Privacy policy

Who we are

Connect Your Way is a technology services business run by Sean Yongwoo Cho. "Connect Your Way" is a registered business name of CHO, YONGWOO, ABN 93 500 781 614. We are based at 3A Taplow Street, Crace ACT 2911 and work with businesses across Canberra, NSW and Victoria. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Connect Your Way.

Contact us about privacy at s.cho@connectyourway.au or on 0433 869 396.

What we collect and how

When you use our contact form

Your name, email address, company (if you give it), the service you are interested in and your message. The form sends these to us as an email. The website does not keep its own copy.

When you use the chat on our website

The messages you type and the assistant's replies are saved in our database under a random conversation number, not under your name. To write each reply, the conversation is sent to Anthropic, whose Claude AI model powers the assistant. If you choose to leave your name and email in the chat, we save them with a short AI-written summary of the conversation and email them to us so we can follow up.

When you call our AI receptionist

Calls to our AI receptionist, Mel, on 02 5760 7791, and the voice demo on our website, are handled by Retell AI. What you say is converted to text so Mel can respond, and Retell produces a transcript and summary of the call. Calls may also be recorded. We receive an email with your phone number, your name if you give it, and the call summary. The website voice demo uses your microphone only after you start the call and allow microphone access in your browser.

When you send a design from the Instant Quote Designer demo

If you send a design from the demo on our website, we receive your name, email address, and your phone number, suburb and message if you give them, together with your design, the estimate you were shown and a picture of it. We save these and email them to us. Nothing is sent unless you tick the consent box.

When you use our client portal

The client portal is for our clients only. You sign in with your email address, and our hosting provider, Cloudflare, emails you a one-time code. We record the date, time and IP address of what you do in the portal, such as viewing or signing a document. When you sign a document we also record your name, your typed initials and that you confirmed a code we emailed you. We keep this as the record of what was signed.

When you message our WhatsApp assistants

We run two business assistants on the WhatsApp Business Platform, provided by Meta. When a message reaches either of them, we receive the sender's phone number and the message, including any photos or documents sent with it. Meta also handles every message under WhatsApp's own terms.

Our bookkeeping assistant is for our own team, for tasks such as recording receipts. It only acts on numbers we have set up in advance. Messages from any other number are not answered and are not saved by us. For numbers we have set up, messages, photos and documents may be read by Anthropic's Claude AI to pull out details such as the amount and date, and the results are saved in our private storage.

Our marketing assistant turns job photos into social media posts for the businesses we work with. Their staff, whose numbers we set up, send photos and a short description of the job. Cloudflare resizes the photos, and Anthropic's Claude AI writes a draft post from the photos and the description. Nothing is posted until the draft is approved, either by the person who sent it or by the business owner. Approved posts and their photos are then published on that business's own channels: Instagram, its Facebook Page, its website and, where switched on, its Google Business Profile. Once published, they are public. Before we store a JPEG photo (the usual camera format), we remove its hidden details, such as where it was taken. Every copy we publish has those details removed.

If a number we have not set up messages the marketing assistant, it gets a short reply saying the number is not set up, at most once a day. We keep that number and the time of our last reply so we do not reply more often. We do not download photos sent from such a number. The message itself stays in our processing records until they are cleared out, about 30 days later.

When you ask for access to our marketing assistant

Businesses can ask to use our marketing assistant through a request form. It asks for the business name, a contact name and email address and, if you choose, a phone number, the services you offer, the suburbs you serve and any notes. We keep these so we can consider the request. We do not store your IP address. To stop the form being flooded, we keep a one-way code made from your network address with a secret key, plus the country and network provider Cloudflare reports for the request.

When you visit our website

We use Google Analytics, which sets cookies, to understand how the website is used: which pages are visited, how people arrived, the type of device and browser, and approximate location. Google shortens IP addresses before storing them. Cloudflare may also count page views and measure page speed without cookies. You can block analytics with your browser settings, a content blocker or Google's opt-out browser add-on.

Like every website, ours receives your IP address when you visit. We use it briefly to stop spam and repeated automated submissions, and our server logs keep only a shortened version of it.

When you email or call us directly

We keep your emails, and any details you give us on the phone, in our business email and records so we can work with you.

Why we use it

• To reply to your enquiry and give you a quote.
• To provide the services you engage us for, including the client portal and document signing.
• To prepare social media posts for the businesses we work with, and publish them once they are approved.
• To keep business, accounting and tax records.
• To understand how our website is used and improve it.
• To protect our website and services from spam and misuse.

Who helps us handle it

We use these service providers to run our business. They handle your information on our behalf:

• Cloudflare hosts our website, databases, file storage, client portal and WhatsApp assistants, resizes photos for our marketing assistant (Cloudflare Images), emails client portal sign-in codes, and may count page views.
• Resend sends the emails our website and client portal generate.
• Microsoft 365 runs our business email, where enquiries, chat leads and call summaries arrive.
• Anthropic provides the Claude AI model behind our website chat and both WhatsApp assistants, including the draft posts our marketing assistant writes.
• Retell AI, with its audio provider LiveKit, runs our AI receptionist and the website voice demo.
• Google provides Google Analytics and, where switched on, publishes approved posts to a business's Google Business Profile.
• Meta provides the WhatsApp Business Platform, and publishes approved posts to a business's Instagram account and Facebook Page.

Some of these providers store or process information outside Australia, including in the United States.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your personal information.
• We do not add you to a mailing list or send you marketing unless you ask us to.
• We do not use advertising or remarketing cookies on this website.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it for, or as long as the law requires. Signed documents and the client portal's record of them are kept as the record of what was agreed.

Our marketing assistant also clears out data automatically:

• A post's full-size original photos and working copies are deleted once the post has finished publishing on every channel and is at least 90 days old. The resized copies that were published are kept, because they are what appears on the business's channels and website.
• If a draft is cancelled, expires or fails without being posted, all its photos are deleted 30 days later.
• Records of incoming WhatsApp messages and of finished processing tasks are deleted after 30 days.
• Nightly backups of its database are kept for 14 days.

How we protect it

Our website and services run on secure, encrypted connections (HTTPS). Our databases and file storage are private, our admin tools and client portal need a sign-in with a one-time code, and access is limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect what we hold and to fix problems quickly.

Seeing and correcting your information

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it, by emailing s.cho@connectyourway.au. We will reply within 30 days.

Data deletion

You can ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you at any time, including your WhatsApp messages, chat conversations, enquiries and call details.

• How to ask: email s.cho@connectyourway.au with the subject "Data deletion request".
• What we need: the phone number or email address the information is linked to (for WhatsApp, the mobile number you messaged us from), and anything else that helps us find it, such as roughly when you contacted us. We may ask you to confirm the request comes from you.
• What we do: we delete or de-identify the information within 30 days, then confirm by replying to your email.
• What we may keep: records we must keep by law, such as tax and accounting records, and signed agreements with clients, which we keep as the record of what was agreed. If we keep anything, we tell you what and why in our reply.

Posts our marketing assistant has already published on a business's own Instagram, Facebook, website or Google Business Profile belong to that business. Ask the business to remove them, or tell us and we will pass your request on.

Deleting our copy does not delete messages from your own devices or apps. To remove a WhatsApp conversation from your phone, delete the chat in WhatsApp.

These instructions are also on their own page: Data deletion.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please contact us first at s.cho@connectyourway.au and we will try to put it right. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when the way we handle personal information changes. The date at the top shows when it was last updated.