Legal

Terms & Conditions

Effective date: September 9, 2026

Updated October 2026: VeriBark is now FaunaVera and supports many species. The previous VeriBark Terms & Conditions remains available for reference.

Welcome to FaunaVera! These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the FaunaVera mobile application, website, and related services (collectively, the "Service"), operated by BarkBack LLC ("FaunaVera," "we," "our," or "us"). FaunaVera was previously called VeriBark.

By accessing or using FaunaVera, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

1. Informational Use Disclaimer

FaunaVera is an AI-powered animal behavior analysis tool designed to provide educational, informational, and entertainment-focused insights about the behavior of animals based on user-submitted media.

FaunaVera:

FaunaVera is an informational and educational tool only.

You understand and agree that FaunaVera's outputs are estimates and interpretations, not definitive conclusions.

FaunaVera does not provide medical, veterinary, behavioral, or professional training advice, does not assess safety or risk, and does not guarantee accuracy or outcomes.

Animals are inherently unpredictable. By using FaunaVera, you acknowledge and agree that you assume all responsibility and risk for how you interpret and act on FaunaVera's insights.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old to use FaunaVera. If you are under the age at which you may independently consent to the use of an online service or enter into these Terms in your jurisdiction, you may use FaunaVera only with the consent of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.

By using the Service, you represent and warrant that:

FaunaVera does not knowingly allow use by children under 13.

3. Accounts

To use FaunaVera, you must create an account.

You agree to:

You may terminate your account at any time through the app or by contacting FaunaVera. FaunaVera may suspend or terminate accounts as described below.

4. User Content

Your Responsibilities

You are solely responsible for the content you upload, including videos, audio recordings, photos, and any associated information ("User Content").

By uploading content, you represent that:

Prohibited Content

You agree not to upload content that is:

5. Animal Welfare Use Policy

FaunaVera exists to help people understand animals so they can care for them better. You may use the Service only for purposes that respect the welfare of the animals it observes. This section explains what that means.

5.1 The core rule

You agree to use FaunaVera, and any output, report, signal, score, or interpretation it produces ("Outputs"), only to understand, protect, care for, or improve the wellbeing of animals. You may not use the Service or any Outputs for any Animal Exploitation Purpose as defined below, whether directly, through a third party, or by incorporating Outputs into another product, dataset, model, or process.

5.2 Prohibited uses

An "Animal Exploitation Purpose" is any use whose primary purpose or foreseeable effect is to increase the extraction of value from animals at the expense of their welfare, or to reduce, suppress, or work around an animal's own welfare-relevant signals. Without limiting that definition, you may not use the Service or Outputs to:

(a) Optimize animal-production systems. Design, tune, benchmark, or otherwise improve the productivity, throughput, yield, or profitability of meat, dairy, egg, fur, leather, wool, fish or seafood, laboratory-animal, breeding, racing, fighting, or other systems in which animals are raised, kept, or used primarily as commercial inputs.

(b) Select animals for commercial traits. Evaluate, rank, or select individual animals or lines for productivity, growth rate, feed conversion, temperament suited to confinement, racing or fighting performance, breeding value, or other commercial or performance traits.

(c) Improve slaughter, transport, confinement, or extraction. Study or refine the handling, loading, transport, lairage, stunning, or slaughter of animals; the design or operation of cages, crates, stalls, pens, or other confinement; or the milking, shearing, egg collection, semen collection, or any other extraction of animal products or bodily materials, except as expressly permitted in Section 5.3.

(d) Override welfare-relevant signals. Use behavioral insights to detect and then suppress, habituate, desensitize, override, or otherwise work around an animal's avoidance, fear, distress, pain, resistance, or refusal, rather than to relieve its cause. This includes using Outputs to make an animal more compliant with a procedure, environment, or handling practice that is itself contrary to its welfare.

(e) Conduct invasive or harmful experimentation. Plan, conduct, or refine research or testing that causes animals pain, distress, injury, or death, or that involves invasive procedures, deprivation, or induced disease or stress as part of the experimental design.

(f) Train exploitative systems. Use Outputs, or data derived from them, to train, fine-tune, evaluate, benchmark, or otherwise develop any model, software, hardware, or system whose primary purpose is an Animal Exploitation Purpose.

(g) Facilitate cruelty or unlawful use. Use the Service in connection with animal fighting, baiting, poaching, illegal trade in animals or animal parts, or any act that is cruel to animals or unlawful in the jurisdiction where it takes place.

(h) Coercive or aversive training. Use Outputs to design, calibrate, or justify training methods that rely on inflicting fear, pain, or intimidation on an animal.

5.3 Permitted welfare-positive uses

Working with farmed, laboratory, working, or other non-companion animals is not itself prohibited. What matters is the purpose. The following are expressly permitted, including for farmed animals, provided they are not used to serve a purpose prohibited in Section 5.2:

If you are unsure whether a particular use is permitted, ask us at support@faunavera.org before you begin. We would rather answer a question than terminate an account.

5.4 Commercial, research, and API users

If you use the Service on behalf of a business, institution, or research program, or under any commercial, enterprise, research, or API agreement, you represent that your organization's use complies with this Section 5, and you agree to give us reasonable information about your intended use on request. We may decline, condition, or withdraw commercial, research, or API access at our sole discretion where we believe a use is inconsistent with this policy, even if it is not expressly listed in Section 5.2.

5.5 Our commitments

We hold ourselves to the same standard we ask of you. FaunaVera commits that we will:

(a) State the rules clearly. We will keep the permitted and prohibited uses in this Section 5 public, specific, and current, and we will explain any material change to them when we update these Terms.

(b) Not build for exploitation. We will not design, develop, or offer any feature, product, integration, or service whose purpose is to optimize animal confinement, production, transport, slaughter, breeding, or the extraction of animal products, or that is otherwise built for an Animal Exploitation Purpose.

(c) Not license our data for exploitation. We will not knowingly license, sell, or share Derived Data, AI Models, or Outputs (as described in Section 6) to any party for an Animal Exploitation Purpose, and we will include equivalent restrictions in any agreement under which we share them.

(d) Monitor for misuse. We will take reasonable steps to detect misuse of the Service, including reviewing patterns of use, the nature of commercial and API accounts, and reports we receive from users, and we will investigate credible reports promptly. You can report suspected misuse to support@faunavera.org.

(e) Refuse harmful customers. We will decline, condition, or end our relationship with any customer, partner, or account where we believe its use of the Service serves an Animal Exploitation Purpose, regardless of the commercial value of that relationship.

These commitments describe how we intend to operate. They do not create rights enforceable by third parties and do not limit the disclaimers and limitations in Sections 8 and 12.

5.6 Enforcement

A breach of this Section 5 is a material breach of these Terms. If we determine, in our reasonable judgment, that you have used or intend to use the Service or Outputs for a prohibited purpose, we may, without prior notice: suspend or terminate your account; revoke any license to use Outputs; and, where we believe an animal is being harmed or the law requires it, report the matter to the relevant authorities. Refunds remain governed by Section 10. You agree that a breach of this Section may cause harm to animals that money cannot remedy, and that FaunaVera may seek injunctive relief in addition to any other remedy.

5.7 Interpretation

This Section 5 will be read in favor of animal welfare. Where a use could fall under both Section 5.2 and Section 5.3, its primary purpose and foreseeable effect on the animals concerned will decide. Listing a use in Section 5.3 does not permit it to be used as a step toward a purpose prohibited in Section 5.2.

6. Ownership and License

  1. Your Content Ownership. You retain full and exclusive ownership of all videos, audio recordings, and other content you upload to FaunaVera ("User Content").

  2. License to FaunaVera. By uploading User Content, you grant FaunaVera a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, host, store, reproduce, and analyze your User Content for purposes including operating and providing the Service, improving machine learning models, and debugging technical issues. This license is subject to our commitments in Section 5.5.

  3. Ownership of AI and Derived Data. You acknowledge and agree that FaunaVera owns all rights, title, and interest in "Derived Data." Derived Data includes de-identified, aggregated or anonymized statistical data, machine learning models ("AI Models"), and behavioral insights that cannot identify you or your animal personally.

  4. Commercialization Rights. FaunaVera retains the exclusive right to sell, license, and commercialize the Derived Data and AI Models for any purpose consistent with Section 5.5. You are not entitled to compensation from commercialization of de-identified data.

  5. Restrictions on Selling User Content. FaunaVera will NOT sell, rent, or license your raw, identifiable video files to third parties without your explicit written consent.

  6. Your License to Outputs. FaunaVera grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Outputs generated from your User Content for purposes permitted under Section 5 and subject to Section 9.

  7. Termination of License. The license you grant us ends when you delete your content or account. However, FaunaVera may retain Derived Data indefinitely, as it cannot be reverse-engineered to reconstruct your original content. Deletion does not require FaunaVera to retrain or modify AI Models that were lawfully trained using your User Content before deletion.

  8. Use for Machine Learning. To be clear: your User Content may be used to train and improve FaunaVera's AI Models, as described above and in our Privacy Policy. You may opt out of having your future uploads used for training at any time in App Settings. The Privacy Policy explains how uploads are handled, including uploads that contain identifiable people.

7. Sharing, Social, and Public Use

FaunaVera is designed to be fun, insightful, and shareable.

You may:

You are solely responsible for:

FaunaVera is not responsible for:

Once content is shared outside the FaunaVera Service, it is subject to the policies and practices of the platform where it is posted.

FaunaVera is not responsible for how third parties interpret or use shared content or results.

8. AI Limitations and Disclaimers

You acknowledge and agree that:

You assume full responsibility for any actions taken based on FaunaVera's outputs.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AVAILABILITY, OR ERROR-FREE OPERATION, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.

9. Intellectual Property

FaunaVera IP

FaunaVera owns all rights, title, and interest in:

You may not:

User Content Ownership

You retain ownership of your original content, subject to the license granted to FaunaVera as described in these Terms.

10. Subscriptions and Payments

FaunaVera may offer:

Subscriptions automatically renew unless canceled in accordance with the applicable app store's policies.

Payments are handled exclusively by Apple App Store or Google Play. FaunaVera does not process or store payment information.

Refunds are governed by Apple's or Google's refund policies.

Pricing and subscription offerings may change in the future.

11. Account Suspension and Termination

FaunaVera may suspend or terminate your account if you:

Breaches of Section 5 may result in immediate termination without prior notice.

You may terminate your account at any time.

Handling of your data upon termination is governed by the Privacy Policy.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law:

FaunaVera's total liability for any claim shall not exceed the amount you paid to FaunaVera in the preceding 12 months, or $100 USD if no payment was made.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless FaunaVera from any claims, damages, or losses arising from:

14. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of North Carolina, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law principles, except that this choice of law does not deprive consumers of mandatory protections provided by the laws of their country of residence.

Before filing any legal claim, you agree to attempt informal resolution by contacting FaunaVera.

Any disputes not resolved informally shall be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in North Carolina. If you are a consumer residing in a jurisdiction that gives you a statutory right to bring or defend proceedings elsewhere, nothing in this section limits those rights.

15. Changes to These Terms

FaunaVera may update these Terms from time to time. If material changes are made, users will be notified through the Service or other appropriate means.

Continued use of FaunaVera after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

16. Contact Us

If you have questions about these Terms, or about whether a particular use is permitted under our Animal Welfare Use Policy, please contact support@faunavera.org.