Terms and Conditions

mybirdID is an online registry that helps people identify, track, and reunite lost birds with their owners. It's run by mybirdID Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (registered office: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ). In these Terms we use “we”, “us”, or “mybirdID” to mean mybirdID Ltd.

You can use the Service to record your birds' identifiers (leg rings, microchips, CITES/Article 10 certificates and photographs), report a bird as lost, or look up the owner of a bird you've found through our Lost & Found feature.

mybirdID is a voluntary registry. We are not an official government database, an authorised microchip registration service, or a licensed CITES authority. Using mybirdID doesn't replace any legal obligation you have to register microchips with an approved database or to hold CITES documentation.

Using mybirdID means you're agreeing to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If there is anything in either document that you aren't comfortable with, please don't create an account.

You need to be at least 18 to sign up. By registering, you're confirming that you are.

If you're signing up on behalf of a business, organisation, or rescue, please make sure you have authority to bind that entity to these Terms.

You're responsible for keeping your login details to yourself, and for what happens under your account. If you think someone else has accessed it, please email help@mybirdid.com straight away so we can help.

Please keep your account information accurate and up to date. We may suspend or close accounts where the information is clearly false or misleading (for example, claiming ownership of a bird that isn't yours).

mybirdID is here to help you:

• Register your birds and record their physical identifiers, dates, and photographs;
• Report a bird as lost and publish a public listing for it;
• Report a found bird and use our matching tools to identify a potential owner;
• Be found by others through Lost & Found matching (contact details shared on your terms, as set out in Section 7);
• Transfer ownership of a bird to someone else, or grant guardian access to another user (Section 8);
• Record the handover of a found bird to another carer (Section 8).

Please don't use mybirdID to:

• Upload content that infringes someone else's intellectual property rights;
• Enter false, misleading, or fraudulent information about a bird or its ownership;
• Harass, stalk, or attempt to defraud other users;
• Scrape or systematically extract data from the Service;
• Get around our security or access-control measures;
• Do anything unlawful, including facilitating the illegal trade in protected species.

If we notice misuse, we'll usually try to contact you first to understand what's happening. We do reserve the right to suspend or close accounts where misuse continues.

mybirdID offers two plans:

• Free: register one bird, with one photograph per bird, plus Lost & Found alerts. Free for as long as you want to use it.
• Flock: a yearly subscription at £9.99 per year, billed annually. Includes unlimited bird registrations, up to ten photographs per bird, the ability to grant guardian access to people you trust, and health tracking for every registered bird.

Flock is a recurring annual subscription. It renews automatically each year unless you cancel before the renewal date, and we'll send you a reminder before each renewal so you're not caught out. Payment is processed by Stripe; we don't store your card details ourselves.

All prices include any applicable taxes. Where VAT or other taxes apply based on where you are, they'll be shown at checkout.

Your right to change your mind (14-day cooling off). If you're a consumer in the United Kingdom, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you 14 days from the date you bought a Flock subscription to cancel for a refund, without needing to give us a reason.

By signing up to Flock, you're asking us to start the Service straight away rather than waiting until those 14 days are up. You can still cancel inside the 14 days, but we may charge you a small pro-rata amount for the days you've already had access.

To cancel within the 14 days, email help@mybirdid.com from your account email, or use the cancellation option in your account settings. We'll send the refund within 14 days of receiving your cancellation, to the same payment method you used to buy.

Cancelling after the 14 days. You can cancel at any time from your account settings or by emailing us. Access continues until the end of your current paid year. We don't normally refund the unused portion of the year, but if you think a refund is fair (a long inactive period, change of circumstances), please drop us a line and we'll take a look.

Price changes. If we ever change the Flock price, we'll email you at least 30 days before the change takes effect. You can cancel before the next renewal if you don't agree with the new price.

If your Flock subscription lapses while you have multiple birds registered. Your additional birds (everything beyond your first registered bird) become read-only until you renew, and mybirdID will keep sending Lost & Found match notifications for your first registered bird but not for the additional ones until you upgrade again.

If your subscription stays lapsed for one year, we will then permanently delete all but one of your birds. We keep the oldest (first-registered) bird that isn't currently reported lost, and delete the rest along with their photographs and the records that relate only to them. We will not delete a bird while it has an active lost-bird report, and we never delete records that other people are part of (such as sightings or found-bird reports filed by others, contact requests, guardian access you've granted, or birds you've transferred to someone else). Before we delete anything we'll email you in advance (around 30 days, and again around 7 days, before the deadline), and we only go ahead once those reminders have been sent, so you have the chance to renew and keep everything. Renewing at any point beforehand cancels the deletion. The one year is counted from a continuous lapse: a short break that you quickly resolve won't restart the clock. Deletion is permanent and can't be undone, though we keep a minimal record that it took place. This applies only to subscriptions that lapse after this rule took effect; birds on accounts that had already lapsed before then aren't affected.

