Blockscout, Inc. d/b/a Handled Abroad
Privacy Policy
This policy describes how Blockscout, Inc., doing business as Handled Abroad (“Handled Abroad,” “we,” “us”), collects, uses, and shares information when you use handledabroad.ai, our apps, or when we phone a business on your instruction.
1. Who we are
Handled Abroad is a concierge. You tell us what you need in English. We call local shops in Mexico in Spanish and bring back what they said — stock, price, hours, and, when they have one, the name of a person who speaks English so you can ask for them.
We are not a pharmacy, clinic, doctor, or medical-advice service. Anything we report about medicine or care is what the shop told us on that call, not a diagnosis or a recommendation.
The controller is Blockscout, Inc., a United States company, doing business as Handled Abroad. A current postal address is available from privacy@handledabroad.ai.
If you are in Mexico, or if we collected information about you in Mexico (including if you work at a shop we called), the Spanish Aviso de privacidad also applies and controls where Mexican law requires it.
2. Notice at collection
At or before we collect personal information, this is what we collect and why. We do not sell personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
| Category | Purpose | Sold / shared? | Kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identifiers (username, Google email if you use Google Sign-In, session cookie) | Run your account, keep you signed in, support, billing when it exists | No | While the account is open, then a short period for security and law |
| Precise location (only if you tap to share it) | Find shops near you for that errand | No | For the errand. We do not keep a map of everywhere you went |
| The content of your errand (chat, including health-related details you type) | Plan the call and ask the shop the right question | No | While the account is open; health-related content no longer than we need to finish the errand, handle disputes, and meet the law |
| Call recording and transcript | Complete the errand, quality, disputes | No | No longer than needed to operate the service, handle disputes, and meet the law |
| Shop facts (name, public phone, hours, whether someone speaks English and their name if they give it) | Reach the shop and so you can ask for that person later | No | Directory facts are cached on the order of a month; a named person is deleted when they or you ask, or when the cache expires |
| Payment information (when checkout exists) | Charge the plan you chose | No | Card numbers are handled by the payment processor. We keep status, last four digits if the processor gives them, and invoices |
We do not collect contacts, photos, or the microphone on your device. The phone call is placed from our servers, not from your phone.
Your rights, and how to use them, are in Your choices and rights.
3. Information we collect
From you
- Account details you type (username and password, stored as a hash) or the email Google sends us if you continue with Google.
- What you write in the chat, including medicines, sizes, addresses, and names you choose to give us.
- Location, only after you tap to share it. We do not request it on page load.
- Approvals to call, spending limits you grant, and whether you asked us to leave your own name or number with the shop.
From the device and the session
- A session cookie so you stay signed in (about seven days). It is not an advertising cookie.
- Theme and language preferences in local storage on your device.
- Ordinary server logs (IP address, time, path) for security and to keep the service up.
From shops we call, and from directories
- Public listing data from Google Places (name, address, phone, hours, location).
- What the person who answers says: stock, price, hours, and, if they give it, a name of someone who speaks English.
- A recording and a transcript of that call. We tell them the call is being recorded.
We do not collect (v1)
Advertising identifiers, contacts, photos, on-device microphone, or precise location in the background. We do not run advertising or analytics SDKs.
4. How we use it
- To provide the errand: find shops, call them in Spanish, and show you the result.
- To operate accounts, prevent abuse, and debug failures.
- To charge credits or a subscription when checkout exists.
- To improve how we hear shops and how we plan questions — on our own systems, for this service.
We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use the content of your errands to train a public model. If a vendor’s terms would allow that, we will not turn it on, or we will say so here before we do.
5. What we tell the shop — and shop-side people
On the call we identify ourselves as an automated assistant calling for a customer. We ask the question you approved. We give the shop your name or your phone number only if you asked us to. By default the callback number is ours.
If someone at the shop gives a name of a person who speaks English, we may show that name to you so you can ask for them later. That person did not open our app. They can write to privacy@handledabroad.ai and we will delete their name from our records. The Spanish aviso is the notice we owe them under Mexican law, together with the short spoken notice at the start of the call.
6. Processors
We use companies that process information on our instructions to run the service. They are not buying your data from us.
| Processor | What they do |
|---|---|
| Fly.io | Hosts the application and stored errands (United States, currently Dallas) |
| OpenAI | Helps plan the errand and the Spanish spoken on the call |
| Twilio (or a successor telephone carrier we name here if we switch) | Places the phone call to the shop |
| Speech and voice vendors | Turn speech to text and text to speech on the call |
| Places lookup, Maps, and optional Sign-In | |
| Stripe | Payments, when checkout exists |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple and App Store billing, when those exist |
That is an international transfer: information about travelers and about people in Mexican shops is processed in the United States.
7. Retention
- Account. Until you delete it. After deletion we drop personal data we are not required to keep, and we keep only what we need for security, disputes, and the law, for a short period.
- Location. Used for the errand. We do not build a location history.
- Chat and results. While the account is open, unless you ask us to delete an errand sooner.
- Call recordings and transcripts. Long enough to finish the errand, handle a dispute, and operate quality. Not indefinitely.
- Shop directory facts. On the order of 30 days, then refreshed if we need them again.
- Health-related content (for example a medicine you asked us to check). Treated as sensitive. Used only for that errand. Not used for advertising. Kept no longer than the operational and legal limits above.
8. Your choices and rights
- Location. Optional. Refuse the prompt and type a city instead.
- Google Sign-In. Optional. You can use a username and password instead.
- Delete. Email privacy@handledabroad.ai from the address on the account, or with enough detail that we can find it, and ask us to delete the account and the personal data tied to it. We will also put deletion in the app settings. Deleting the account does not cancel a store subscription by itself; cancel that in Apple or Google if you bought there.
- Access and correction. Same address. We will give you a copy of what we have about you, or fix what is wrong, unless an exception in law applies.
- Do not sell or share. We do not sell or share personal information as California law defines those words. If that changes, we will say so here and offer the opt-out the law requires, including Global Privacy Control where required.
- Non-discrimination. We will not deny the service or charge a different price because you exercised a privacy right, except as the law allows for a truly optional feature.
We honor these requests for every user of the service, including where a US state privacy statute does not yet apply to us because of its size thresholds.
Shop-side people have the same deletion path for their name and for a recording that identifies them, as Mexican ARCO rights require. See the aviso.
9. Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are stored as salted hashes, not in the clear. Access to live calling and to stored errands is limited to operating the service. No policy can promise that a system is never breached. If a breach is likely to affect you, we will notify you and the authorities the law requires.
10. Children
Handled Abroad is for people 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we learn that we have, we will delete it. Write to privacy@handledabroad.ai.
11. Where we operate
The service is offered for errands in Mexico, primarily to people in the United States arranging those errands. Processing is in the United States. We do not currently target the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) is not for sale yet; when it is, this policy will say so.
Mexican law: Aviso de privacidad.
12. Changes
We will post the new date at the top of this page. If we start selling or sharing personal information, add advertising SDKs, or change the processors in a material way, we will update this policy before that change takes effect and, where we have an email for you, we will say so there too.
13. Contact
Privacy requests: privacy@handledabroad.ai
Shops and partners: partners@handledabroad.ai
Blockscout, Inc. d/b/a Handled Abroad
United States