Privacy Policy

We built this as parents, for parents.

Wayfound is built by parents of a child with autism in San Diego. We created Wayfound because we needed it ourselves. We treat your family's information the way we'd want our own information treated: with care, respect, and transparency.

This policy explains what we collect, why, and what we do (and don't do) with it. We wrote it in plain language because you have enough complicated documents in your life.

What we collect

When you create an account and set up your family profile, we collect:

• Account information: Your name and email address (through our authentication provider, Clerk).
• Family profile: Your child's first name, date of birth, diagnosis, state, county, school district, current services, and insurance type.
• Conversations: Your chat messages with our AI navigator and the AI's responses.

We collect this information so our AI can give you personalized, accurate guidance about the specific programs and services your child qualifies for in your specific location.

What we do NOT collect

• Social Security numbers
• Medical records or clinical notes
• Financial or banking information
• Your child's full legal name (first name only)
• Photos or biometric data

What we will NEVER do

• Sell your data. Never. To anyone. Period.
• Share your information with advertisers. We don't run ads and never will.
• Share your family's information with government agencies, schools, or service providers unless you explicitly ask us to.
• Use your data to train AI models. Your conversations are yours. They are not used to train any AI system.
• Contact you with spam. We'll only email you about your account and important product updates.

How we protect your data

• Encryption in transit: All data sent between your device and our servers is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS.
• Encryption at rest: Your data is stored in encrypted databases.
• Access controls: Only the Wayfound founding team has access to your data, and only for the purpose of providing and improving the service.
• Secure authentication: We use Clerk, an industry-standard authentication provider, to protect your account.
• No unnecessary data retention: If you delete your account, we delete your data.

Our service providers

We use the following third-party services to operate Wayfound. Each has access only to the data they need to provide their specific service:

• Clerk — Authentication (your email and login credentials)
• Supabase — Database hosting (your family profile and conversations)
• Anthropic (Claude) — AI responses (your chat messages are sent to generate responses)
• Vercel — Web hosting
• OpenAI — Text processing for our knowledge base search (your questions are used to find relevant information)
• Pinecone — Knowledge base search

We do not share your raw family profile data with these providers except as needed to provide the service. For example, when you ask a question in the chat, your question and relevant family context are sent to Anthropic's Claude to generate a response.

AI-generated information

Wayfound provides information and guidance based on published laws, regulations, and program rules. It is not a substitute for legal, medical, or professional advice. Our AI can make mistakes. We always recommend verifying important information with the relevant agency, a qualified attorney, or a professional advocate before making decisions that affect your child's services.

Children's privacy

Wayfound is designed for parents and caregivers, not for children to use directly. We collect limited information about children (first name, age, diagnosis, location) solely to provide personalized service recommendations. We comply with COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) requirements.

Your rights

You can, at any time:

• Access your data: View everything we have about your family in your account settings.
• Update your data: Edit your family profile at any time.
• Delete your data: Request deletion of your account and all associated data by emailing us.
• Export your data: Request a copy of all your data in a portable format.

California residents have additional rights under the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), including the right to know what data we collect, the right to delete, and the right to opt out of data sales (we don't sell data, so this right is automatically satisfied).

Future changes

As Wayfound grows, we plan to add features like document analysis (uploading IEPs and IHSS notices). Before we handle any medical or educational records, we will implement HIPAA-compliant security measures and update this policy accordingly. We will notify you of any material changes to this policy via email.

Contact us

If you have questions about this policy or your data, email us at hello@wayfound.us.

Wayfound is based in San Diego, California.