Privacy policy

Animalerte is a community-run, free alert service for lost and found animals. We process the minimum data necessary for this purpose, in line with the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (nFADP, in force since 1 September 2023).

Who is responsible

The data controller is Adrien Gambetta (Fix & Flow), operator of Animalerte. For any question or request about your data, write to: info@animalerte.ch

Adrien Gambetta · Fix & Flow, Rue Oscar-Bider 108, 1950 Sion. Legal notice

What data we collect

• The alert: species, description, microchip number if you provide it, town and place, optional photos, position shown on the map. This information is public: only mention what you are willing to make visible.
• Your contact details (email, and phone and postal address if you provide them): never shown publicly without your consent. They are used for the management link, the expiry reminders and message relaying, and are visible to our partners (shelters, veterinary practices or municipalities). Your address never appears on the listing, and your number only if you explicitly enable it.
• Relay messages: if someone has seen the animal, their message and contact details are forwarded to you so you can get back to them. Those details, left by the witness, are also visible to our partners (shelters, veterinary practices or municipalities), and are kept for as long as the alert.

We use neither account nor password: an alert is managed via a secret link. We set no advertising cookies and do no behavioural tracking.

Purpose and legal basis

The data is only used to help find the animal and run the service. The legal basis is your consent, given when creating the alert, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting it.

Retention period

• An alert expires automatically after 60 days and then disappears from the map.
• An expired alert is permanently deleted 7 days later; a closed alert (animal reunited) 30 days after closing.
• You can delete your alert and all its data yourself at any time via your management link (right to erasure).
• A backup copy of the site is made every night, so that it can be restored after a failure. A deleted alert, whether deleted by you or automatically, remains in it for at most 30 days, then disappears on its own. These copies stay in Switzerland and serve no other purpose.

Recipients

The public details of a listing are visible to everyone. Your private contact details are never shown on the site without your consent, and the relay passes them to no one: you alone decide whether to reply. They are, however, visible to our partners (shelters, veterinary practices or municipalities), identified organisations we have a written agreement with, so they can reach you if they take your animal in. A partner can also correct, extend or reopen a listing, which extends how long it is kept. Each of their actions is recorded in a log that keeps the listing reference and the kind of change, never its content; the log is kept for one year, except instructions to remove an Instagram post, which carry only the reference and are kept until the post is removed. What you do yourself through your management link (edits, photos, extension, closing, deletion) is recorded in the same way. Whenever a new alert is posted, the team is notified through Telegram, a messaging service run by a company based outside Switzerland. The notification only carries the alert’s reference, species, status and municipality, its link, whether it has a photo and whether you declined social media publication, never your contact details. We do not sell any data.

Social networks (Meta)

To widen the search, every alert is published on the service’s Facebook and Instagram pages once a member of the Animalerte team has checked it. You can opt out when posting or at any time from your management link; the team may also hold back an alert it considers inappropriate. What is sent: the main photo, the species, the animal’s name, its breed, colour, sex and age, the town, the date of the alert, the beginning of the description and the link to the alert; for a reunion post, the note you left when closing. Never your contact details or the precise place. These posts are hosted by Meta, in the United States, under their own terms. A Facebook post is removed automatically as soon as the alert is closed or deleted, or you opt out, and by hand by the team if that fails; an Instagram post, however, cannot be deleted programmatically: we remove it by hand, without being able to guarantee a timeframe. Once the animal is found, we may publish a reunion announcement carrying the same photo: it is the only way to tell the people who were searching, since Meta’s API allows neither editing a post nor commenting on it. It is removed along with the rest when the listing is permanently deleted.

Reports

When you report a listing or a problem, we keep what you write, the page concerned, your email address if you leave one, and your IP address, for at most six months. Only the Animalerte team reads them, in the site’s administration area; partner shelters have no access to them. A notification is sent at the same time through Telegram, a messaging service run by a company based outside Switzerland. It contains neither your text nor your email address, only the type of report, the reason chosen, the listing’s reference and link or the page concerned, and whether an address was left. For a personal matter, write to info@animalerte.ch instead.

Mapping (OpenStreetMap)

Map tiles come from OpenStreetMap, but your browser never contacts their servers: our server fetches the tiles and serves them to you from animalerte.ch. OpenStreetMap receives neither your IP address nor the page you are viewing, only the part of the map requested, on behalf of our site. We keep a copy of these tiles, which contain no personal data, so that they don’t have to be fetched again on every visit.

Hosting

The service and database are hosted in Switzerland. Fonts are served from our own server (no call to Google Fonts).

Your email address, phone number and postal address, like the contact details left by a witness, are stored encrypted: they do not appear in plain text in our database or in its backup copies. The key that decrypts them is kept separately, on the site’s server, which uses it to run the service (reminders, message relay, access by our partners). Backup copies made before 11 October 2026, deleted at most 30 days after they are made, may still contain them in plain text.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify and delete your data. Deletion is immediate via your management link; for any other request, contact: info@animalerte.ch

This text is provided for information only and does not constitute legal advice.

Last updated: 25 October 2026.