Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are and Scope

Smart Care Guide is an owner-operated sole proprietorship based in California, United States. We provide virtual, educational consultations, home safety checklists, and resources designed to help older adults age in place safely and support their family caregivers.

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard information when you visit our website, use our online calculators, planners, and safety assessment tools, or request a consultation.

Professional Services Disclaimer: Smart Care Guide provides educational resources and informational assessments only. We do not provide medical, legal, financial, emergency response, home inspection, contractor installation, or any other licensed professional services.

2. Information You Provide

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when using our website or communicating with us. This information may include:

• Contact Details: Your name, email address, and phone number.
• Geographic Data: Your ZIP code.
• Assessment & Calculator Inputs: Your answers, ratings, selections, and text notes submitted through our home safety assessment, savings calculators, and planning tools.
• Inquiry Details: Any messages, comments, or information you submit through our contact forms or email.
• Acknowledgment and Consent Records: Historical or existing legacy newsletter consent evidence may exist from earlier testing or operations. Versioned consent (using version 1.0.0 for newsletter consent), assessment acknowledgments, and Resource Partner authorizations are approved but not currently active. If these features become active, we may record the wording version shown, the displayed wording, and a server timestamp associated with the action. These records serve distinct operational purposes: assessment acknowledgments are recorded as product or safety acknowledgments; Resource Partner authorization is recorded for administrative review and possible publication of identified public listing fields; and newsletter consent is recorded for the receipt of the newsletter and educational email updates. These records are used strictly for these specific administrative purposes and do not represent agreement to this Privacy Policy, general consent to all data processing, or consent to unrelated marketing.

3. Information About Another Person

If you are a family caregiver, trusted helper, or aging-in-place professional, you may submit information about another person (the care recipient or home resident) to generate a personalized report or plan. This information may include:

• The resident's name, service address, telephone number, and email address.
• Your relationship to the resident.
• The resident's care needs, health/mobility profiles, home layout, and access notes.
• Uploaded photographs of home spaces and hazards.

Important note for people submitting another person's information. Only submit another person's information if that person has given you permission or you are otherwise authorized to provide it. Please do not submit information about someone you do not have authority to share. Submitting information about another person does not by itself give you legal authority to make privacy requests on that person's behalf; requests made for someone else are handled under "Requests made on behalf of another person" in Section 17.

4. Assessments, Calculators, and Planning Tools

We offer several interactive educational tools on our website, including:

• Home Safety Assessment (Dashboard)
• Caregiver Time & Cost Savings Calculator
• Smart Tech & Caregiver Time Optimizer
• Room-by-Room Home Setup Planning Guide (Smart Home Design)

When you use these tools, the information you submit is sent to our service infrastructure and stored so we can generate and provide the requested report, checklist, plan, assessment result, or calculation result.

5. Contact and Consultation Requests

When you submit an inquiry through our Contact Us form, we collect your name, email address, phone number, ZIP code, message subject, message text, and the page from which the contact form was opened. This information is saved in our database and forwarded to our administrator's mailbox to allow us to review and respond to your request.

6. Newsletter Subscriptions

If you subscribe through our newsletter signup panel, we collect your email address and any other information you choose to provide, such as your first name or subscriber type. Newsletter subscription functionality is not currently active. If introduced, we may use a confirmation process to verify subscriptions. You may unsubscribe using the link included in newsletter messages.

7. Payment Processing

Smart Care Guide does not currently accept live online payments. Its existing Stripe integration is used only for sandbox testing. Smart Care Guide has not selected or committed to Stripe or any other provider for future live payments.

If online payments are offered later, a third-party payment processor will collect payment-card information directly. Smart Care Guide will not receive or view complete card numbers, but may receive contact information, payment status, transaction identifiers, and limited payment-method metadata.

The payment setup and this policy will be reviewed before any live online payment is accepted. Current sandbox settings do not describe or guarantee a future live configuration.

8. Consultation Questionnaires and Attachments

Smart Care Guide uses Jotform for the post-payment intake questionnaire and related submitted information or uploads. Information submitted through this questionnaire is processed by Jotform and provided to Smart Care Guide for consultation intake and administration. Depending on the questionnaire, this information may include contact information, information about a residence or care situation, service preferences, access notes, and uploaded photographs. The Jotform dashboard settings, data retention, deletion, access, attachment handling, and provider configurations remain unverified and require external verification.

