Scope of this policy
This Privacy Policy explains how Automation Room Control, LLC (“ARC,” “we,” “us”) collects, uses, stores, and shares information when you visit our website, create or use an ARC Portal account, license ARC Software, use the ARC Control or ARC Team mobile apps, contact us, or enable an optional cloud service or integration.
Information we collect
The information we collect depends on which ARC products and services you use.
- Account and business information: business name, contact name, email address, password hash, profile photo if you add one, business locations, the people a business invites to its account or to ARC Team, account status, and communication preferences.
- Subscription and licensing information: plan, trial and subscription status, billing tier, location name, license status, activation history, and identifiers for the computer connected to a license.
- Payment information: Stripe processes payment-card and billing details. ARC receives transaction, customer, subscription, payment status, and limited payment-method information from Stripe, but does not receive or store your full card number.
- Product and technical information: ARC version, operating system or platform, device and installation identifiers, license state, IP address, approximate city, region, and country estimated from an IP address (for example, when you sign up or when a licensed computer checks in), last-seen times, download history, diagnostic events, and other information needed to activate, secure, support, and improve ARC.
- Security and activity records: a log of security-relevant account actions, such as sign-ins to the ARC Portal and ARC Team, invitations, license activations, computer pairing, phones connecting to a location, and Backup actions. For sign-ins, computer pairing, phones connecting to a location, and Backup actions, the record includes the IP address the request came from. Our hosting provider also records IP addresses in request logs used for security and troubleshooting.
- Email records: a log of the emails we send to an account, with the recipient, the subject, and, for most emails, a copy of the message. Most emails to account owners, such as welcome, trial, billing, and backup emails, contain a small tracking image and tracked links, so we record whether and when each email was opened and its links were clicked, and how many times. Invitations to join a business’s ARC account or its ARC Team, and email-address change emails, are not tracked.
- Mobile app information: the information described in the ARC Control and ARC Team sections below, including employee records kept for businesses that use ARC Team, the on-site result of a clock-in location check, and phone and notification identifiers.
- Information you submit: support messages, feature requests, roadmap votes and comments, uploaded screenshots or logos, feedback, and other content you choose to send us.
- Website and Portal usage: pages viewed, referrer, browser, operating system, device type, country, and events such as signups or downloads. Our analytics configuration is intended to avoid collecting directly identifying information.
Optional cloud services and integrations
ARC sends additional information off your local network only when you enable or use the relevant service.
- Backup: stores the ARC recovery archives you choose to upload, together with backup status, size, scope, integrity information, and retention metadata. A recovery archive can include core configuration data and, depending on your selections, media, text-to-speech assets, chat settings, and chat history.
- Connect: processes the commands, notifications, and status information needed to provide enabled remote or messaging features.
- Booking updates: when a venue connects a booking system, such as Off the Couch, through Connect, Connect receives the booking system’s updates and keeps only the room, date and time, booking status, party size, and the lead guest’s first name and last initial. Guests’ contact details and payment amounts are not kept. Connect holds each update, encrypted, until the venue’s ARC computer collects it, and then deletes it. An update the computer does not collect is deleted after the service’s retention period, which is 24 hours by default and never more than 72 hours.
- Slack and Discord: when connected, we store identifiers and names for the workspace, server, and selected channels, authorization credentials or bot tokens, and the channel mappings you configure. Messages routed through an integration are processed to deliver them to the destination you selected.
- Logo discount: if you enroll, we store the logo file you provide, file metadata, your consent record, and enrollment status so we can administer the discount and the related logo license.
Website Chat and optional AI
When a business enables Website Chat, Connect stores conversation messages, visitor and staff names and contact details included in messages, conversation identifiers, timestamps, assignment and status information, and website page context. It also stores the business’s chat settings, allowed website origins, business knowledge, AI instructions, and an encrypted copy of its supplied AI API key. Network requests expose technical information such as IP addresses to the hosting service for delivery and security. Website Chat is separate from local team chat and Backup.
