This policy explains what data R2 Business Ventures LLC, doing business as Ask a Shop Owner ("we", "us"), based in North Carolina, United States, collects, how we use it, and the limited choices you have. By using the Service you agree to this policy and to the broad usage rights described below. This policy is part of, and incorporated into, our Terms of Service.
1. What we collect
- Account data: name, email, password hash, business profile (trade, size, location).
- Conversation data: every question, prompt, message, transcript, file, image, and AI output exchanged through the Service.
- Usage data: saved plays, feature interactions, clicks, ratings, and feedback.
- Technical data: IP address, browser, device, timestamps for security and reliability.
- Communications: messages you send us through forms or email.
2. How we use it (broad rights)
You grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable, and transferable right to use the data we collect, including your conversations, prompts, AI outputs, and uploaded content, for any lawful business purpose, including the items below. This right survives deletion of your account.
- Operate, maintain, secure, monitor, and support the Service.
- Improve answer quality and expand our curated library.
- Train, fine-tune, evaluate, and improve our own and our service providers' AI models, embeddings, classifiers, and datasets.
- Build, develop, and commercialize new products, features, datasets, research, benchmarks, and offerings.
- Create de-identified, aggregated, or derivative data that we own outright and may use, license, publish, or sell without restriction or compensation to you.
- Prevent abuse, fraud, and security incidents, and enforce our policies.
- Send transactional and product communications, and, where permitted, marketing.
- Comply with law, legal process, and lawful requests by public authorities.
3. Sale, sharing, and your rights
We may "sell" or "share" personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA and similar state laws, including as part of a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of the business, and in the ordinary course of licensing or transferring the data and derivatives described above. California residents and residents of other applicable states have the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal information and to submit other privacy requests. Contact us through the contact page to submit a request.
- We do not publicly attribute conversations or quotes to you by name without consent.
- We do not run ads against your conversations or use them to build ad targeting profiles about you.
- We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.
4. Service providers
We rely on trusted vendors for hosting, database, email delivery, analytics, and AI inference. These vendors process data on our behalf and may also use de-identified or aggregated data to improve their own services as permitted by their terms. We share data with successors in interest in connection with any merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets. We also share the data necessary to process payments (name, email, billing address, and transaction details) with Stripe, Inc., our payment processor, which acts as an independent data controller for payments, subscription management, tax compliance, invoicing, and fraud prevention. See Stripe's Privacy Policy for details.
4a. Legal basis for processing
- Contract: to provide the Service you signed up for, including account management and support.
- Legitimate interests: to secure the Service, prevent abuse, improve and develop our products and models, conduct research, and operate and grow our business.
- Legal obligation: to comply with tax, accounting, and other applicable laws (including payment records held by our payment processor).
- Consent: where required, for optional cookies or marketing communications. You can withdraw consent at any time.
5. Data retention
We keep account, conversation, and usage data for as long as we determine necessary for our business purposes, including model improvement, research, security, dispute resolution, and legal compliance. You may request deletion of your account, but de-identified, aggregated, derivative, and AI-processed data, along with records we are required or permitted to retain, will not be deleted and remain ours.
6. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete personal data we hold about you, and to object to or restrict certain processing. We will honor verified requests as required by applicable law. These rights do not extend to de-identified, aggregated, or derivative data, or to models, datasets, or outputs created from your data. Contact us through the contact page.
7. Security
We use commercially reasonable safeguards including encryption in transit, encrypted storage, access controls, and audit logging. No system is perfectly secure and we make no guarantee of security. You use the Service at your own risk and are responsible for what you submit.
8. Children
The Service is not intended for children under 16. Do not use it if you are under 16.
9. International transfers
We are based in the United States and process data primarily in the United States. By using the Service you consent to the transfer of your data to the United States and other countries, which may have different data protection laws than your jurisdiction. Where required, we use appropriate safeguards for cross-border transfers.
10. Changes
We may update this policy at any time. The "Updated" date above reflects the latest version. Continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.
11. Contact
Privacy questions go to our contact page.