Privacy Policy

Porchlight is software for pet sitting, dog walking and boarding businesses. It is operated by Hive Asset Group, LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company ("Porchlight", "we", "us"). This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with and what choices you have.

Porchlight is used by three groups of people, and our role is different for each:

• Business customers (the pet care companies that sign up). For their own account and billing information, we are the business that decides how it is used.
• Staff (sitters, walkers and managers a business adds). Their information is collected on behalf of their employer or contracting business.
• Pet parents (our customers' clients). Their information is entered into Porchlight by the pet care business or by the pet parent through the business's client portal. For this client and pet information, we are a service provider (processor) to the business. The business decides what is collected and why. We process it only to provide Porchlight to that business, as set out in our Data Processing Addendum.

If you are a pet parent and have a question or request about your information, please start with the pet care business you work with. They control it. We will also help you if you contact us.

From business customers:

• Account details: owner name, email address, password (stored only as a salted hash), company name, time zone and settings.
• Subscription details: plan, trial and renewal dates, and billing status. Card details for your Porchlight subscription are handled by Stripe. We do not store full card numbers.
• Your business content: services, rates, schedules, invoices, messages, forms, notes, photos, videos and documents.
• Payment connection details: your connected Stripe account identifier and the status of your Stripe onboarding. Stripe collects your identity and bank information directly.
• Communications you send us, and requests such as help with importing data from another system.

From staff:

• Name, email address, phone number, role and password hash.
• Schedules, visit check-ins and check-outs, time worked, notes, checklists and photos or videos taken during visits.
• GPS location from the field app, recorded at check-in and check-out and, when the business uses walk tracking, as a route during a walk. See the section on location below.
• Push notification subscription details, if you turn on notifications in your browser or phone.

From pet parents (entered by a business or by the pet parent):

• Names, email addresses, phone numbers, home and billing addresses, emergency contacts and veterinarian details.
• Home access information that the business chooses to store, such as lockbox codes, alarm codes and entry instructions. We encrypt access instructions and alarm codes in our database.
• Pet information: names, breeds, ages, photos, behavior and feeding notes, medications, medical conditions, microchip numbers and vaccination records.
• Booking requests, messages, invoices, payment history, saved payment methods (held by Stripe, not by us) and survey responses.

Collected automatically: device and browser type, IP address, pages used, and records of actions taken in the app (for example, who changed a price or an access instruction and when). See the Cookies page.

From visitors to our website: pages viewed, the page that referred you, campaign tags in links you followed, and email address and company name if you ask for a free checklist or start a trial.

We use information to:

• Provide Porchlight: scheduling, visit records, invoicing, payroll reports, payments, the client portal and the field app.
• Send messages on a business's behalf, such as appointment reminders, visit updates and billing notices, by email, text message and push notification.
• Process subscription payments and the Porchlight platform fee on client payments.
• Keep Porchlight secure, prevent fraud and abuse, and keep an audit log of important changes.
• Give support, answer questions and send service notices.
• Send onboarding and product emails to business owners who start a trial. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• Understand which parts of our website help businesses find Porchlight, using measurements that do not identify you.
• Improve and maintain the service, using information that does not identify anyone where we can.
• Meet legal obligations and enforce our terms.

We process client and pet information only on the instructions of the business that entered it. We do not use it for our own marketing, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

If a business turns on the optional AI writing assist, text it chooses to draft from (for example, pet names, a visit checklist and the sitter's notes, or notes pasted into the intake helper) is sent to our AI provider to produce a draft. A person always reviews a draft before anything is sent. Our AI provider processes these requests for us only to produce the draft. Businesses should not paste home access codes into AI features.

The Porchlight field app can use a phone's location to give the business proof of service. When a business has this feature on, the app asks the phone for its location when a sitter checks in and checks out of a visit and, for walks, at intervals during the walk. The business, as the employer or contracting party, decides whether to turn this on and must tell its staff. A business can turn GPS recording off in its settings. When it is off, the field app captures no location and we store none.

Location is recorded only through the field app during a visit, not in the background when no visit is in progress. It is visible to the business, and the business may show a pet parent a visit summary or route as part of a report. Photos may carry location information in their metadata, which we may read to help confirm where a photo was taken. Your phone's permission settings control whether the app can see your location at all.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share information only as follows:

• With the business customer. A business can see the information of its own clients and staff. Businesses cannot see each other's data.
• With service providers (subprocessors) that help us run Porchlight, such as hosting, database, payments, email, text messaging and push notifications. They may use the information only to provide their service to us. See the Subprocessors page for the current list.
• At the business's direction. If a business connects an outside tool, turns on a webhook or the API, or asks us to export data, we send data where it directs.
• For legal reasons. To comply with law, a court order or a valid legal request; to protect the rights, property or safety of our customers, the public or us; or to investigate fraud or abuse.
• In a business transfer. If Hive Asset Group, LLC is part of a merger, sale or reorganization, information may be transferred, and the buyer must honor this policy.

Pet care businesses use Porchlight to send text messages such as appointment reminders, visit updates and billing notices. Details about those messages, message frequency, costs and how to stop them are in our SMS Terms.

Mobile information will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties. We share phone numbers and message content only with the messaging providers and carriers that deliver the messages for us (and with the business that sent them), and only for that purpose.

We use a small number of cookies and browser storage to keep you signed in, remember which company you are working in, make the field app work offline, and measure how our public website is used. We do not use advertising cookies. Details are on our Cookies page.

We keep Customer Data while the business has an account, because the business needs its history. A business can delete records inside Porchlight and can export everything at any time. After an account ends, the business has a 30-day export window. Then we delete or de-identify its data within 30 days, except for what we must keep for legal, tax, fraud-prevention or dispute reasons (for example, billing records). Copies in backups are removed as they expire under our providers' schedules.

Records of important changes (our audit log) are kept as long as the account exists so that the business can rely on them. Unfinished data-import requests that are never submitted are removed automatically. Information about people who ask for our free checklist or start a trial is kept until they unsubscribe and we no longer need it for our records.

We use technical and organizational measures to protect information, including encryption in transit, encryption of the most sensitive fields (access instructions and alarm codes), separation of each business's data, throttling of sign-in attempts and an audit log. No system is perfectly secure. You can read more on our Security page. If we learn of a breach that affects you, we will notify you as the law requires.

Depending on where you live (for example, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon and other states with privacy laws), you may have the right to:

• know what personal information we hold about you and get a copy;
• correct inaccurate information;
• delete your information;
• opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share it);
• limit the use of sensitive personal information (we use it only to provide the service);
• appeal a decision on your request; and
• not be treated unfairly for using these rights.

To make a request, email hello@porchlight.pet. We may need to verify your identity. We respond within the time the law requires, generally 45 days. You can also have an authorized agent make a request for you.

If your information is held in a pet care business's account, we are its service provider. We will usually pass your request to that business, which decides how to respond, and we will help it do so. For information we hold as the business, such as a business owner's account, we respond directly.

If you do not like our response, you may appeal by replying to our email, and if you are still not satisfied you may contact your state attorney general.

Porchlight is for businesses and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or under 16 where the law sets that age). Pet parents' households may include children, but we do not collect information about them as users. If you think a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Porchlight is intended for businesses in the United States, and information is processed and stored in the United States. If you use Porchlight from another country, you understand your information will be sent to the United States, where privacy laws may differ.

We may update this policy. We will change the date at the top of the page, and for material changes we will email business account owners before they take effect.

Hive Asset Group, LLC
Email: hello@porchlight.pet