Privacy policy

LotOwl is the trade name of Nuvina Systems, LLC, which does business as LotOwl (“LotOwl,” “we,” “us,” “our”). We run lotowl.ai and its pages (the “Site”) and LotOwl, the service that answers car buyers' internet leads for independent used-car dealerships by text, email and WhatsApp (the “Service”).

In this policy:

• Dealership means a business that signs up for LotOwl.
• Team member means a person a dealership adds to its LotOwl account, such as an owner, manager or salesperson.
• Car buyer means a person who contacts a dealership that uses LotOwl, for example through a lead form, a marketplace listing, a text or WhatsApp.
• Visitor means anyone who uses the Site, including people who ask for a free guide or send us a question.

This policy explains what personal information we collect about each of these groups, where it comes from, how we use and share it, how long we keep it, how we protect it, and the choices and rights you have. It does not cover the websites or services of dealerships or other companies, which have their own policies.

Car buyers' information belongs to the dealership. When a buyer contacts a dealership that uses LotOwl, LotOwl handles that buyer's information for the dealership, as its service provider, and only to provide the Service. The dealership decides how the information is used and is responsible for having the buyer's permission to contact them. The dealership's own privacy policy also applies, and buyers can make requests to the dealership directly.

The sections below give the detail.

When you send us a question. Through the form on our Contact page we receive your name, dealership, email address, phone number if you give it, your question, and which text-message boxes you ticked. If you agree to receive text messages, we keep your number and a record of your consent, including the exact wording of the consent you were shown and when you gave it. If you email us at support@lotowl.ai, we receive your email address and what you write.

When you ask for a free guide. Your first name, email address, dealership name if you give it, which guide you asked for, the page's language and address, and the line on the form that said what you were signing up for. If you used the BDC calculator on the page, the two numbers you set (internet leads a month and gross profit per car).

When a dealership signs up. The dealership's legal and trading names, address, website, phone, and the owner's name and contact details; lot details such as hours, address, languages and team; how the dealership wants LotOwl to answer (for example its financing and trade-in options, and who gets alerts); and its cars for sale, from an inventory file it uploads or from its website.

Text-message registration. US carriers require every business that texts customers to register. To do this for a dealership we collect its legal business name, tax ID (EIN), business address, website and an authorized contact person, and file them with our messaging provider and the carriers' registry. We use these details only for that registration; the tax ID is not stored in LotOwl's database.

Billing. Payments go through Stripe. We receive the billing contact, the plan, invoices and whether a payment succeeded. Card numbers go straight to Stripe; we never see or store them.

The setup call. When a dealership books its setup call, Cal.com receives the name, email and time chosen, and passes the booking to us.

Team members. A dealership can add team members with their name, email, phone and role, so LotOwl can alert them and let them sign in.

Support. When you write to us or talk to us, we keep what you tell us so we can help you.

We receive and create this information for the dealership a buyer contacted, to provide the Service to that dealership.

• The lead. The buyer's name, phone number, email address, the car they asked about and their message, as sent by the dealership's website, a marketplace such as CarGurus, Cars.com or Autotrader, or another lead source the dealership connects.
• The conversation. The messages between the buyer and the dealership by text, email or WhatsApp, including messages written by LotOwl and by the dealership's team, and when each was sent and delivered.
• Details the buyer shares. What a buyer chooses to tell us during the conversation, such as whether they plan to finance or pay cash, a budget or down payment, a trade-in, and when they want to buy.
• Visits. Appointment times booked, moved or cancelled, and reminders sent.
• Opt-outs. Whether the buyer asked to stop receiving messages, and when.

What LotOwl never asks a buyer for by text or chat: a Social Security number, date of birth, driver's license, bank details, income or employer. A buyer who wants to apply for financing is sent the dealership's own credit application link; LotOwl doesn't collect credit applications, pull credit or make credit decisions.

With a form submission. When you submit the Contact form, we also record your IP address, your browser's user agent string, and the page you submitted from. When you ask for a guide, we keep a scrambled code made from your IP address (a hash), not the address itself. We use these to block automated abuse of the forms and, for the Contact form, because they form part of the record of how and when consent was given. They are not used for advertising.

Server logs. Like most online services, our servers keep logs of requests and errors, which may include an IP address, the time and the address requested. We use them to keep the Service secure and working, and keep them for a limited time.

