Last updated: 15 August 2026
The short version
Tameside Tails on Trails keeps what it knows about you and your dogs on your own phone. There is one exception, and only one: your email address, which is held so that your subscription can be allocated to it. That address is not sold, not rented and not passed to any third party.
You do not have to give it. If you decline, some functionality that depends on a subscription may not be available to you, but the app itself keeps working and everything already on your phone stays exactly where it is. You can change your mind either way, at any time.
There are no adverts in this app, and there will not be. That is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight: adverts mean handing information to advertising companies, and nothing in here is going to be handed to anybody.
Who is responsible for this
The app is made by Howarth Games. If you have a question about anything here, or you want your email address removed, write to martin@howarthgames.co.uk and it will be dealt with.
What is held on your phone, and stays there
All of the following is written to your device and is not sent anywhere:
- Your name, phone number and home address, if you enter them
- The person you nominate as an emergency contact
- Your dogs: their names, breed, age and weight
- Medical records — vaccinations, weigh-ins, allergies, medication and ongoing conditions
- Your vet practice, the microchip number and insurance details, if you add them
- Walks you plan, and walks you track, including the routes they take
- Anything you log on a walk: notes, voice memos and photographs
- Your PIN
None of this is uploaded, backed up to us, or readable by us. It lives on the phone, and it is opened with the PIN you set.
The one thing that leaves the app: your email address
The app asks for an email address because a subscription has to be allocated to something. That address is the account.
What it is used for: allocating and maintaining your subscription, and contacting you about that subscription if something needs saying — a renewal, a problem, a change to this notice.
Who it is shared with: nobody. It is not sold. It is not rented. It is not passed to any third party, any advertising network, any analytics provider or any data broker. It is not used to profile you, and it is not used to advertise anything to you or to anybody else.
If a payment is taken for a subscription, that payment is handled by the app store you bought it through, under its own terms — card details are never seen by, or held in, this app.
Declining, and what that means
Giving the app your email address is a choice, not a condition of using it. You can decline when you are asked, and you can withdraw it later in the app.
The one consequence is practical rather than punitive: a subscription has to be allocated to something, so if there is no address to allocate it to, the parts of the app that depend on a subscription may not be available. Everything else carries on as normal. Your dogs, their records, your planned and tracked walks, your photographs and your notes are all held on the phone and are not affected in the slightest by that choice.
If you change your mind in either direction, nothing on the device is lost.
Why there are no adverts
Plenty of apps that are free at the point of use are paid for by advertising. This one is not, and that is on purpose.
An advert has to be chosen by somebody, delivered by somebody and counted by somebody, and all three of those mean information about you and your phone leaving the app and being processed by companies you have never heard of and did not choose. Once that pipe exists, it tends to widen. The simplest way to be certain that your dog’s medical history, the routes you walk and the photographs you take are not feeding anybody’s advertising is for there to be no advertising, so there is none.
There are no advertising networks in the app, no tracking for advertising purposes, and no profile of you built anywhere for it. Nothing is sold to data brokers, because nothing is sold at all.
Location
The app uses your device’s location while you are tracking a walk, to draw the route on the map and measure the distance and pace. It does this only while a walk is being tracked. The route is saved on your phone with the rest of that walk, and it is not sent anywhere. Tracking stops if the app is closed.
Camera, photographs and the microphone
Photographs you take on a walk, and any voice memo you record, are saved on the device with the walk they belong to. They are not uploaded. The app asks for access to the camera and microphone only so that you can use those features.
Medical information and first aid
The medical record is there for you and for whoever walks your dog. It is not shared with your veterinary practice, and it does not replace their advice.
The first aid pages are general guidance for an emergency. They can be wrong for your dog, and they are no substitute for having the animal seen. Always ring your vet.
How long any of it is kept
What is on your phone stays there until you remove it. Deleting the app deletes it, and because none of it is held anywhere else, there is nothing left behind for anyone to go through.
Your email address is kept for as long as you have a subscription. It is removed when you ask for it to be removed, or when you withdraw it in the app. Removing it does not touch anything held on your device.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, object to how it is used, and withdraw permission you have given. Since the only thing held off your device is your email address, in practice that means asking for that address to be removed — write to martin@howarthgames.co.uk.
If you are unhappy with how a request is handled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Children
The app is meant for adults looking after dogs. It is not aimed at children and it does not knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes to this notice
If what the app does with your information changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top will say when. If a change is significant, subscribers will be told by email.