Business Privacy Notice

1. Who we are

PetMap operates a directory of pet-related businesses and places in Nigeria at petmap.ng. For the purposes of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (the “Act”), we are the data controller for the information described here. Read this alongside our Terms & Conditions, sections 4 and 5 of which set out the same position in contract terms.

2. Why is my business listed?

If you did not put your business here, this section is for you.

PetMap is a directory of pet services in Nigeria. Like a phone book or a map, it lists businesses so that customers looking for a vet, a groomer or a boarding kennel can find one near them. We create a basic listing from information a business already publishes about itself, so that the directory is useful from the day someone searches it rather than only once enough businesses have signed up.

You do not need an account for a listing to exist, and you did not miss a step. A basic entry holds your trading name, what you do, roughly where you are, and the contact routes you already publish. It is there to send customers to you.

You are in control of what happens next. You can claim the listing and manage it yourself, correct anything we have wrong, or ask us to remove it. None of those requires payment, and only claiming requires an account. Section 8 sets out how each one works.

3. Where listing information comes from

We say this plainly because it matters to you. Entries in the directory come from three places: information submitted by a business or its representative, information gathered by our field agents, and business information the business already publishes about itself.

A listing compiled from public sources holds business contact details, not private ones: trading name, category of service, area of operation, and whatever contact route the business already publishes. Where a business trades under a person's own name, that information is also personal data and everything here applies to it.

4. What we publish

Business name, category, location, description, opening hours, photographs, phone number, WhatsApp number, email address, website and social handles. This is published, because publishing it is what a directory is for. We do not enrich it from data bought elsewhere, and we do not infer, score or profile anything about a business.

5. Why we are permitted to publish it

We rely on legitimate interests under section 25 of the Act. Our interest is in operating a directory that helps people in Nigeria find pet services. Your interest is in being found by customers, which is why the details are published in the first place. We limit what we publish to business contact information, and section 8 is how you object.

Where you have claimed a listing or taken a paid plan, we also process your information to provide what you signed up for, and we keep records the law requires us to keep.

6. Measuring how your listing performs

We count listing views and contact taps so that you can see whether anyone is finding you. For each event we record the listing, the type of event, the page the visitor came from, and an identifier derived from the visitor's network address, browser and the date.

That identifier is a one-way code. It separates one visitor from another for a single day, changes daily, and cannot be reversed to identify anyone. It is never shared with an advertising network or an analytics company, and nobody is followed onto another site.

What you see in your dashboard is totals: views, contact taps, and where visitors arrived from. You never see who. This runs on legitimate interests rather than visitor consent, because a directory that cannot tell you whether anyone found your listing is of no use to you.

7. How long we keep things

We do not keep listings indefinitely by default. Every listing carries a status, and the status decides what happens to it.

An active listing stays published while the business is trading. A listing we have marked closed because the business has shut comes off the site and is kept only long enough to stop it being re-added by mistake. A suspended listing is withheld while we look into something. When you ask us to take a listing down it is marked removal requested, comes off the site once we have confirmed the request, and is then marked removed. We keep a minimal record that a removal was requested and honoured, so that the same listing is not compiled again from the same public sources a month later. That record holds the business name and the date, not the contact details we removed.

Performance records are kept for up to 24 months, then deleted or reduced to totals from which no individual event can be separated. Account records are kept while the account is open and for 12 months afterwards. Messages you send us are kept for as long as needed to deal with the matter and any follow-up. Where the law requires us to keep something longer, we keep it for that period and no longer.

8. Claiming, correcting or removing your listing

You have three routes, and the last two need no account.

Claim it. Verify that you represent the business and take control of the entry, after which you decide what it says. Start from PetMap for Business.

Correct it. Use the contact widget on any page and pick “Listing Correction”, or the reporting control on the listing itself.

Remove it. Use the contact widget and pick “Remove My Listing”, or write to privacy@petmap.ng. You do not have to give a reason. We ask only for enough information to confirm you are connected to the business, so that a listing cannot be removed by someone unconnected to it. We act on confirmed requests within 30 days and usually much sooner.

9. Your other rights

Beyond section 7, you may ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to restrict how we use it, ask for it in a portable form, and withdraw any consent you have given. We do not make decisions about you by automated means.

Write to privacy@petmap.ng and we will respond within 30 days. Exercising any of these rights is free.

10. Who else handles it

We use a small number of service providers to run the site: hosting, database and file storage, and email delivery. Each processes data only on our instructions and for no purpose of its own. Some operate infrastructure outside Nigeria, so running the site involves transferring data abroad, and we rely on contractual protections with each of them to keep it subject to standards comparable to those the Act requires.

We do not sell business data, and we do not pass your contact details to advertisers or to other businesses in the directory.

11. Changes and complaints

We update this notice when what we do changes, and the date at the top shows when it last changed. Where a change materially affects your rights we will say so.

For anything here, write to privacy@petmap.ng. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a matter, you may complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, which supervises compliance with the Act. Security, cookies and the site's general handling of data are covered in the Privacy Policy.