Privacy Policy
HVAC Tech Helper (“the app”) is a tool for HVAC/R technicians. It is published by Ao Yang Ren (“we”, “us”). This policy explains what information the app collects, why, who it is shared with, and the choices you have. We wrote it to match how the app actually works.
- We collect what the app needs to work: your account, your company, and the reports and questions you create.
- Photos you send for AI analysis are not stored by us. Voice recordings stay on your phone; only the text is uploaded.
- We do not sell your information, show ads, or track you across other apps or websites.
- You can delete your account at any time in the app: Settings → Delete Account.
1. Information we collect
Account and company
- Your email address (or the private relay address Apple gives us if you use Sign in with Apple), your name, your role in your company, and optionally your certifications.
- Your company’s name, country, unit preference, and, if entered, its address, phone number and licence number (printed on your reports).
- Your confirmation that you are a trained technician or an apprentice, your acceptance of these terms, and your consent to the photo notice, with the date and version.
Work you do in the app
- Service reports: customer and site names, work order numbers, times, equipment details, findings, readings, parts, recommendations, and the customer’s signature and name.
- Voice reports: speech is turned into text on your phone by Apple’s speech recognition. When your phone has no offline recognizer for the language, Apple may process the audio on its servers under Apple’s privacy policy. The audio recordings stay on your phone; we receive only the text.
- Nameplate scans and photo questions: the photos and your description are sent to our AI provider to produce an answer. We do not store the photos. We save the equipment details you keep, your question, the AI’s answer, and your feedback (“Correct” / “Not right”).
- Usage records: how many AI requests each account makes and their size, to enforce fair-use limits and control costs.
Before a photo is sent, the app offers to blur faces and other private details on your phone. Please photograph equipment, not people.
We do not collect your location, contacts, advertising identifiers or browsing history.
2. How we use it
- To run the app: sign you in, keep your company’s records, write and print reports, and answer your questions.
- To improve answers: a report or correction can become a “case” in your company’s case library, which the AI may cite when helping your company.
- Shared case library: a case may be shared with technicians at other companies only after our reviewer approves a de-identified technical summary. Names, businesses, addresses, phone numbers, emails, work orders, serial numbers, signatures and your own words are removed and are never shared.
- To keep the service safe and within its usage limits, and to answer support requests.
3. Who we share it with
Only with service providers that run the app for us, under their own privacy and security terms:
- Supabase – database, sign-in and server functions (servers in the United States).
- Anthropic – the Claude AI that reads photos and text to produce answers and reports. Anthropic does not use this data to train its models.
- Resend – sends sign-in code emails.
- Cloudflare – hosts this website and forwards support email.
- Apple – Sign in with Apple, speech recognition and App Store distribution.
Within your company, owners, admins and technicians can see the company’s reports and records. We may disclose information if required by law. We do not sell or rent personal information.
4. Where your information is stored
Our providers store and process information in the United States and possibly other countries. If you are in Canada, your information may therefore be subject to the laws of those countries and accessible to their authorities.
5. How long we keep it
- Your account information is kept until you delete your account.
- Service reports belong to your company’s records. When a technician deletes their account, the reports they wrote stay with the company, still showing their name. When the last member of a company deletes their account, the company and all its data are deleted.
- Approved de-identified case summaries may remain in the shared library because they contain no personal information.
- Deleted data may remain in our providers’ backups for a limited time before it is overwritten.
6. Your choices and rights
- Delete your account in the app: Settings → Delete Account.
- Ask to access or correct your information, or withdraw a consent, by emailing support@hvactechhelper.app. We reply within 30 days.
- Depending on where you live (for example Canada, Quebec, California and other U.S. states), you may have further rights. We honour them regardless of where you live.
- If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact your local privacy regulator, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
7. Security
Data is encrypted in transit. Each company can only read its own records (enforced by the database). AI provider keys are kept on our servers, never in the app. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will tell you as the law requires.
8. Age
The app is for working professionals and is not intended for anyone under 18.
9. Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date above, and for important changes we will ask you to review and accept it again in the app.
10. Contact
Ao Yang Ren, person in charge of the protection of personal information
Email: support@hvactechhelper.app