You own the photographs, descriptions, and other content you upload to mybirdID (“Your Content”). Uploading it doesn't change that.

By uploading Your Content, you grant mybirdID a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, and display Your Content to the extent necessary to operate the Service and make Your Content available to you and to anyone you choose to share it with (for example, through a Lost & Found listing). This licence ends when you delete Your Content or close your account, except where we're required to keep it by law.

Social-platform link previews. Sharing a lost-bird listing on social platforms (Facebook, X, WhatsApp, iMessage and similar) generates a preview that may include the bird's photograph and listing details. These previews are cached by the social platform itself, outside our control, and may continue to appear on the platform after the bird has been found or the listing has been removed.

You confirm that Your Content doesn't infringe anyone else's rights, and that you have the right to grant the licence above. You're responsible for what you upload.

If content on mybirdID is harmful, offensive, or unlawful, we'll remove it. Where we can, we'll let you know first and explain why; for unlawful content we may need to act without notice.

When you report a bird as lost, mybirdID creates a public listing with the bird's species, physical description, and approximate area. Sensitive identifiers (ring numbers, microchip numbers, CITES certificate numbers) stay private; the listing only shows whether each one exists (e.g. “has a microchip”).

When someone submits a found-bird report, we compare the identifiers automatically against the registry to flag potential matches. Matches are suggestions, not confirmations, and the decision to act on one is always yours.

How your contact details get shared. You decide whether other users see your email or phone number, and you decide it in two independent ways:

• Per-report opt-in. When you file a lost or found report, you can tick a per-report toggle to publish your email and/or phone number on that specific listing. The toggles are off by default and apply only to the report you're filing.
• Per-request acceptance. Another signed-in user can submit a Contact Request on your listing. We'll notify you. If you accept, that specific person gets your email and phone. You can decline without needing to explain why.

There's no global setting that shares your contact details across all reports or with all users. Each listing and each accepted request is a separate decision.

Once contact details have been shared, what happens between users is between you. Please use the same caution you would when meeting any stranger online.

mybirdID is a tool to help reunions. We can't guarantee a lost bird will be found, but we'll do our best to make it easier.

mybirdID has three features that involve another person seeing your bird's record. Here's how each works.

Transferring ownership of a bird. If you sell, rehome, or give a bird to someone else, you can transfer the bird's record on mybirdID. Enter the new owner's email; they'll be invited to accept. When they accept, the record (photos, vet history, leg-ring details, microchip details, current address) moves to them, and you lose access. Any lost-bird reports you filed for the bird stay on your account as part of your history, but you no longer own the bird itself.

Please don't use the transfer feature for anyone who doesn't actually have authority over the bird. Misuse here is grounds for account suspension.

Guardian access. Flock subscribers can grant another mybirdID user limited safety-focused access to one or more of their birds (we call them “guardians”). A guardian can view the bird's record, mark it lost or found, edit the active lost-bird report, dismiss potential matches, and choose whether to share their own contact details with finders. A guardian cannot edit the bird record itself, upload photographs, log vet visits, transfer ownership, delete the bird, or invite further guardians.

When you invite a guardian, their display name becomes visible to you. Once they accept the invitation, they can see your bird's record. You can revoke their access at any time. Revoking stops further visibility but can't retract anything they've already seen or contact details they've already received from finders while their access was active.

Found-bird handover chain. If you've reported finding a bird and then pass it onwards (to a vet, a rescue, or another carer), you can record the handover on mybirdID. The new carer is emailed and confirms (or declines) by clicking a link.

Each linked carer in the chain (current and previous) keeps visibility of the found-bird record so they can answer questions about it or respond to potential matches. Only one pending handover can exist per bird at a time. You can cancel a pending handover before the new carer accepts; we'll email them to say the request is no longer active.

mybirdID lets you record sensitive identifiers including microchip numbers, leg ring numbers, and CITES/Article 10 certificate numbers. Please make sure these are accurate when you enter them.

We don't verify identifiers against any external database, and recording one on mybirdID isn't the same as registering it with a government authority or an approved database. You're still responsible for any legal obligations you have around keeping, registering, or trading birds, including CITES rules and any local wildlife laws.

When you use mybirdID, you'll get emails and in-app notifications about your account and what's happening with your birds. These include:

• Account emails: password resets, email-change confirmations, billing receipts, renewal notices, and account-closure confirmations.
• Lost & Found emails: claim links for bird handovers, contact request notifications, reminders about active reports, and a weekly digest summarising Lost and Found reports in your area.
• Vet reminders: scheduled reminders for vet appointments, vaccinations, or other health events you've recorded.

Most of these are essential to the Service and can't be opted out of without closing your account or removing the underlying record. The weekly Lost & Found digest is the exception: every digest email has an unsubscribe link.

