How to read this matrix
“Commercial use” distinguishes HoundLine’s paid dog-research product from the sale of personal information. “Testing” means controlled internal product, scanner, quality, fraud, security, or model evaluation—not automatic public release or unrelated external training.
Data-use matrix
| Category | Visibility | Purpose | Internal testing | Commercial use | Retention | Choices |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account and contact information | Private to you and authorized HoundLine staff and service providers. | Sign-in, account operation, security, support, and required notices. | Only as needed to test account, security, and delivery systems; not as scanner training content. | Not sold, licensed, or shared for cross-context behavioral advertising. | While the account exists; deleted with the account except limited security, legal, and deletion records. | Access, correct, export, or delete through account tools; submit a privacy request for help. |
| Private dog records and pedigrees | Private unless you deliberately contribute facts to HoundLine research. | Your pedigree workspace, matching, lineage analysis, and requested features. | May be used internally to test and improve HoundLine when the Terms permit and access is restricted. | The private workspace is not sold. Eligible dog facts contributed to public research may become part of paid HoundLine products. | Until you delete the pedigree or account; independently retained source evidence and public research are handled separately. | Edit or delete in the product and include in an account export. |
| Uploaded source documents and images | Original files remain private to authorized operations; they are not public certificates or galleries. | Scanning, provenance, resolving disputes, fraud prevention, and research verification. | May be used in restricted scanner evaluation and quality improvement. | Original documents are not sold or publicly licensed. Eligible extracted dog facts may support paid research products. | Unaccepted uploads expire quickly; accepted source evidence may be retained privately after account deletion when needed for provenance, quality, disputes, or law. | Request review, correction, restriction, or removal when rights or privacy are at issue. |
| Public dog research and contributed dog facts | May appear in HoundLine research profiles and subscriber features, subject to access controls. | Pedigree research, identity matching, lineage, search, citations, and corrections. | May be used to evaluate research and scanner accuracy. | May be combined, normalized, displayed, distributed, and offered through paid HoundLine services. | Generally retained as an enduring research record, even after the contributing account is deleted. | Submit corrections, source disputes, privacy concerns, or copyright complaints; credible disputes may be restricted during review. |
| Scanner output and human corrections | Restricted operational data; verified dog facts may enter HoundLine research. | Document extraction, accuracy measurement, quality improvement, provenance, and dispute review. | Yes—this is a core internal evaluation use. | Not sold as personal data; resulting eligible dog research may support paid products. | May be retained with accepted source evidence; temporary failed or abandoned work is cleaned up on shorter schedules. | Correct extracted facts and submit a complaint about source material or personal information. |
| Saved dogs, searches, and private links | Private to your account and necessary providers. | Personalization and restoring your saved work. | May be tested internally in a restricted environment without publishing your private list. | Not sold or used for cross-context behavioral advertising. | Until you remove the item or delete the account. | Remove individual items, export account data, or delete the account. |
| Support and legal requests | Private to the requester, authorized staff, and providers needed to deliver or investigate the request. | Responding, diagnosing problems, documenting disputes, and protecting rights. | May be used to improve support quality after minimizing unnecessary personal details. | Not sold or used for advertising. | Ordinary support records are generally kept two years after closure; disputes, security matters, and legal requests may be kept longer. | Ask for access or correction; some records must remain to document the request and outcome. |
| Analytics, logs, and security records | Restricted to authorized staff and infrastructure providers. | Reliability, aggregate product measurement, fraud prevention, security, and incident response. | Used to test performance and defenses; scanner telemetry is designed to exclude document content and personal information. | Not sold or shared for cross-context behavioral advertising. | Application logs are generally kept 90 days; documented incidents up to one year; administrative security audits up to seven years. | Browser controls may limit nonessential measurement; privacy requests remain available. |
| Derived, de-identified, and aggregated information | May be used internally or published when it does not reasonably identify a person or expose a private document. | Statistics, capacity planning, research quality, product decisions, and safety. | Yes. | May support HoundLine products and business reporting without selling identifiable personal information. | May be retained indefinitely when it is no longer reasonably linked to a person. | HoundLine does not attempt to re-identify de-identified information except to test its protections. |
Important boundaries
- HoundLine does not call this permission “fair use.” The license depends on rights you actually possess and does not erase third-party rights.
- Original source documents remain private unless there is a separate lawful basis to publish them.
- Dog facts and HoundLine’s research compilation may support paid products; identifiable personal information does not become a commodity merely because it appears near a dog record.
- Provenance should be preserved, competing sources should not be concealed, and HoundLine must not falsely claim authorship of a contributor’s material.