Privacy Policy

Effective 2026-07-29 · Applies to the CarFixGPT mobile app (iOS and Android)

CarFixGPT ("we," "us," "the app") is an AI-powered car-diagnostics chat assistant. This policy explains exactly what data the app collects, why, where it goes, and how you can remove it. We wrote it to match what the app actually does — not a generic template — so if something below looks oddly specific, that's why.

1Data we collect

Account data

You can use CarFixGPT three ways:

• As a guest — we generate a random, anonymous account ID. No email, password, or name is collected.
• With a registered account — you provide an email address, a password, and optionally a display name. Your password is never stored in readable form: it's hashed with PBKDF2-SHA256 (100,000 iterations, unique salt per account) before it touches our database.
• As a Premium subscriber — your subscription status and renewal date are stored against your account. Payment itself is handled entirely by Apple or Google; we never see your card number or billing address.

Conversations, photos, and voice

When you chat with CarFixGPT:

• Your messages, and any photo or voice recording you attach, are sent once to an AI provider (OpenRouter or Google Gemini — see §2) to generate a response, then discarded by our server. We do not keep a copy.
• Your full conversation history is saved locally on your device only, using on-device storage. Deleting the app deletes this history.
• Voice messages are recorded to a temporary file, sent once for transcription, and the audio file is deleted immediately after — only the resulting text is kept, and only on your device.
• If you connect an OBD-II Bluetooth adapter, vehicle data (RPM, coolant temperature, trouble codes, etc.) stays on your device unless you explicitly tap "Attach OBD data" to include a snapshot in a chat message — at which point it's treated exactly like any other message content above.

Vehicle identification (VIN / HSN-TSN)

If you enter your VIN, or — for users in Germany — your HSN/TSN code, to auto-identify your vehicle, we send it to the relevant external database (NHTSA vPIC in the US, RegCheck in Germany) to look up the make, model, year, and engine details. These services only receive the VIN/HSN-TSN code itself — no personal or account identifiers are sent along with it.

Video search

When the chat suggests a relevant instructional video, we send the search query to the YouTube Data API to fetch a match. This search doesn't include any personal or account identifier — just the topic being searched.

Usage counters

To enforce the free daily message limit, we store a per-account daily message count — never the message content itself.

What we don't collect

• No location data. Bluetooth permissions on Android require a location permission as an OS-level technicality for device scanning; we never read or store your actual GPS position.
• No analytics or tracking SDKs. The app doesn't integrate any analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting service.

2Who we share data with

We don't sell your data. It's shared only with the services required to run the app:

Each of these providers processes data under their own privacy terms; we send them only what's needed for the specific request in front of them, and none of them receive your email or password.

3Your rights

• Delete your local history anytime — use "Delete all conversations" in Settings, or uninstall the app.
• Delete your account — open Profile → Delete account in the app. This immediately and permanently removes your account record, email, and usage data from our server. It does not undo local deletion of your on-device chat history — do that separately if you want both gone.
• Access or export your data — contact us at the address below and we'll respond within a reasonable time.

4Children's privacy

CarFixGPT is not directed at children under 13 (or the minimum age required by your country), and we don't knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll delete it.

5Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Material changes will be reflected in the app's release notes.

6Contact