Privacy
policy.
What HALO collects, why, how long it's kept, and the choices you control. Plain language, no fine print tricks.
This page describes how HALO is built to handle data, drafted from the team's own data and privacy plan. It has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer. It will be finalized before Phase 1 testers sign in — check back or ask in the HALO Discord if you need the current status.
The short version
HALO reads your car and your head unit so it can show you where your car is, what it's doing, and alert you when something's wrong. That data lives in your account. HALO never sells or shares your driving or location data with insurers, data brokers or credit bureaus — not now, not later, not as a business model pivot. Full stop.
What HALO collects, and why
Each purpose below is its own choice in Account → Privacy (or Settings → Privacy on the head unit). Only Core service is required.
Core service (required). Location, trips, alerts, and Lost Mode tracking — the data HALO needs to do the one job it exists to do: show you your car and keep it safe. You can't turn this off and keep using HALO, the same way you can't use a phone without letting it know which cell tower it's near.
Product improvement (on by default, you can turn it off). Usage analytics and signal data that help HALO work better for every car in its library. When this is on, HALO may use coarse or de-identified location — never your precise, exact location — for this purpose.
Community calibration (off by default, you opt in). Short capture sessions you start yourself from Signal Sniffer, which help HALO learn a car model it doesn't fully understand yet. Nothing is captured unless you start a session.
Personalized offers (off by default, you opt in). HALO and SquareWheels offers picked for your account. Turning this off removes you from any offer audience entirely.
How long we keep it
Retention is set by the kind of data, not by how long your account has existed:
Raw device logs: 30 days.
Precise location and trip history: 12 months.
Deletion: if you delete your account or ask us to delete your data, it is removed from active systems within 30 days.
Who sees it
Your data is visible to you, through your own signed-in account, and to anyone you explicitly share a device with. HALO staff access it only to operate and support the service.
HALO never sells or shares your driving or location data with insurers, data brokers or credit bureaus. We use a small number of infrastructure providers (hosting, authentication, email delivery, billing, and Sentry for crash and error reports) strictly to run the service — not to monetize your data.
When the app or website crashes or hits an error, a report goes to Sentry so we can fix it: what broke, the app version and device model, and a short screen recording of the moments before, with all text and inputs masked and maps and camera views blacked out. Location, VIN, email address and names are removed before the report leaves your car or browser; the only identifier it carries is an internal account ID.
Your choices
Every purpose above except Core service can be turned on or off at any time, in Account → Privacy on your phone or Settings → Privacy on your head unit. Changes take effect immediately and are recorded with a timestamp, so there's always a record of what you agreed to and when.
You can ask to export or delete your data at any time by reaching out to rob@squarewheelsauto.com.