Warning: Please do not upload unnecessary highly sensitive information, government-issued identity documents, complete financial records, or medical records unless specifically requested for an appropriate purpose.

9. Resource Partner Submissions and Local Resources

If you apply to be listed as a senior care or technology partner in our Local Resources directory, we collect information including your business or organization name, contact person, email address, phone number, website, city, state, ZIP code, service area, primary category and other category, services and specialties, license number, license expiration date, professional designations or credentials, insurance information or notes, listing-interest information, additional notes, and publication authorization.

While the Resource Partner submission service is active, the versioned-authorization evidence path is not currently active. Submissions are non-public by default. Smart Care Guide reviews submissions administratively, and only approved fields identified as public listing information may be published. Private contact and review information is not published through the submitted authorization.

10. Information Collected Automatically

When you visit or interact with our website, certain technical information may be collected automatically:

• User Agent: Your browser type, version, and operating system are captured during form submissions to assist with formatting and security.
• Website Analytics: Vercel Analytics is active in our website code to collect usage and performance information. However, whether the current build is deployed, dashboard activation and configuration, account tier, identifiers or cookies, retention, and environment/project settings require external Vercel verification.
• Abuse & Spam Prevention: Cloudflare Turnstile is integrated on our website for abuse prevention and may receive connection or interaction information. Production enforcement and key configuration require external verification.
• Google Fonts: Our website loads the Inter and Outfit font families directly from Google-owned domains. When your browser requests these fonts, Google receives your IP address and browser headers.

11. Browser Storage and Similar Technologies

We use client-side storage technologies to support the website interface:

• sessionStorage: Used transiently to synchronize contact fields (name, email, phone) when switching between assessment tools, link post-payment profiles, persist calculator scores during your session, and manage active UI tab states.
• localStorage: Used to store your theme preference (dark/light mode) and persist your Smart Technology Optimizer results across browser restarts.
• Cookies: No first-party cookies are set directly by our code. Third-party services, such as Vercel Analytics, Cloudflare, Jotform, and any payment provider in use, may use cookies or similar technologies under their respective practices and configurations.

Do Not Track and privacy preference signals. Some browsers offer a legacy "Do Not Track" or "DNT" setting. Because there is no uniform industry standard governing legacy DNT signals, Smart Care Guide does not currently take separate action in response to a legacy DNT signal.

As described in Section 14, Smart Care Guide does not sell personal information for money or other valuable consideration and does not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. Opt-out preference signals, such as Global Privacy Control, are distinct from legacy DNT signals. Because Smart Care Guide does not currently engage in the sale or sharing practices to which such an opt-out would apply, receiving such a signal does not change the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

If our practices later change, we will update this Privacy Policy and implement any legally required signal handling before beginning the new practice. Information collected by third-party services remains subject to the disclosures in Sections 10, 11, and 14 and to those providers' own privacy practices.

12. Ask Smart Care Guide

The 'Ask Smart Care Guide' feature is an under-development preview. It currently returns one fixed demonstration response and does not generate an answer to the submitted question. No artificial-intelligence provider is called. Questions are processed one at a time, and no conversation history is maintained between messages or sessions.

When you use this feature, the submitted question is transmitted over the service request. The question text exists temporarily in browser memory, the HTTPS request, and Edge Function memory while the request is validated and handled. The application does not write the question text to its database, does not write the question text to browser storage, does not intentionally log the question text, and does not send the question to an AI provider. Please note that our integrated hosting, database, networking, and security providers may process connection, request, and response information — potentially including request or response content where applicable to the service — under their own practices and retention settings.

For abuse prevention, we temporarily store a hashed value derived from network information for rate limiting. The stored client hash changes daily. Rate-limit records are designed to expire 48 hours after creation, and cleanup is designed to occur hourly. If the scheduled cleanup is delayed or fails, expired rows may remain longer. Actual provider operation and timing cannot be guaranteed.

The current Ask Smart Care Guide fixed-response preview does not provide medical, legal, financial, emergency, inspection, installation, or other licensed professional advice.

