Privacy Policy

Last updated October 28, 2026

This policy explains what Unit Sphere Labs LLC ("we") collects and does when you use Ask the Sign at askthesign.com and the related sites tap.askthesign.com, mcp.askthesign.com and console.askthesign.com (together, the "Service"). It covers two groups of people: customers who use Ask the Sign through their own AI assistant (such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Muse) at a place, and business owners and their teams who set Ask the Sign up. In this policy, a "place" is a store, restaurant, hotel, venue or other business that uses Ask the Sign.

1. Customers

What we collect

• A random ID. When your assistant connects, we give the connection a random ID. We don't ask your assistant who you are. Assistants connected from the same phone and browser can share one ID; another browser, or cleared browser data, gives a new one. The sign's page has its own random ID.
• Connect codes. We keep each one-time code a sign's page gives out only as a one-way hash, with its sign and times, for 7 days. During that time, chats connected with codes from the same page could be linked to each other. We also keep a keyed hash of your IP address, not the address itself, to limit abuse.
• Visit records. Which sign a random ID tapped, at which place, and when the visit started and ends. Only a new tap extends a visit.
• What your assistant sends to our tools. Your assistant calls our tools with words it chooses: usually a search phrase, filters such as size or price, and sometimes what you want to do. The search box on a sign's page works the same way. We log each lookup with its sign, tool, outcome and time, and a visit hash that changes daily, so the place can count different customers without following anyone. This text can include personal information. We remove names, phone numbers, email addresses and street addresses before storing it for analysis, but this filtering isn't perfect. A question we couldn't answer that comes up repeatedly may be shown to the place as a suggested question, with a few example wordings.
• Requests to staff and problem reports. We remove personal details such as phone numbers, email addresses and names from a message to staff, and don't send one with a card number. The place's verified staff get it by email (or by text, once we switch texts on), with where you said you are, such as a room number, and so may a system the place connected (section 5). Only a visit that began with a tap of the sign can send requests or reports; from any other visit, only the attempt is logged.
• Assistant registrations. An assistant registers when it first connects, with its name and the web addresses it returns to. These can include a number of the assistant's own, which we never use to tell who anyone is.
• Technical data. Our servers log each request's time, path, status, IP address and user agent, for operations and abuse prevention. Query strings, cookies and private links are kept out of these logs.

What we don't ask for

• Your name, email address, phone number, or account details from your assistant.
• Your photos, voice or the rest of your conversation. We receive only the text your assistant decides to send to Ask the Sign.
• Your precise location history, or any advertising or cross-site tracking identifiers.

