Privacy Policy

Welcome to CareKate.com, a website operated by CareKate, LLC (“CareKate” or “We”), a Limited Liability Company formed and operating in Illinois.

CareKate, through its website and application (all together referred to as “Platform”), wants to help anyone going through a health and recovery journey, whether as a patient (“CareClient”), as a caretaker (“CareTaker”), or as part of a support group, to improve interactions and to ease communication during this health journey. We believe in the saying “Sharing is Caring” because everyone needs a support group when it comes to health and recovery. But we also know that personal data protection is of the utmost importance and that sharing must be done with caution and in all transparency.

This Privacy Policy is applicable to all products and services of CareKate and states our standards. We are doing our best to protect personal information as detailed below! However, there may be factors beyond our control that may result in disclosure of data. For instance, we will not be responsible for any third-party interferences.

Before using the Platform (including any other applications or social media platforms related to CareKate’s business as may exist from time to time), please review this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with our policy, please leave the Platform immediately or contact us at CareKate.Tom@gmail.com.

1. What Personal Information Do We Collect?

Our ultimate goal is that, by using the Platform, you may centralize your communications about your or a CareClient’s health in one place and to make it easier for you to form a caring support group for a CareClient.

Depending on how you use the Platform, we may collect personal information like: Names, Mailing Addresses, E-mail Addresses, Phone Numbers, Username and Password (if you create an account), Date of birth, Credit Card details, Your geographic location, device data, IP address, event tracking, browser or Contact details of anyone part of your connected support group.

You may also provide us with personal information about your or the CareClient’s health and wellbeing when you use the Platform and, in particular, when you enter information relating to symptoms, vital signs, prescriptions, doctor appointments, immunization records, questions you would like to ask the physicians, or any other information about how a CareClient feels, any side effects, weight, mood changes, physical activities etc. When you share information about a CareClient or any other third party, it is your responsibility to ensure they are correct, updated, and that you have the authorization to do so.

2. Why Do We Collect Personal Information?

Collecting your or a CareClient’s personal information allows us to:

• Perform services and/or contracts, ie to ensure you have access to all your data but only to your data, and that you may share your or an CareClient’s personal information with your support group if you wish to do so,
• Analyze your interactions with the Platform,
• Resolve any issues you may have with the Platform and fix bugs,
• Communicate with you via mail, email, push notifications, newsletters, blog, texts, or other platforms for customer engagement purposes and marketing campaigns,  
• Analyze your interactions with the Platform to improve our services and potentially add new features,
• Advance scientific research, ie we may share de-identified data with carefully vetted researchers to advance health studies. For that purpose, we de-identify your data by removing or hashing personal identifiers so that neither the researchers nor any third parties can link it to you.

3. How Do We Collect Personal Information?

The Personal Information we collect is mainly limited to the information you consented to provide us with via the Platform or otherwise. When you use the Platform and especially when you create an account with CareKate, you expressly consent to have your data—including sensitive data and data related to your health—stored on our password protected servers or computers/workstations and shared with third parties as further described in this policy. If you share information about a CareClient, you must have their or their representative’s consent.

There are also circumstances where your data are collected automatically, in particular through the use of cookies and tracking pixels.

Cookies are small data sent from a website and stored onto your computer. They help us offering a better experience on the Platform (for instance, this helps us recognizing you when you sign in or it may track your preferences). You can accept or decline cookies, but declining cookies may prevent you from fully taking advantage of the Platform.

Do Not Track is a setting that gives users the option to opt out of being tracked by the websites they visit.  When someone enables the Do Not Track setting in their web browser, the browser automatically sends a special request to the websites they visit, asking the sites to stop tracking their activity. Please note that the Platform does currently NOT support the Do Not Track option. We cannot respond to Do Not Track signals.

4. How do we use Personal Information?

Personal information is used primarily to perform contracts, to provide technical support, to maintain and improve the Platform, and to communicate with you regarding our products and services (for instance to add and offer you more features, reply to requests, or follow-up with claims). We may engage in automated decision-making or profiling activities for this purpose or for research only.

We may also use some de-identified information for research purposes.

Unless required by applicable laws or regulations, we will retain personal information collected in connection with an account only for as long as is necessary to provide the services to the account holder and we will not retain your data in an identifiable format for longer than necessary to deliver our services.

5. With Whom Do We Share Personal Information?

As you know, we believe having a strong support group can be beneficial when it comes to health and recovery. This is why our Platform will allow you to share your or a CareClient’s data and personal information with your selected support group. But this part of the sharing is under Your responsibility. So, make sure you do it wisely and that your support group will treat your information with care. We will not be responsible for such third-party’s subsequent use or disclosure of your personal information. If you wish to stop sharing with third parties, you may revoke access permissions through the Platform.

Please also note that we do NOT provide our services as a Business Associate to your Provider as defined under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). We do not have any contract with any care provider regarding the access to and sharing of your data and will not directly permit health care entities to send information to your account. If you or a CareClient are a patient or the legal representative of a patient, any identifiable information that you share through the Platform with a medical team will become a part of the records maintained by your Provider, subject to your Provider’s privacy policies and practices. This information may then be shared with your insurance company. Please contact your provider to obtain a copy of their privacy policies and practices.

We do not sell personal information to third parties. However, we may share it with third-party providers who will help us perform our services such as content management providers (for instance: Godaddy, Wix, and Wordpress), data analytics providers (for instance Google Analytics), marketing tool providers (for instance Mail Chimp and Constant Contact), credit card processors (such as QuickBooks or PayPal), or customer management systems (such as Hubspot or SalesForce) where you will input your customers' personal information. We may also contract with third party vendors to assist us with some web development work such as maintenance or building of new features.

If you would like to opt out of Google Analytics, please visit: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.

You can also visit our main third-party providers’ websites for more information on their privacy policies:

• Godaddy: Privacy Agreement - GoDaddy – email to privacy@godaddy.com
• Wix: About Privacy | WIX - email to privacy@wix.com
• Wordpress: Privacy Policy – Automattic - Contact – WordPress.com Support
• Mail Chimp: Intuit®: Privacy - Data Subject Access Requests | Mailchimp
• Constant Contact: Privacy Center | Constant Contact – email to privacy@constantcontact.com
• PayPal: PayPal Privacy - Contact Us (paypal.com)
• Hubspot: HubSpot Privacy Policy – email to privacy@thehustle.co
• SalesForce: Privacy Policy - Salesforce.com – email to privacy@salesforce.com
• Google: Privacy Policy – Privacy & Terms – Google
• Intuit Quickbooks: Privacy Statement – email to ukprivacy@intuit.com.

We may also share information with vetted scientists for research purposes. If this is the case, we will only share de-identified information and will enter into legally binding contracts requiring those scientists to comply with all applicable data privacy laws and regulations.

In the future, we may sell, merge, or partner with another company or business. These transactions may include your Personal Information in the transferred assets.

We may provide you with information about and links to third-parties’ websites. Please check their privacy policy before engaging with such third-parties. We will not assume any liability for the disclosure and use of information provided to websites and others outside of the Platform.

We also may share personal information with other third parties if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to comply with applicable law, regulation, subpoena, legal process, or enforceable governmental request.

6. How Do We Secure Personal Information?

Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that loss, misuse, or alteration to data hosted by or on, or accessed by or through, the Platform will not occur. To mitigate these risks, we maintain physical, administrative, electronic, technical, and procedural safeguards.

Here are examples of measures we put in place from time to time:

• make sure we are using reputable partners offering strong security systems,
• use of access-controlled data centers, 
• regular internal risk assessments, 
• restricted employee access to Data, 
• employee training on data security,
• use of data encryption.

We will only collect the data necessary to provide our services for the purposes outlined above.

We will limit access to your Personal Data to employees who have a need to know to perform services and we will ensure they are trained and bound by confidentiality obligations.

When creating an account through the Platform, you are responsible for keeping your account password confidential and secured.

7. Contact Information

You may address any questions, requests, or claims regarding the Privacy Policy to:

Name: Thomas A. Webb

Title: Managing Partner

Email: carekate.tom@gmail.com 

Address: 10428 S. Artesian Ave., Chicago, IL 60655

Phone Number: 708-646-3510

We may ask you to provide your name, mail address, phone number, and email address to identify you to be able to answer such requests or claims. Please note that it will take us 30 (thirty) days to reply to your request or claim. If this should take longer, we will keep you informed.

8. What are your rights?

You may contact us to request:

• data amendments,
• to delete information about you or entered by you,
• to get a copy and to review the collected information, and
• to opt-out from receiving marketing materials.

We will follow up with your request and will make the changes in our own records. Please note that it may take us a few days to process (see Section 7 above for the details on the process). However, some of your Personal Data may be stored and processed in password protected servers in the US and/or with our third-party providers outside of our control.

9. Children

The Platform is not intended for children under 16 years old of age. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 16. If you are under 16, please do not provide any information on the Platform.

10. Access from outside of the United States

If you are visiting our Platform from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored or processed in the United States, where our servers are located and our central database is operated. The data protection and other laws of the United States and other countries might not be as comprehensive as those in your country, but please be assured that we take steps to protect your privacy. By using the Platform, you understand that your information may be transferred to our facilities and those third parties with whom we share it as described in this Privacy Policy.

11. Amendments

We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time, to adapt to changes in law or changes in our business practices. We may also send you an e-mail to inform you. But please check the link to our Privacy Policy regularly to monitor such amendments.

Updated 10/10/2023.