Community Rules

Pupsley exists to help dogs make friends, which means it only works if people feel safe here. These are the rules everyone agrees to when they join — what we expect of you, what you can expect of us, and what to do when somebody gets it wrong.

Last updated: 12 September 2026

Operator: Pupsley, an independent service run from Australia. Pupsley is not yet a registered company — when that changes we'll name the entity here. Written enquiries: [email protected].

You need to be 16 or over

Pupsley isn't for children under 16, and that matches our Privacy Policy. If you believe a child has an account, tell us and we'll deal with it.

Be decent to people

Most of this comes down to one thing: there is a real person on the other end, and usually a dog they love. Don't:

Harass, bully, threaten or intimidate anyone.
Attack people for who they are — their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or sexuality.
Keep contacting someone who has made it clear they'd rather you didn't.
Share anybody's personal information — their address, their phone number, photos of them — without their say-so.

Keep it about dogs

Nothing sexual, and nothing sexualised. This includes profile photos and dog profiles.
Nothing that depicts or encourages cruelty to animals, violence, or self-harm.
Nothing illegal, and nothing that promotes illegal activity.
No selling dogs or puppies through Pupsley. This is a place to meet neighbours and walk together, not a marketplace.

Be who you say you are

Don't impersonate another person, a rescue organisation, a vet or a business.
Don't run an account that pretends to be someone it isn't.
No spam, no bulk advertising, no chain messages, and no scams or requests for money.

Lost dog alerts are for lost dogs

A lost dog alert reaches the lock screens of strangers who never asked to hear from you. It's the loudest thing anyone can do on Pupsley, so it comes with rules:

Only raise an alert for a dog that is genuinely missing.
Say where the dog was actually last seen, and describe them honestly.
Mark them found when they're home. It's what keeps the next alert worth reading.
Alerts are limited to 2 live at a time and 3 a week per account, and they stop after 7 days whether or not anyone marks the dog found.

Meeting up is your call

Pupsley helps you find dog owners near you. It doesn't check anybody out, run background checks, or vouch for anyone — we have no way to. If you arrange to meet someone:

Meet somewhere public the first time, in daylight, and tell someone where you're going.
You're responsible for your own dog — their behaviour, their vaccinations, and the local rules where you walk.
Trust your instincts. If something feels off, don't go, and tell us about it.

The same goes for your location: your suburb is visible to people near you by default, and you can change that any time in your privacy settings.

Reporting and blocking

There's a Report option on profiles, dog profiles and groups, and on every lost dog alert. Reports go to our moderators.

We never tell the person who reported them. Not their name, not that a report exists.
There's also a Block option on profiles. Blocking someone hides each of you from the other in local search, stops friend requests and walk invitations between you, and stops notifications passing either way. You can unblock from Settings whenever you like. They aren't told, either way.
Blocking changes what you can both see and do from now on. It doesn't delete anything that already happened.

What we check, and what we don't

We'd rather tell you exactly how this works than imply more than we do:

When you write something — a dog's description, a group name, a walk's meeting place, a note on an invitation, the details on a lost dog alert, a report — our server checks it before saving: it has to be within a length limit, it can't contain HTML or hidden characters, it can't contain certain kinds of link, and it's checked against a short list of words we don't allow here. What we store and send on is the checked version, not the original.
Nothing is reviewed before it appears, and we don't scan photos. There's no automatic system judging whether someone is being unpleasant.
That's what reporting is for. Moderators read reports and act on them, and we deliberately don't promise a response time we can't keep — Pupsley is small.

What we can do about it

When somebody breaks these rules, depending on what happened, we may:

Remove or hide the content.
Stop the account raising lost dog alerts.
Remove someone from a group, or close a group.
Deactivate the account, so it's no longer visible to anyone on Pupsley.
Contact the police or an animal welfare authority where somebody or some animal is at risk.

Group admins can also ban someone from their own group — that's their call within their group, and separate from anything we do.

If we get it wrong, email us and say so. We'd rather hear it than not.

Your content stays yours

Your photos and what you write are yours. By posting them you're giving us permission to show them to the people on Pupsley they're meant for — that's all we need, and it's the only reason we have for it. Turning off a dog's public profile, or deactivating your account, takes that content out of view.

Changes to these rules

If we change these rules in a way that matters, we'll update this page and the date at the top, and ask you to agree again next time you open Pupsley.

Contact us

Email [email protected] or use the contact page. A real person reads it. For anything about your data, see the Privacy Policy.