2. Business owners and their teams

• Accounts and teams. Your email address, your role, the people you invite, and sign-in and security information, to sign you in, manage access and send you notices and reports.
• Place details. Name, category, address, map position, phone, website, hours, time zone, areas, settings, and the contacts you approve for guests (and those you chose not to share, which guests aren't given).
• Catalog and answers. Customer-facing item details from your files, website or a connected system (such as name, description, price, stock and where it is), your answers and your signs. We drop cost, supplier, margin and sales-history columns.
• Documents you upload or email. Files your team uploads or emails to the place's documents address, their text, and the passages guests' assistants may quote. We take emailed files only from the sign-in address of a team member who may add documents, and don't read the email's own words. A new week's menu replaces the last one once it is live. A document stays live until you remove it or delete the place. Passages marked internal, such as codes, staff details and costs, aren't given to guests unless an owner or manager chooses to show them; their words remain in the stored file. For anything added from a document, we keep a short quote and the file's name as a record of its source.
• Your website (optional). If you give us your website, we copy a shop's product list from it without AI, and read its other pages (such as hours, policies, menus and linked PDFs) as we read documents. While the place is live we check the site regularly, until you stop this in the console. We identify ourselves as AskTheSign, follow the site's robots.txt, and record each read.
• Programmes and emails. Daily programmes and flyers you upload or email in, and closure or reopening emails from senders you approve, with the sender, subject, attachments and what we read from them.
• Staff mobile numbers and text messages. If a place adds your mobile number for staff alerts, we text you a code to confirm it, then send alerts when a customer asks for help. You can reply to answer, and replies are saved with the request. We keep the number, whether it was confirmed, and a log of messages sent and received (see SMS terms). We use your number only to send these texts. We never sell mobile numbers or consent to receive texts, or share them with third parties for their marketing. Reply STOP to any text to stop them, or HELP for help. Message and data rates may apply. Text messages are off today, and staff alerts go by email until we switch them on.
• Staff alert email addresses. Addresses you enter for staff alerts and whether each was confirmed. When an owner or manager switches a place on and nobody there gets staff requests yet, their sign-in address gets them until they change it.
• Your own system (optional). If you connect a web address to receive staff requests, we keep it, an encrypted signing secret, and a log of what we sent.
• Report email addresses. Addresses that get the weekly report, once each has agreed, and a log of reports sent.
• Confirming a place is yours. Before a place can see what customers asked, whoever set it up may need to prove it is theirs. Using an address or number printed on the place's own website, we may email a code, or call and have an automated voice read one. We record who asked, the address or number, the website, how the email or call went and the result, and keep the code only as a hash. The address or number that confirms the place becomes one of its approved contacts, which guests' assistants may be given. Anyone who didn't ask for a code can refuse more (section 9), and we never contact that address or number again.
• Stopping our emails. Every staff alert and weekly report has a link that stops it at once. If an email bounces permanently or is marked as spam, we stop emailing that address.
• Till and catalog connections (optional). If you connect Square, Shopify, Lightspeed or Google Merchant Center, we store the account's ID and its access tokens, encrypted, and read only the items, stock and business details of the store you chose; never customers, orders or sales. When you disconnect or delete the place, we delete our tokens and ask the system to end our access where it can (for Lightspeed, also remove our app there), and you choose whether its items stay. We also keep which other systems you ask us to support.
• Change history and access log. We record who changed what guests are told, when, and the values before and after, so changes can be undone. If our team looks at your data, we record who, why and when, and you can see it in the console. We also record your progress through setup, and the handout card that brought you, if any.
• Voice input. If you use the microphone in the console, your browser's speech service turns your voice into text (Chrome's sends it to Google), and we receive only the text.
• Sessions and limits. A sign-in session for the console, and rate-limit counters keyed by a hashed IP address.

Google Merchant Center (Google user data)

If you connect Google Merchant Center, you sign in with Google and let Ask the Sign use Google's Merchant API. Google grants this as one permission to read and change a Merchant Center account; we only read. We read the Merchant Center accounts your sign-in can reach (their IDs and names) and, for the account you choose, its products (titles, descriptions, attributes, prices and availability) and their stock by store, keeping only the store you choose. We don't access anything else in your Google account, or your customers or orders.

We use this data only to answer customers' questions about your products, prices and stock, to show you what came in, and to suggest your place's name. We store the access tokens encrypted and the products as your items. Like your other items, product names and descriptions may go to our AI service provider (section 3), which doesn't train its models on them. We don't sell this data, use it for advertising or to train AI models, or let people read it, except with your permission, for security, or to comply with the law. You can disconnect in the console at any time: we ask Google to revoke our access and delete our tokens, and you choose whether the items stay. You can also remove our access in your Google Account settings.

Ask the Sign's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

3. Where AI is used, and where it isn't

• We don't send customers' questions or requests to any outside AI service. We answer your assistant with lookups and fixed rules, and search runs on our own servers. The reasoning in your conversation happens in your own assistant, under its provider's terms.
• Business content is read by an AI model. To set a place up from its documents and website, and to read its programmes and closure emails, we send that content to Anthropic's API (Claude), or to Claude on Amazon Bedrock when Anthropic's service is busy or unavailable. This includes document text and images, website pages, emails from approved senders, and the items an owner adds or imports. The model works out what each document says, and which parts are for guests and which are internal.
• Some reading uses no AI model. Imports from Square, Shopify, Lightspeed, Google Merchant Center or a website's product list are copied without AI, except that a model may read their column names and a sample of item names.
• Personal information in business content is sent with it, for example a staff member named in a document. The model helps keep internal details out of guest answers, and contact details reach guests only once the place approves them.
• How the AI services handle it. Anthropic processes this content as our service provider. Under its commercial terms it doesn't train its models on it and deletes it within 30 days, unless it must keep it longer by law or to investigate misuse. On Amazon Bedrock, AWS doesn't store this content or train models on it.

