Privacy Policy

Caregiver Compass is designed to support family caregivers. This page explains, in plain language, what information we collect, why, and the choices you have.

Caregiver Compass is operated by Oikos Consulting & Management Inc., a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada. Oikos Consulting & Management Inc. is responsible for the information described here. Joel AI is the proprietary AI technology and platform brand developed by Oikos Consulting & Management Inc. that powers Caregiver Compass; it is not a separate legal entity, so sharing information with Joel AI is not sharing it with another company.

What we collect

• Account details you provide during registration, such as your name, email, phone number, and region.
• Information you enter into the app about your caregiving situation, tasks, notes, and reminders.
• Information you enter about the person you care for — their preferred name, daily routines, care needs, and safety concerns — so the app can give you relevant support.
• Care Circle and support information: the people you invite, the email address you invite them with, their role, and the requests or updates shared inside your circle.
• Your conversations with Alma, including transcripts of voice turns, as described below.
• Where you stopped in a learning pathway, so you can pick up where you left off. Nothing about your reading is scored, graded, or assessed.
• Your communication and notification preferences, and the consents you have given or withdrawn.
• Accessibility and interface preferences, such as text size, contrast, and voice settings.
• Messages you send us through the contact form or feedback tools.
• Basic technical information needed to keep the service secure and reliable.

We do not ask for medical records, government health identifiers, or payment card details, and we do not collect location beyond the region you tell us, which is used to show information relevant to where you live.

Why we collect it

• To provide the caregiving features you rely on.
• To keep your account secure and to answer your questions.
• To improve the service over time.

Conversations with Alma

Alma is the guided companion inside Caregiver Compass. When you send Alma a message, the text of that message is sent to our servers and then to an AI model service that generates the reply.

• What is submitted. The words you type or speak to Alma, together with limited context from your own account that helps the reply make sense — for example your preferred name, the person you are caring for, and recent messages in the same conversation.
• Why it is processed. To produce a relevant reply, to keep the conversation coherent from one turn to the next, and to apply the safety checks described on our Safety and Scope page.
• Whether it is stored. Yes. Your messages and Alma's replies are saved to your account so you can return to a conversation later. Caregiver Compass also keeps short conversation summaries and, where you have turned continuity on, longer-term notes that let Alma remember what matters to you between visits.
• How it supports you. Stored conversation history is what allows Alma to pick up where you left off instead of asking you to explain your situation again each time.

You control the longer-term memory. In Alma's settings you can review what Alma has remembered, turn continuity off, and remove individual remembered items.

Voice, speech, and transcription

• The microphone is only used when you choose voice. Caregiver Compass does not listen in the background. Your browser asks for microphone permission, and audio is captured only while you have started a voice turn.
• Speech may be transcribed. When you speak to Alma, the recording of that turn is sent to a speech-to-text service and converted to text so Alma can respond.
• Audio is processed, not kept. The recording is used to produce the transcript for that turn and is not stored as an audio file in your account. The resulting text is treated like any other message you send Alma and is stored with your conversation, as described above.
• Spoken replies. Alma's replies may be read aloud using a text-to-speech service.
• Shared audio is limited to approved scripts. To avoid regenerating the same audio for everyone, Caregiver Compass keeps a shared cache of spoken audio for a fixed set of approved, non-personalized page introductions. Only text that matches one of those approved scripts word for word can enter that cache.
• Personalized speech is never placed in the shared cache. Greetings that use your name, replies about your situation, and anything else specific to you are generated for that moment and bypass the shared cache entirely.

Service providers we rely on

Caregiver Compass is built on services operated by other companies. They process information on our behalf, under their own terms, for these purposes:

• Application hosting and the database that stores your account records.
• Authentication — creating your account, signing you in, and password resets.
• AI model processing, to generate Alma's replies.
• Speech-to-text and text-to-speech processing, when you use voice.
• Email delivery, for account messages such as sign-in and invitation emails.
• Phone-number verification by text message, when you are asked to confirm a mobile number. The verification service receives the mobile number and the fact that a code was sent, checked, and whether it matched. It does not receive your caregiving information or your conversations with Alma.
• Product analytics, only if you have turned optional analytics on — see below.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it for advertising.

Text messages (SMS)

• Verification only. Caregiver Compass may send a one-time code by text message to confirm that a mobile number belongs to you, for example when you set up your account. Standard message and data rates from your carrier may apply.
• No proactive texting in the beta. Caregiver Compass does not send caregiving reminders, support messages, product news or marketing by text message during this beta. If that ever changes, it will be described here and will require a separate consent that you can withdraw.
• What the verification service receives. Your mobile number and the verification event itself. It does not receive care-recipient information, notes, wellbeing entries or Alma conversations.
• Your record of choices. The messaging preferences you set during registration are kept as consent history and can be changed from your account.

Where your information is processed

Caregiver Compass is offered to caregivers in Canada and the United States. Our own systems and the services listed above may process and store information in either country, and processing may take place outside the country you live in. We do not claim that your information stays within Canada, and we do not claim Canadian data residency.