13. How We Use Information

We use the information we collect for the following operational purposes:

• Generating and displaying your Home Safety Assessment report and checklists.
• Reviewing and calculating savings estimations.
• Contacting you to schedule and coordinate consultations.
• Dispatching transactional emails, confirmation messages, and administrative notifications.
• Sending newsletters (where you have opted in).
• Protecting the website against fraud, spam, and security threats.
• Answering your customer service and support inquiries.

We do not use your information to make automated medical, clinical, legal, financial, or licensed safety-engineering determinations.

14. Service Providers and Disclosures

Smart Care Guide does not sell personal information for money or other valuable consideration. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, as the terms "sell" and "share" are defined under applicable California law.

To operate Smart Care Guide, we may disclose personal information to vendors that help provide hosting, database and backend services, forms and questionnaires, email delivery, scheduling and video meetings, security and networking services, and payment processing. Current examples may include Vercel, Supabase, Jotform, Google, Zoom, Cloudflare, and Stripe when payment functionality is used. These examples are not exhaustive, and the providers we use may change.

These operational disclosures are made to support the services described in this Privacy Policy. We do not disclose personal information to these vendors for cross-context behavioral advertising or in exchange for money or other valuable consideration. If our practices later change in a way that constitutes selling or sharing personal information under applicable law, we will update this Privacy Policy and provide any notice or choices required by law before beginning that practice.

15. Emails and Communications

Smart Care Guide uses Resend to send application-generated transactional messages, signup-confirmation emails, and administrative notifications when the relevant functions are deployed. Although signup-confirmation and related administrative email functions exist in the repository, those newsletter functions are not currently deployed, and no active campaign or broadcast-delivery system is confirmed. Resend does not function as an active newsletter campaign or broadcast-delivery provider, and the campaign delivery provider remains unresolved.

If live payments are offered in the future, the selected payment provider may send payment-related receipts or notices directly. Stripe-generated sandbox receipts are separate from Smart Care Guide’s application-generated communications.

Privacy inquiries can be sent to privacy@smartcareguide.com.

16. Data Retention

Smart Care Guide intends to apply the following owner-approved operational retention rules, which are not currently fully automated or guaranteed. Information is generally planned to be retained only as reasonably needed for the purposes described, subject to documented exceptions, manual procedures, and provider limitations. Actual provider retention settings remain unverified, and deletion timing cannot be guaranteed.

• General Operational Records: Most non-financial operational records are ordinarily retained for up to 24 months after the latest applicable closure event (such as service or request completion, the last meaningful interaction, subscription termination, or partner-record closure, removal, or unpublishing). This general category may include contact inquiries and related correspondence; Safety Assessor and tool submissions; consultation intake records and questionnaires; consultation notes; planning summaries, assessments, reports, calculations, and checklists; scheduling, meeting coordination, follow-up, and support records; Resource Partner submission and lifecycle records; and newsletter subscriber-profile information and ordinary event history.
• Shorter-Duration Records: Shorter retention durations apply to specific categories of temporary or technical information:
  • Incomplete or Abandoned Submissions: Ordinarily deleted after 90 days.
  • Photographs, Uploads, and Supporting Attachments: Ordinarily deleted within 90 days after their service purpose ends, unless needed for an active engagement.
  • Local Exports, Development Copies, and Personal Test Data: Intended for deletion at task completion or within 30 days, whichever occurs first.
  • Routine Application and Security Logs: Generally subject to an internal planning cap of 90 days, except where provider-enforced periods differ or documented holds apply.
  • Stripe Sandbox and Test Records: Intended for deletion within 90 days after testing ends, unless needed for a documented investigation or defect review.
• Evidence Records: We may retain the minimum necessary evidence of acknowledgments, consents, authorizations, unsubscribe actions, and privacy-request handling separately from the underlying record. This minimum evidence (such as consent versions, timestamps, and request completion records) may generally be retained for three years after the latest applicable relationship termination, authorization withdrawal, consent withdrawal, acknowledgment-related relationship closure, or privacy-request completion. Unrelated underlying submissions or payloads are not retained merely because evidence remains. To prevent inadvertent re-subscription, minimum unsubscribe or suppression information may remain while marketing continues, while unrelated profile and engagement history is removed according to the ordinary retention schedule.
• Financial and Transaction Planning Target: Future real financial, accounting, invoice, refund, receipt, tax-supporting, and transaction-substantiation records may be retained for an operational planning target of seven years from the transaction date or applicable accounting-period close. This period is an owner-selected planning target and is not a legal conclusion; applicable requirements will be confirmed before live payments are accepted. Stripe currently remains in sandbox/test mode.
• Holds and Exceptions: Deletion may be delayed for documented operational or legal reasons, including an active customer or partner relationship; an unresolved privacy request; a complaint or dispute; suspected fraud or account compromise; a security incident or investigation; payment, accounting, tax, refund, or transaction-record needs; the preservation of acknowledgment, consent, authorization, suppression, or privacy-request evidence; a subpoena, litigation matter, or another uncertain legal demand; or another specifically documented operational or legal reason. Holds are reviewed periodically and do not continue indefinitely.
• Email, Provider, and Backup Qualifications: Administrative email copies generally follow the source record’s retention trigger and retention period and are not intended to be retained longer merely because they remain in a mailbox. Provider systems, logs, and backups may retain copies according to their technical settings and normal replacement cycles; backup deletion may not occur immediately, and provider capabilities or settings may limit the timing or method of deletion.
• Deletion and Anonymization: Records are intended to be deleted upon expiration unless a documented hold applies, or unless the information is anonymized for a documented aggregate or analytical purpose in a manner where re-identification is not reasonably possible. We do not claim guaranteed deletion timing.

