Privacy policy
Argos Academy is run by Argos Dog Training, Inc., trading as Argos Dog Training, at 1066 Washington St., Boston, MA 02124. This page says what the app collects about you and your dog, what it does with it, who else touches it, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read, not skimmed. If something here is unclear, write to dogtrainer@argostraining.com.
What we collect
Your account. Your name, your email address and a password, which is stored hashed, never as typed. Sign-in times and the session cookie that keeps you signed in.
Your membership. Whether your subscription is active, when the current period ends, and an identifier that links your account to your record at Stripe. Card numbers never reach us: you type them on Stripe's own page.
Your dogs. Each dog's name, breed, age, a photo if you add one, the notes you write about what you are working on, your answers to the onboarding questions (including how many people and children are in the home, whether you live in an apartment or a house, and anything you type in your own words), the four-week plan the app builds, and any health notes you choose to add.
What you do in the app. Which lessons you have finished and when, your streak, your badges.
What you write and record. Every message you send to Argos AI and every reply, plus a rolling summary the app keeps of those conversations for each dog. Questions you send to Martin and his replies. Notes and video clips you send with a check-in or a question. Monthly reports written about your dog.
Technical. Your IP address, browser and device type, and error reports when something in the app breaks. Error reports are scrubbed so they carry the fault, not your messages or your dog's notes.
We do not use advertising trackers and we do not run analytics that follow you to other sites.
Why we collect it
To run your membership and take payment. To show you the courses and keep your place in them. To let Argos AI answer about your dog rather than a generic one. To build and track the four-week plan. To let Martin see your dog's history when you send him a clip or a question, so his reply is about your dog. To write the monthly report. To keep the app secure and to fix it when it breaks.
We do not sell your information. We do not share it with other businesses for their marketing. We use your email address to run your account and, if you have not opted out, to send the monthly newsletter Martin writes.
Argos AI, and what leaves the app
Argos AI is a model made by a company called Anthropic. It is not Martin, and it says so. Nothing about your dog goes to Anthropic until you have read what would be sent and said yes inside the app; until then Argos AI, the four-week plan and the monthly report stay off and everything else works. What is sent, each time you ask something: the dog's name, breed and age; your notes; the health notes on the profile, so the advice stays safe, with an instruction never to give advice about them; your onboarding answers; the plan and what you have ticked; the titles of lessons finished on your account; everything you type in the chat and the summary of earlier chats. Once a month, for the report: your badges, your streak, how many questions you asked and whether you sent a check-in.
What never goes to Anthropic: your name, your email address, your password, your card details, your photos, your videos, and the text of a question you send to Martin. Under Anthropic's terms for business customers, what is sent is not used to train their models.
You can withdraw your yes at any time by asking Martin through the app. The features that depend on it switch off; nothing else changes.
Who else handles your information
The app runs on other companies' infrastructure. Each one sees only what its job needs, under a contract that limits what it may do with it.
- Supabase (United States, Virginia): the database, sign-in, and the private storage that holds photos and video clips. Everything above lives here.
- Vercel (United States): hosts the app. All traffic passes through it, so it sees your IP address and browser like any web host.
- Stripe: takes payment. It holds your card and sees your name and email address. We see whether you paid, never the card.
- Anthropic (United States): runs Argos AI, as described above, only after your yes.
- Cloudflare: the small check on the sign-up and sign-in forms that keeps bots out. It sees the request, not your account.
- Sentry: receives error reports so we can fix faults. Reports are scrubbed of your content before they are sent.
- YouTube (Google): most lessons play through a YouTube embed. When a lesson loads, Google sees that your browser requested that video, under Google's own privacy policy.
- Resend and Bunny Stream: an email sender and a video host the app is built to use but has not switched on. If either is switched on, this page will say so first: Resend would see your email address and the report sent to you; Bunny would hold the video clips.
We will hand over information without asking you only where the law requires it, or to stop fraud, abuse, or a threat to someone's safety.
If the business is ever sold or merged, your information goes with it, under this policy or one at least as protective.
Your clips and photos
A video you send with a check-in or a question is for Martin. It is stored privately, played through links that expire after an hour, and shown only to you and to him. It is never sent to a model and never used in a lesson, a course, or anywhere public without your separate, written permission for that clip.
How long we keep it
For as long as you have an account. When you delete your account from the account page, your membership is cancelled, and your dogs, plans, progress, messages, reports, photos and videos are removed. Stripe keeps the payment records the law requires it to keep. Backups of the database are kept for seven days and then overwritten, so a deleted account is gone from backups within a week.
Some of it goes sooner. Delete a dog and everything about that dog goes with it the same moment: its profile, its chat with Argos AI and the summary the app kept of it, its plan, its practice log, its reports. Video clips you sent Martin are kept while your account exists so he can look back at how your dog was doing; you can ask for any clip to be removed sooner by writing to the address above. The notification token for your phone is removed when you sign out of the app on it. Error reports are kept for ninety days.
What you can do
- See and change your details on the account page.
- Download everything the app holds about you, as a file, from the account page.
- Delete your account, and everything with it, from the account page.
- Withdraw your yes to Argos AI by asking Martin through the app.
- Stop the newsletter with the link at the bottom of any copy, or under Account in the app. Your reports and Martin's replies are part of the membership and keep coming while you are a member.
- Ask anything about this policy, or ask us to correct something, at dogtrainer@argostraining.com or by post at 1066 Washington St., Boston, MA 02124.
If you are outside the United States, your information is stored and processed in the United States, and by using the app you agree to that.
Security
Sign-in is protected, data is encrypted in transit and at rest with our providers, photos and videos are in private storage behind expiring links, and each member can read only their own records. No system is perfectly secure and we do not promise that this one is; we do promise to tell you if something goes wrong with your data.
Children
The app is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13, and a membership can only be bought by someone old enough to make a contract.
Changes
When this page changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect, and the date at the top will move. Where the change is about what Argos AI is sent, you will be asked for a fresh yes.