Privacy, thoughtfully.
This notice explains what personal data Irish Pets collects, why, who it is shared with and what rights you have over it, in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
1. Who we are
Irish Pets is operated by Urban Hawk, Reg. No. 653971, Dublin, Ireland. For data protection purposes this makes Urban Hawk the data controller for information collected through irishpets.ie. Contact us about privacy at [email protected]. We have not appointed a separate Data Protection Officer; privacy requests are handled personally by the controller at that email address.
2. What we collect, and why
Account details — your email address, a hashed password (never stored in plain text), your name and any profile information you add. We use this to create and secure your account and to provide the service you sign up for, which is necessary to perform our contract with you.
Listings and messages — pet or business listing details, photographs, saved searches, and messages you send through the site. We use this to publish your listing, connect buyers and sellers, and keep a record if a dispute or report needs investigating — necessary to perform our contract with you and, for moderation, our legitimate interest in keeping the marketplace safe and lawful.
Payments — if you activate a listing, Stripe or GoCardless process your payment directly; we receive confirmation of payment and a reference, not your card or bank account details. We keep payment and invoicing records because we are legally required to for tax purposes.
Contact-form messages — your name, email address and message, used only to respond to your enquiry or report — our legitimate interest in dealing with enquiries.
Technical data — a necessary, HTTP-only session cookie that expires after seven days, used only to keep you signed in, and a small local preference that remembers whether you have switched on optional analytics (see section 6). Neither requires consent because both are strictly necessary for a service you have asked for.
3. What other people can see
Published listings, seller names, biographies, county and registration references are public. Messages are visible only to the people in that conversation. Moderators can see accounts, reports and listing information to enforce our Terms. Your email address is never published.
4. Who we share data with
We use a small number of service providers to run Irish Pets, each acting as our data processor under its own data-processing agreement. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.
Cloudflare handles hosting and infrastructure. Stripe and GoCardless process card and Direct Debit payments — we never see or store your card or bank account number. Resend delivers account emails, such as sign-in links. Stock photographs on demonstration pages load directly from Unsplash, which receives a normal image request including your IP address when a page containing one loads.
Some of these providers process data outside the European Economic Area. Where that happens, we rely on the safeguard each provider has in place — typically the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, or, for UK-based processors, the UK’s EU adequacy decision — to keep the transfer lawful.
We may also disclose data where required by law, to investigate suspected fraud or illegal content, or to protect the rights, safety or property of Irish Pets, our users or the public.
5. How long we keep it
We keep account, listing and message data for as long as your account is active. If you close your account, or ask us to delete your data, we will do so within 12 months of a verified request, except where we must keep specific records for longer to meet a legal obligation — for example, payment and invoicing records, which Irish tax law requires us to retain for six years. Contact-form messages are kept only as long as needed to deal with your enquiry and for a short period afterwards in case of follow-up.
There is currently no self-service “delete my account” button; email [email protected] and we will action your request by hand.
6. Cookies and analytics
Irish Pets does not use advertising or tracking cookies, and no third-party analytics or advertising pixels are loaded on the site. Beyond the necessary session cookie described in section 2, the only optional feature is anonymous product analytics — off by default, switched on only if you choose to in your account settings, sent to our own systems rather than a third party, and something you can switch off again at any time.
7. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal data, to have inaccurate data corrected, to have data deleted, to restrict or object to certain processing, to receive your data in a portable format, and to withdraw consent for optional analytics at any time — none of which affects the lawfulness of anything we did before you withdrew it. To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected]. We will respond within one month, as GDPR requires, and may ask for information to confirm your identity first.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you have the right to complain to Ireland’s supervisory authority: the Data Protection Commission, 6 Pembroke Row, Dublin 2, D02 X963, Ireland — dataprotection.ie.
8. Children
Irish Pets is for adults. Advertisers must be at least 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, contact us and we will delete it.
9. Security
Passwords are hashed, never stored in plain text, and payment details never reach our servers — Stripe and GoCardless handle those directly. We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect the data we do hold, but no online service can guarantee perfect security.
10. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time, for example if we add a new service provider or feature. Material changes will be reflected here with an updated date at the top of this page.