Signing in. We record sign-ins and failed sign-in attempts to the LotOwl dashboard, to protect accounts. Repeated failed attempts lock the account for a short time.

Email. Our email provider tells us if an email bounces or is marked as spam, so we stop emailing that address. Our emails don't contain tracking pixels; we don't track whether you open them.

Analytics and advertising. The Site doesn't use analytics, session recording, advertising cookies or tracking pixels. If that changes, we'll update this policy first.

Cookies. A few cookies are needed for the Site and the Service to work:

• Lead sources. Marketplaces, website forms and other services a dealership uses send us its buyers' leads, on the dealership's instructions.
• Car listings. To answer buyers about cars for sale, we get a dealership's listings from its website and from vehicle data providers. This is information about cars (such as make, model, price, mileage and VIN), not about people.
• Service providers. Our payment, messaging and email providers tell us whether payments, messages and emails went through.

We never use car buyers' information to market LotOwl, and we don't use one dealership's buyers' information for another dealership.

LotOwl writes replies to car buyers with AI. To write each reply, the conversation, the dealership's setup answers and the relevant cars are sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, which processes them and returns the reply. Under Anthropic's terms for business customers, what we send is not used to train its models.

• Replies follow the dealership's instructions and rules we set, such as never asking for sensitive information and never promising financing approval or terms.
• LotOwl doesn't negotiate, close a sale or decide anything with legal or similar effect about a buyer, such as credit. The dealership's team takes over the conversation when a buyer is ready, and a person stays reachable.
• LotOwl staff may read conversations when needed to support a dealership, investigate a problem or check the quality of replies.
• A dealership can pause LotOwl at any time, and we can switch it off for a dealership immediately.

We use the following providers to run the Site and the Service. They process information on our behalf, under contract, and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.

Our servers and database are in the United States.

Besides the providers above, we share information only:

• With the dealership a car buyer contacted: that buyer's lead and conversation, and with the dealership's CRM when the dealership connects one.
• When the law requires it, such as a valid court order or subpoena, or to protect the rights, safety or property of LotOwl, our users or others.
• In a business change. If LotOwl is merged, acquired or sold, information may move to the new owner, who must keep honoring this policy for it.
• With your permission, or at your direction.

We do not sell personal information.

State privacy laws such as California's group personal information into categories. In the last 12 months we have collected these:

We use and share these categories only as described in this policy. We don't sell any of them, and we share identifiers (hashed email addresses) for targeted advertising only as described in “Ads.”

LotOwl may collect and use phone numbers to send SMS and MMS messages. These fall into two kinds, and they are consented to separately:

• Non-marketing messages: setup call confirmations, appointment reminders, scheduling notifications, account updates, and replies to questions you send us.
• Marketing messages: special offers and promotional communications.

Agreeing to one is not agreeing to the other. You may consent to non-marketing messages without ever receiving a promotional one, and we will not treat consent to appointment reminders as permission to send you an offer. Each is a separate checkbox, unticked by default.

By providing your phone number and opting in through our website or another authorized channel, you expressly consent to receive recurring text messages of the kind or kinds you selected, from or on behalf of LotOwl.

Message frequency may vary. Consent to receive SMS messages is not a condition of purchase or of any service we provide. Message and data rates may apply depending on your wireless carrier. Wireless carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

You may opt out of SMS communications at any time by replying STOP to any message. For assistance, reply HELP or contact us at support@lotowl.ai. Opt-out requests are honored immediately, though you may continue to receive legally required or transactional messages where applicable. Opting out of texts does not affect your account, your email, or your phone calls.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Information sharing to subcontractors in support services, such as customer service and the messaging provider that delivers the message on our behalf, is permitted. All other use case categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

Messages to car buyers for a dealership.

When you contact a dealership that uses LotOwl (through a lead form, a marketplace listing such as CarGurus, a text or WhatsApp), LotOwl answers for that dealership. Those messages come from the dealership, about the car or visit you asked about: replies to your questions, visit confirmations and reminders, and, if you go quiet, a few follow-ups.

• Follow-ups: at most seven, 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60 and 90 days after the last reply, then none. Only Monday to Saturday, 10 AM to 7 PM in the dealership's time zone, and never two on the same day.
• Stopping: reply STOP (or a word like PARAR, BAJA or SAIR) to any message. You get one confirmation, and that dealership's LotOwl never messages you again. Reply START to come back.
• Permission: the dealership is responsible for having your permission to contact you.

