Privacy policy

Last updated: 2026-05-28

Dog Rescuer (gwinnettshelterpets.com) is a volunteer-run site that surfaces publicly listed adoptable dogs at Gwinnett County Animal Welfare and a few neighbouring shelters. We exist to help dogs get fostered or adopted before they run out of time. This page explains what data we collect, why, and how you can have it removed.

Who we are

Dog Rescuer is operated by Fab Bazaar LLC, a Georgia limited liability company, on a volunteer basis — no paid staff, no advertising, no revenue. You can use the contact form for any questions about this policy or your data. We are not the shelter. We do not represent Gwinnett County or any government agency. Decisions about specific dogs are made by the shelter — we surface what they publish and help amplify it.

What we collect

Public shelter data

We periodically read publicly available information from gwinnettcopets.shelterbuddy.com and the daily PDF reports published at gwinnettcounty.com/static/upload/animalshelter/reports/…. This includes each dog's intake date, name, breed, age, kennel ID, photo, status, and stated outcome (adopted / transferred / returned to owner / deceased). Same applies to the LifeLine-managed shelters (DeKalb, Fulton). None of this is private — it's what the shelter shows on their own website.

Data you give us when you sign in

If you sign in (Google only), we store: the Google account ID Google sends us, your email address, your display name, and your profile picture URL. You can edit or remove all of this at /me.

If you fill out the volunteer profile (foster/adopt willingness, vehicle, notes, etc.), that data is stored on your user record and visible to operators making match decisions. You can clear or change it at any time.

Content you contribute

If you upload a photo of a dog, submit a social-media link about a dog, or leave a visit note, that content is associated with your account and visible on the dog's public profile. Volunteer photos live on Cloudflare Images (a third party — see below). You may delete anything you've contributed; the underlying photo is also removed from Cloudflare at deletion time.

Facebook comments on our posts

When we publish a dog's profile to our Facebook Page (Gwinnett Urgent Shelter Dogs), Facebook sends us a notification every time someone reacts, comments, or edits a comment on that post. We store the comment text, the commenter's display name as Facebook sends it to us, and Facebook's internal comment ID so we can honour deletions (when you delete your comment on Facebook, it disappears from our site too).

On the public dog page we show only the commenter's first name and last-name initial (e.g. "Alice A."); we never publish your Facebook user ID or full name on the public site. Admins of Dog Rescuer may see the unredacted commenter name when triaging follow-ups.

What we do not collect

• We do not use third-party analytics (no Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel, no Hotjar/etc.).
• We do not run advertising of any kind. Nothing on this site is monetised.
• We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13.
• We do not collect payment information.

Cookies

We use two cookies, both first-party:

• user_id — set after Google sign-in. It is an itsdangerous-signed token that identifies your account for 30 days. HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax, Secure.
• csrf_token — random per-browser token used to defend against cross-site request forgery on form submissions. 30-day rolling. SameSite=Lax, Secure.

No tracking cookies, no third-party cookies, no cross-site identifiers.

Third parties we use

• Cloudflare — proxies HTTPS, stores the daily database backup (R2), hosts volunteer-uploaded photos (Cloudflare Images), and DNS. Cloudflare receives the IP address of every visitor as a normal consequence of being our CDN.
• Google — sign-in only. When you tap "Sign in with Google," Google verifies who you are and tells us your email + Google account ID. We don't use any other Google service.
• Meta / Facebook — we read engagement data for posts we published on our own Facebook Page via the Pages Graph API (the pages_read_engagement and adjacent permissions). We do not read any data about people who haven't interacted with our Page.
• Hostwinds — the VPS provider hosting the application and database.

How long we keep your data

• Dog profiles and outcomes are retained indefinitely so the site remains a useful historical record.
• User accounts are retained until you delete your account or ask us to. Self-service deletion is at /me/delete.
• Content you contributed (photos, visit notes, links) is removed from public view when you delete it, and from Cloudflare's storage when the underlying photo is deleted.
• Facebook comments are mirrored from Facebook in real time. If you delete the comment on Facebook, it disappears from our site within seconds.
• Database backups are kept on Cloudflare R2 for 30 days then purged.

Your rights

You can:

• Delete your account. Visit /me/delete and confirm. Content you contributed becomes anonymised (attribution removed); your user record is deleted.
• Edit your profile. At /me.
• Appear anonymously. The "show me anonymously" checkbox on /me replaces your name with a role label everywhere on the public site.
• Have your Facebook comment removed. Delete it on Facebook directly — it disappears from our site. Or email us.
• Request your data. Email use the contact form and we'll send you what we have. Allow a few days; this is a volunteer project.

Security

TLS everywhere, HSTS preload, Content-Security-Policy with per-request nonces, CSRF tokens on every state-changing form, role-based authorization for any contributor action, and offsite encrypted backups with IP-restricted API tokens.

Changes

If we change this policy in a material way, we'll update the date at the top and (for signed-in users) put a note on the home page. There is no mailing list to subscribe to.

Contact

Questions, deletion requests, complaints, anything — use the contact form.