When we need to give you notice (for example about a change to these Terms, a suspension, or a security incident), we'll email the address on your account or display a prominent notice in the Service. Please keep your email address up to date.

Our use of cookies and how we handle your personal data are covered in our Privacy Policy. We use only the cookies we need to run the Service (session, authentication, and payment).

To run mybirdID, we use a small set of third-party providers as data processors:

• Stripe (payment processing)
• Amazon Web Services (authentication via Cognito, file storage via S3)
• SMTP2GO (transactional email delivery, pinned to the EU data centre)
• Neon (database hosting)
• Vercel (application hosting)

Where any of these providers process data outside the UK, we rely on standard contractual clauses and other safeguards required by UK data-protection law. The Privacy Policy goes into more detail.

If a third party brings a claim against mybirdID because content you uploaded infringes their rights (for example, a photograph that wasn't yours to share), or because you've used the Service in a way that breaks the law, you agree to cover our reasonable costs in dealing with the claim, including legal fees.

This clause doesn't apply to anything we can't lawfully exclude (such as liability for our own negligence). If you're a UK consumer, your statutory rights are not affected.

We do our best to keep mybirdID running smoothly, but we can't promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We also can't promise that no data will ever be lost, although we take regular backups. We recommend keeping your own copies of your birds' key identifiers.

We're not responsible for the accuracy of information other users enter, including found-bird reports, sightings, contact details, or handover history. Match suggestions are algorithmic and offered for your information only; we don't verify them.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't be limited by law.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability to you for any claim relating to the Service is capped at the greater of: (a) the subscription fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim; or (b) £50.

We aren't liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss, including loss of a bird, loss of data, lost revenue, or lost profits, even if we'd been warned about the possibility.

If you're a UK or EU consumer, none of this affects your statutory rights.

Closing your account. You can close your account at any time from your account settings, or by emailing help@mybirdid.com. When you do, we'll delete your personal profile, bird records, photographs, the lost-bird and found-bird reports filed solely by you, and your notification history.

What we keep after closure. A few things have to stay, either because the law requires it or because removing them would damage the record for other users:

• Found-bird handover history. Where you've given or received a found-bird handover, the handover row (the display name you used at the time and the date) is kept so other carers in the chain, the original finder, and any later finders can see the bird's chain of custody. Your personal contact details are removed; only the cached display name from the time of the handover remains.
• Bird ownership transfers you made. Birds you transferred to someone else stay with that person; their records aren't affected by you closing your account.
• Payment-processor records held by Stripe in line with its own retention policies and applicable law.
• Anonymised or aggregated data that can't reasonably be linked back to you.

See our Privacy Policy for the full retention schedule.

Suspension or termination by us. We may suspend or close your account if you break these Terms, if we're legally required to, or if it's been inactive for a long time (with prior notice where possible). Where we can, we'll always try to explain first and work things out.

Some parts of these Terms keep applying after termination by their nature, including Sections 12, 13, 14, and 18.

For now, mybirdID is aimed at users in the United Kingdom. These Terms are governed by English law, but if you're a consumer in the EU or EEA, you keep the benefit of any mandatory protections in your country's law.

If you're accessing mybirdID from outside the UK, you're responsible for making sure your use complies with your local laws, including any laws about keeping or identifying birds.

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute will be handled by the courts of England and Wales, except that if you're a consumer in the EU, you can also bring proceedings in your country of residence.

We'd much rather sort things out by email first. If you're unhappy with anything we've done, please write to help@mybirdid.com and we'll do our best to put it right.

The whole agreement. These Terms (together with our Privacy Policy and any plan-specific terms shown at checkout) make up the whole agreement between you and mybirdID about the Service. They replace any earlier agreements about the same things.

Severability. If a court decides one part of these Terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.

No waiver. If we don't enforce a right under these Terms straight away, that's not us giving the right up; we may still enforce it later.

Force majeure. We're not liable for failures or delays caused by things outside our reasonable control: natural disasters, war, civil unrest, pandemic, internet or telecoms outages, third-party service outages, or government action. We'll work to restore the Service as soon as we can.

Assignment. You can't pass your account or these Terms on to someone else without us agreeing. We may transfer these Terms to a successor entity (for example, if mybirdID merges with or is acquired by another business) by giving you reasonable notice.

No third-party rights. No one other than you and mybirdID has any right under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce these Terms.

From time to time we'll need to update these Terms. When we make a material change, we'll email you at least 14 days before it takes effect, or display a clear notice in the Service. The update takes effect on the date stated in the notice.

If you carry on using mybirdID after the update takes effect, that counts as accepting the new Terms. If you don't agree, you can stop using the Service and close your account before the date the update kicks in.

Got a question about these Terms, or anything else? We'd love to hear from you: