What Minou publishes, and when

Why it matters so much

A cat photo tells where someone was, and when. Put together, photos published instantly and at the exact spot would show where a person lives, where they walk every morning, and when they're not home. Minou is built so that this isn't possible.

Three protections

1. Rounded locations

   The point shown for a cat is rounded to within about a hundred metres. It doesn't move from one load to the next: reloading the map won't reveal the exact spot.

2. A 45-minute delay

   What a neighbour photographs only appears to others 45 minutes later: the location, the time, and even a cat's photo count (except for a missing cat, during their alert). No one can follow a cat, or the person photographing them, live. You see your own photo right away.

3. Exact only for a missing cat

   When an owner starts an alert, photos of their cat taken after the alert starts appear right away, at their exact location: that's what helps find them. The past stays rounded, except for a cat added by their owner from home, whose whole history becomes exact during the alert.

What Minou never publishes

• Your area: if you declare one, it's only used to count neighbours, and no other member sees it. That count isn't even shown when too few people are there.
• A location in a shared image: a cat's card that you post on Facebook contains no map and no location, not even an approximate one.
• Your number or address in a notification: the alert to neighbours only says that a cat went missing near them. The details are read in the app.

What happens on your phone

• The cat is recognised on the phone, without sending the photo away for analysis.
• Before anything is sent, the phone also checks that no face appears and that the image is appropriate.
• Your location is only read while the app is open, never in the background. Minou only records where your photos were taken and, if you turn on alerts, an area rounded to about a hundred metres.

Ads, trackers, data sales

No ads, no ad trackers, no selling of data. The Google libraries built into the app (cat recognition, and the map on Android) send Google technical data about how they work, never a photo: the privacy policy describes them. To count active people, the app only notes that an account opened that day, with no time and no location. On this website: no cookies, no audience measurement.

If you delete your account

Your profile, username, messages and alerts are deleted right away. Your cat photos stay, without your username, because they tell the story of cats who belong to the street; write to us if you want them removed. Each photo's technical address still contains the account's identifier: the policy says so plainly.

Frequently asked questions