4. How we use data

• To run the Service: answer lookups, deliver staff requests and reports, give each place insight into its own customers' questions, confirm places, and set up and update places from their documents, website and connected systems.
• To keep it safe: rate limiting, abuse prevention and debugging.
• To produce de-identified, aggregated statistics and benchmarks, and to improve the Service. Benchmarks are shown only when they cover a minimum number of places and visits, with random noise added, and no place sees another place's raw questions. Every place is included from the start; owners can turn this off in the console, and a place that opts out doesn't receive benchmarks. Our Terms cover the license owners give us for this.

We don't sell personal information, show ads or use customer data to advertise to anyone, and we don't use your data to train AI models.

5. Who sees or receives data

• The place you connected to sees questions asked at its own signs (filtered as described), their outcomes, which sign was tapped, staff requests, and daily counts of different customers. It never sees your random ID.
• The place's own systems, if it connects them. A place can have staff requests (the filtered request, where it came from and its status) sent to a web address it controls, under its own policies.
• Your assistant provider. The company behind your assistant (such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Meta) receives your conversation and the results we return, under its own privacy policy.
• Service providers listed below, only to run the Service.
• Legal and safety. We may disclose information if required by law, or to protect people, the Service or our rights.
• Business changes. If we are involved in a merger, acquisition or sale, data may transfer to the successor, which must honor this policy.

6. Service providers (sub-processors)

The companies behind customers' assistants aren't our service providers in that role; customers use those assistants under their makers' own terms.

7. How long we keep data

8. Security and where data is stored

• We store and process data in the United States, on Amazon Web Services; Anthropic also processes the business content in section 3. If you use Ask the Sign from outside the US, your data comes to the US.
• Traffic is encrypted in transit, and stored files, backups, access tokens and other secrets are encrypted.
• Database access rules and checks in our code keep each place's data apart, and team members see only what their role allows.
• Assistants can only read the place you are connected to, during an active visit.
• We limit how often codes can be requested and tried, and how many texts, emails and calls can be sent.

No system is perfectly secure. See Security for details and how to report a problem.

9. Your choices and rights

• Customers. You can disconnect Ask the Sign from your assistant at any time (see Support) and stop tapping signs. We don't usually know which records are yours, so if you believe we hold data about you, email privacy@askthesign.com and we will do what we reasonably can.
• Owners. You can remove any document in the console; it stops being quoted at once, and its file, text and passages are deleted. You can stop website reading, disconnect a till or catalog, and export a copy of your place's records at any time. If you delete a place, it goes offline at once and its records are erased from our live database; its stored files are deleted in the background, backups are gone within 30 days, and the records in section 7 that outlast a place stay for their listed periods. Deleting a place doesn't close your owner account. To correct data, edit it in the console. To close your account, or for anything else, email privacy@askthesign.com.
• Staff. Reply STOP to a text from Ask the Sign, use the stop link in any alert email, or ask the business owner, or us, to remove your number or address. See SMS terms.
• A business we contact to confirm a place. If we email you a code you didn't expect, use the link in the email. If we call, press 9 during the call, or call our number back and press 9. We then never send that address a code, or call that number, again.
• Privacy laws. Depending on where you live, laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and other US state laws may give you rights to know, access, correct or delete personal information, and to opt out of its sale or sharing. We don't sell or share personal information for advertising. Ask the Sign isn't designed to collect consumer health data or precise location. To make a request, email privacy@askthesign.com. We may need details to verify who you are and find the records, and you won't be treated worse for asking.

10. Children

Ask the Sign is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. Assistants have their own minimum ages. Owner accounts are for adults. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact privacy@askthesign.com.

11. Cookies and this website

This website (askthesign.com) sets no cookies and uses no analytics, advertising or third-party scripts. The sign's page (tap.askthesign.com) sets a few functional cookies for its session, security, your connection and your preferred assistant. The owner console sets a sign-in cookie and a few short-lived ones (an hour at most) for signing in, setup and deleting a place, and keeps some preferences, and its offline page if installed, in your browser. None are used for advertising or tracking across sites.

12. Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change is significant, we will tell business owners by email and note it on this page.

In this version (October 2026): reading a place's website; the Shopify, Lightspeed and Google Merchant Center connections, with a section on Google user data; documents and weekly menus by email; confirming a place by a code sent to an address or number on its website; suggested questions; our promises about staff texts, which are still off; and more on what we collect, who receives it, how long we keep it, and default benchmark pooling.

13. Contact

Unit Sphere Labs LLC, Washington, USA. Email privacy@askthesign.com or support@askthesign.com.