Guides. If you ask for a guide, we email it to you, and now and then we send a new guide for small lots. Every one of these emails has an unsubscribe link, and we stop within a few days at most. If you unsubscribe, we keep a note that you did, so we don't email you again.

Account email. Dealerships and their team get emails about their account and the Service, such as setup links, sign-in links, alerts about buyers, visit updates, weekly and monthly results, and billing. These are part of the Service and stop when the account closes; a dealership can choose who gets alerts.

Email to car buyers. When a buyer contacts a dealership by email, LotOwl replies for the dealership by email. A buyer can ask to stop at any time, and LotOwl won't email them again for that dealership.

We may use the email addresses of people who asked for a guide to show them LotOwl ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram). Before an address leaves us, it is turned into a scrambled code (hashed). Meta uses that code only to match it to an account, and deletes codes it can't match.

We never use car buyers' information, or anything a dealership gives us about its customers, for our ads.

To be left out, unsubscribe from our emails or write to support@lotowl.ai. Anyone who unsubscribed is left off every list we upload. You can also control the ads you see in your Facebook and Instagram ad settings.

• Email: unsubscribe from guides and offers with the link in any of those emails.
• Texts: reply STOP to any text from LotOwl, or from a dealership through LotOwl.
• Ads: unsubscribe or write to us, as described in “Ads.”
• Cookies: block or delete cookies in your browser settings. The Site works without them, though the Try it demo and signing in need theirs.
• Your information: ask to see, correct or delete it (see “Your privacy rights”).

Depending on the state you live in (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas and other states with privacy laws), you may have the right to:

• know what personal information we hold about you, where it came from and who we share it with, and get a copy;
• correct information that is wrong;
• delete your information;
• opt out of targeted advertising, which for us means the Meta ads described above, and of any sale of personal information (we don't sell it);
• appeal if we turn down your request.

We won't treat you differently for using these rights.

Making a request. Email support@lotowl.ai and tell us what you'd like. It's free. We'll confirm it's you by matching details we already have, such as your email address or phone number, before acting on it. Someone you authorize may make a request for you; we'll ask for proof they're allowed to. We answer within 45 days, and tell you if we need more time as the law allows. If we turn down a request, we explain why and how to appeal.

Car buyers. Because a buyer's information belongs to the dealership they contacted, we pass buyer requests to that dealership and help it answer. A request to stop messages takes effect right away.

California residents may also ask once a year whether we shared personal information with others for their own direct marketing. We don't.

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, or as the law requires:

Records of consent to receive text messages are kept for at least four years after the last message we send to that number. This is deliberate. If a question ever arises about whether someone agreed to be texted, that record is the answer, and deleting it would remove the only proof of what was agreed and when. If you ask us to delete your information, we will delete it, but we may keep the consent record itself for this period and nothing else.

We protect information with safeguards suited to what we hold, including:

• encryption in transit: the Site and the Service only use secure connections (HTTPS);
• servers and a database in the United States, with the database reachable only by the Service's own login, which has only the access it needs;
• keys and passwords kept in a secrets vault, never in our code;
• sign-in protection: passwords stored only in hashed form, accounts that lock after repeated failed attempts, and sign-in links that are signed and expire;
• checks that messages reaching the Service really come from our providers;
• each dealership's information kept separate from every other dealership's;
• access limited to the people who need it, and regular security reviews of the Service.

No system is completely secure, so we can't promise that information will never be accessed without permission. If a breach affects your information, we'll tell you as the law requires.

When a dealership gives us information about other people, such as its team members or its buyers' leads, the dealership is responsible for having the right to share it with us and for telling those people how it's used.

LotOwl is offered to dealerships in the United States, and we store and process information in the United States. If you use the Site from somewhere else, your information is sent to and processed in the United States, whose laws may differ from those where you live.

The Site links to other services, such as Cal.com, social networks and the companies we compare LotOwl with. Their own privacy policies govern what you give them.

Some browsers send a “Do Not Track” signal. The Site has no tracking to turn off, so the signal changes nothing here.

The Site and the Service are for businesses and adult car buyers. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we'll delete it.

We may update this policy from time to time. The “Effective date” above reflects the most recent revision. For a material change, we tell dealerships by email before it takes effect.

Questions about this policy or your information, or a privacy request: email support@lotowl.ai.

LotOwl, a trade name of Nuvina Systems, LLC.