Privacy Policy

Effective August 10, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information Boat Guru, LLC, a Virginia limited liability company (“Boat Guru”, “we”, “us”), collects when you use the Service, and what we do with it.

1. Information we collect

You give us

• Account information: email address and a hashed password.
• Chat content:the messages you send and Boat Guru's answers, including any photos you upload for help with a problem.
• Boat profiles (BoatGuru Plus and Pro): hull and engine specifications you choose to save (manufacturer, model, year, HP, HIN, notes).
• Reports for a mechanic: summaries that may include symptoms, context, tests, readings, likely causes, parts considered, citations, safety notes, and share links.
• Payment information: handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full credit card number — Stripe gives us only a customer ID and last-4 / expiry for display purposes.

We collect automatically

• Usage: message counts, which answer option you use, feature use, and error logs.
• Marketing attribution: UTM campaign parameters, landing page path, referrer, and conversion events such as signup, recall-alert subscription, checkout started, and paid subscription.
• Technical: IP address, browser, device type, approximate geolocation derived from IP (used for rate-limiting and abuse prevention).
• Cookies and local storage: a session cookie for authentication, a short campaign-attribution cookie when you arrive from a tracked link, plus minimal local storage for UI preferences (theme, input draft).

2. How we use your information

• To provide, maintain, and improve the Service.
• To prepare Boat Guru's answers by securely sending your messages (and saved boat details, if any) to the companies that help provide them.
• To process payments and manage your subscription.
• To send transactional email (receipts, payment failures).
• To enforce our Terms, detect abuse, prevent fraud, and meet legal obligations.
• To measure whether marketing campaigns lead to signups, recall-alert subscriptions, checkouts, paid subscriptions, and plan gate attempts, and mechanic-report use. Where configured, we may send scrambled email addresses and basic visit information to advertising platforms for conversion measurement.
• With your separate consent: to send occasional product updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your chat content to improve tools for other companies.

3. Shared boat guides and reports for a mechanic

Shared boat guides are public, read-only summaries, not full copies of your conversation. By default:

• Shared boat guides are public, read-only summaries.
• Public shared links strip account details, contact details, precise location, HIN, registration or documentation numbers, trailer VIN or plate, full engine serial numbers, raw transcripts, raw images, attachments, EXIF, support notes, billing details, and unrelated personal text by default.
• Reports for a mechanic may include contact details, exact location, full serial numbers, or identifying photos only when you choose to include them.

Reports for a mechanic may include private details only when you choose to include them. Public shared links never include full engine serial numbers by default.

4. Service providers we share data with

Operating the Service requires sharing limited information with infrastructure providers who act as our processors:

• Vercel — hosts the Boat Guru website.
• Anthropic— helps prepare Boat Guru's answers. Your messages and photos are sent to Anthropic for that purpose. Anthropic does not use submitted content to improve its service.
• Neon — managed PostgreSQL database (account, chat history, boat profiles, and reports for a mechanic).
• Vercel Blob — file storage for photos you upload.
• Upstash — Redis cache used for resumable streams.
• Stripe — payments and customer billing portal.
• Google Analytics / Google Ads — analytics, advertising tags, and enhanced conversion measurement when enabled.
• Meta — advertising pixel and Conversions API measurement when enabled.
• Reddit Ads — advertising pixel measurement when enabled.

We may also disclose information when required by law, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of users or the public.

5. International transfers

We are based in the United States, and the providers listed above primarily process data in the United States. If you access the Service from outside the U.S., you consent to your information being transferred to and processed in the U.S.

6. Data retention

• Account data: retained while your account is active and for up to 90 days after deletion to allow account recovery and to satisfy legal obligations.
• Chat history: preliminary-assessment history is visible in-app for 30 days; BoatGuru Plus and Pro history is retained until you delete it or request account deletion. You can delete individual chats or all chats from the sidebar.
• Reports for a mechanic: kept until you delete the source chat, delete your account, or request deletion. Share links expose only the curated report artifact, not the raw chat transcript or billing data.
• Uploaded chat photos: deleted when associated chats are deleted (best-effort cleanup), and handled by the same retention policy as chat history.
• Billing records: retained as required by tax and accounting law (typically up to seven years).
• Logs and aggregated usage: retained up to 12 months for security and product improvement.

7. Your rights

You can:

• Access the chat content and boat profiles tied to your account.
• Delete chats individually or all at once.
• Delete your account and request deletion of the data associated with it at /account/delete, or email support@boatguru.ai if you cannot sign in. We will action verified requests within 30 days.
• Export a copy of your account data on request (same email above).
• Manage or cancel your subscription through the customer portal.

California residents have specific rights under the CCPA, and EU/UK residents have rights under GDPR/UK GDPR (including access, rectification, erasure, portability, objection, and the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority). Contact us to exercise these rights.

8. Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit (HTTPS), encrypted database storage, and limited employee access. No system is perfectly secure; you use the Service at your own risk.

9. Children

The Service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

10. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the updated Policy with a new effective date and, for material changes, notify you by email or in-product notice.

11. Contact

Questions or requests? Email support@boatguru.ai.

See also our Terms of Service and Disclaimer.