Your choices and requests

You can act on most of these yourself from your account:

• Access. View the information held about you and the people you care for from your account and profile pages.
• Correction. Edit your profile, care details, tasks, and notes at any time. Some security, audit and consent history is deliberately unchangeable, so a past record of what happened is corrected by adding to the history rather than by rewriting it.
• Export. Request a copy of your account records from the Account page. When the copy is ready you can download it through a private, time-limited link that expires.
• Deletion request. Request account deletion from the Account page. This pauses your account right away and opens a request you can cancel while it is open. An administrator reviews the request and removal is carried out by our team rather than automatically, so we do not promise a fixed erasure date, and security, audit and consent history is kept unchanged. Our final retention and erasure schedule is still being reviewed with legal counsel.
• Withdrawal and deactivation. Withdraw a consent you previously gave, or deactivate your account, from the Account page. Deactivation signs you out everywhere and is not the same as deletion — nothing is removed.

If you would rather have us handle a request for you, contact us using the details below.

How long we keep information

• Account and caregiving records. Kept while your account is in use, so your history stays available to you.
• Alma conversations and memories. Kept with your account until you remove them or your account is deleted.
• Voice recordings. Not retained as audio; only the transcript of what you said is kept, with your conversation.
• Shared approved-script audio. Held in the shared cache and cleared when the script changes or the audio has gone unused; it contains no personal information.
• Data exports. Export files expire, after which the download link no longer works.
• Test data. Temporary test accounts and synthetic test data are removed once they are positively identified as such.
• Alma request records and follow-up reminders. Technical records of Alma requests, which contain no message text, are removed automatically after 30 days. Follow-up reminders are removed automatically after 180 days.
• Background maintenance history. Records of the app's own scheduled maintenance runs contain no personal information and are removed automatically after 30 days.
• Error reports (application diagnostics). Removed automatically after 90 days.
• Optional product analytics. Collected only if you turn them on, and removed automatically after 180 days.
• Phone verification attempts. A verification attempt that has been used or has expired is removed automatically after 30 days. Your phone number on your profile, and your record of consent to receive verification codes, are separate and are not removed by this.
• Everything else. Categories without an approved removal schedule above are kept for as long as they are needed to run the service safely; the remaining schedule is still being reviewed with legal counsel, and we do not promise a fixed number of days before it is set.

Technical logs, security records, and audit history

To keep the service working and safe, Caregiver Compass keeps technical records: error reports, security and sign-in related events, and an audit history of significant actions taken in an account — for example a deletion request, a consent change, or an administrator action. Some of this history is deliberately kept unchangeable, so that a record of what happened cannot quietly be rewritten. Because of that, entries in the audit history may remain after related content is removed. These records are used for security, troubleshooting, and accountability — not for profiling or advertising. Our security page describes the protections around them.

Analytics, cookies, and advertising

• Caregiver Compass does not use third-party advertising, ad networks, or advertising cookies.
• We do not use third-party tracking or cross-site analytics services, and we do not build advertising or cross-device profiles.
• Storage in your browser is used to keep you signed in and to remember interface preferences such as text and voice settings.
• Optional product analytics. Inside the app you may choose to allow anonymous product analytics that help us improve safety and usability. It is off unless you turn it on, it is recorded as a consent you can withdraw at any time, and it never includes the text of your conversations. When it is off, the app does not send these measurements. Withdrawing stops future collection; it does not delete measurements already recorded, which are anonymous and not linked to you.
• Platform traffic measurement. The hosting platform that serves our pages keeps basic aggregate traffic counts, such as how many times a page was requested. This happens at the hosting layer, so it is not something our app can switch on or off for an individual visitor, and we do not receive it linked to your account.
• Essential records are separate. Security events, error reports, and the records needed to keep the service reliable are not optional analytics and continue regardless of this choice, as described above.

Who inside our organization can see your information

Access is limited by role. Authorized administrators can see a limited set of account, support and governance information — for example account and profile details, the people you have recorded as care recipients, tasks, wellbeing entries, support requests and feedback — so they can operate the service, answer support requests, and handle privacy requests such as an export or a deletion request. Your conversations with Alma are not readable by administrators. Administrative actions are recorded in the audit history described above, and access is limited to what is needed for these purposes rather than being open to everyone who works on the product.

Information about the person you care for

Caregiver Compass is built for you as a caregiver, and it lets you record information about another person so the support you receive is relevant. Please provide only what is reasonably necessary for that caregiving purpose, and avoid recording details that are not needed for the help you are looking for. Information you record about that person is held in your account, is covered by the same access controls and choices described here, and is included when you export or ask us to remove your records.

Tone and faith preference

During setup you may choose the tone of encouragement you would like — faith-neutral, gentle spiritual, or Christian. This is an optional personalization setting, not a statement of belief that we analyse or share. It is stored as a simple preference on your profile, it is used only to shape wording, and you can change it back to faith-neutral at any time from your profile.

Sensitive information

Caregiver Compass may ask about daily care needs, routines, safety concerns, and caregiver wellbeing so it can provide practical support. It does not require medical records or government health information. Please share only what is necessary and avoid entering identification numbers, financial details, passwords, or unrelated private information.

Who is accountable, and how to reach us

Oikos Consulting & Management Inc. is the organization accountable for the information described on this page. Responsibility for privacy is held by our Privacy Officer — Caregiver Compass, currently Joel Thomas.

Questions or privacy requests: care@aicaregivercompass.com or use our contact form. Messages reach Oikos Consulting & Management Inc., the operator of Caregiver Compass.

This page describes our current practices. It is not a legal certification or a claim of compliance with a specific regulation.