guidelines.
• Filters: slurs are rejected automatically in notes, names, bios and usernames.
• Report and block: every dog and every profile has a menu to report it or block the person. Blocking hides them from you, and you from them, straight away.
• We act within 24 hours. Our moderators review every report within 24 hours. We remove content that breaks these rules and ban the accounts that posted it.

Your content

You own the photos and notes you post. By posting, you give Dog Maps a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, display and share them as part of running the service (for example showing them on maps, in feeds, and on share pages for public accounts). This license ends when you delete the post or your account, except for copies others have already shared or that we must keep by law.

You're responsible for what you post and confirm you have the right to post it.

Location

Posting a dog requires your phone's current location, and each post shows where it was taken. Public accounts' posts can be seen by anyone. Please don't post from places you don't want others to know you've been, like your home. See our Privacy Policy for details.

Your account

Keep your password safe. You can delete your account at any time in the app (Profile, then Settings, then Delete account), which permanently deletes your posts too. We may suspend or ban accounts that break these terms, without notice if the situation calls for it.

The service

Dog Maps is provided as is. We work hard to keep it running and safe, but we can't promise it will always be available or error free, and the breed guess is a guess. To the extent the law allows, we aren't liable for indirect or consequential damages arising from your use of the app. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under consumer law that can't be limited.

Changes

We may update these terms. If the change is meaningful, the app will ask you to accept the new version before you post again.

Contact

Questions, or something to report outside the app: [email protected].