17. Privacy Choices and Requests

Depending on where you live and the circumstances, you may have rights under applicable privacy laws to access, correct, or delete personal information, or to make other privacy choices. Some laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act, apply only to businesses that meet specific thresholds, and may not currently apply to Smart Care Guide. Regardless, we offer the choices below as a matter of practice, and where a specific legal right applies to you, we will honor it as required by that law. We will respond within the time required by applicable law.

You may contact us to ask about, access, correct, or request the deletion of your personal information.

• Submit Requests: You may submit your request via email to privacy@smartcareguide.com or by using our general Contact Us form.
• Verification and Handling: Because we process requests manually and do not have an automated identity-verification system or a dedicated privacy portal, we may ask you to contact us from the email address associated with your original submission or provide other reasonable details to help us locate the correct records. We do not require highly sensitive identity documents by default. Completion of any request depends on the availability of records, verification, exceptions, provider limitations, and our manual operational capability, and we may be unable to fully complete some requests.
• Requests made on behalf of another person: If you make a request on behalf of someone else — as a caregiver, representative, or authorized agent — we may ask for appropriate signed authorization from that person and may seek to confirm the request directly with them, unless applicable law requires a different method. Acting as a caregiver or providing someone's information does not by itself establish authority to exercise that person's privacy rights. We may decline or limit a request where we cannot reasonably verify authority.
• Retention Limitations: We may be unable to delete certain information where retention is required or permitted for legal, tax, accounting, fraud-prevention, security, backup, dispute-resolution, contractual, or service-provider obligations.

18. Information About Children

Our website and services are intended for adults, including family caregivers and aging- and care-related professionals. The services are a general-audience offering, are not directed to children under 13 within the meaning of the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from a child under 13. Information you submit about another person is provided by you as an adult, not collected directly from that person. As a general business rule, we ask that individuals under 18 not use the services or submit information without the involvement of a parent, guardian, or other responsible adult. If you believe a child under 13 has provided personal information directly to us, or you wish to request removal of information concerning a minor, contact privacy@smartcareguide.com and we will take appropriate steps to review and delete it where appropriate.

19. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect personal information. However, no Internet transmission or electronic-storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

20. United States Focus

Smart Care Guide’s services are primarily intended for people in the United States. We do not actively market paid services outside the United States.

21. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The effective date of the current policy appears at the top of this document. We may communicate material changes by posting the revised policy on our website or through other reasonable means. We do not promise individual notice for every minor revision.

22. Contact Us

For questions, corrections, deletion requests, or concerns regarding your privacy, please contact:

• Entity: Smart Care Guide
• Location: California, United States
• Email: privacy@smartcareguide.com
• Form: Smart Care Guide Contact Us form