The business operating the website determines why it collects visitor information and which staff may access conversations. ARC processes hosted chat information on that business’s instructions to deliver, secure, and support the service. Visitors should contact that business first about their conversation or privacy rights. We can assist a verified business administrator with an export or deletion request through [email protected].
If the business enables AI, ARC sends selected conversation context, website page context, supplied business knowledge, and instructions to the selected provider (OpenAI or Anthropic) using that business’s API key. The business is responsible for its provider account, applicable charges, and data settings. OpenAI’s API data-handling documentation describes its processing and retention. We do not promise zero provider retention. ARC does not use Website Chat content to train its own models or sell or share it for advertising. See also Anthropic’s API retention documentation when that provider is selected.
The widget uses browser storage for conversation access tokens and pending messages so visitors can reconnect or retry delivery. Clear site data in your browser to remove that local copy; this does not delete the hosted conversation. Website Chat is initially offered to United States-based businesses, whose websites may receive visitors from any country. This is a supported-market policy, not a restriction on visitor locations or a promise that all processing remains in the United States. The Website Chat terms and data-processing addendum explain the roles and provider arrangements.
The ARC Control app
ARC Control lets a business’s owners and staff run their rooms from a phone. The app connects to the business’s own ARC computer over the venue’s network, the business’s own VPN, or Connect. Most of what the app shows and changes stays on that computer.
Kept on the business’s ARC computer, not by ARC. Games, rooms, cameras, bookings from the business’s booking system (such as the lead guest’s name and party size), staff names and PINs, team chat messages and photos, the list of phones connected to that computer, and each phone’s notification settings and push token are stored on the computer that runs ARC Software at the venue. ARC does not receive this information or have access to it, except as described below. The business controls it and decides who may use the app and what each staff member can do. Live camera video goes directly between the venue and the phone. When the phone is away from the venue, Connect may carry small still images from the cameras to the phone without storing them. Photos you take for team chat are sent to the venue’s ARC computer. Camera snapshots are saved to your phone only when you choose to save them.
Sent to ARC. ARC receives information from ARC Control only in these cases:
- Signing in with an ARC account: when you choose “Sign in with your ARC account,” you sign in to the ARC Portal and choose a location. We record your account, the location, the type of phone (iPhone or Android), the app version, the time, and the IP address the phone connected from. The phone then registers with that location’s ARC computer. Connecting on the venue’s network with a staff PIN does not use an ARC account.
- Remote access through Connect: when the business uses Connect, the app creates a connection key that stays on your phone. We keep the public part of that key, an identifier for your phone at that location, and when it was last used, so Connect can confirm that the phone may reach the location. Commands, status updates, chat messages, and camera images pass through Connect to and from the venue’s ARC computer. Connect does not store them.
- Website Chat: if the business uses Website Chat, the replies you send from the app are stored in Connect with your staff name, as described in the Website Chat section above.
- Notifications: the venue’s ARC computer creates chat notifications and sends them to Apple or Google for delivery, usually through Connect, which passes them on without storing them. See Phone permissions and notifications below.
- Backup: if the business chooses to include chat history in Backup, team chat messages become part of the backup archive described under Optional cloud services.
The ARC Team app
ARC Team is the staff app for businesses that subscribe to ARC Team scheduling and time clock. Unlike ARC Control, ARC Team is a hosted service, so its information is stored on ARC’s servers. Your employer invites you, and you create your sign-in in the ARC Portal when you accept the invitation. ARC Team information belongs to your employer, which decides how the business uses ARC Team and who at the business can see what. ARC stores and processes this information on your employer’s behalf, as its service provider, to provide the service.
What ARC Team keeps.
- Account and profile: your name, email address, and password (stored only as a hash); your role, positions, and work locations; and, if you or your employer add them, your preferred name, phone number, emergency contact, hire date, and a profile photo. Profile photos are stored as a small square copy.
- Work records: your shifts, availability, time-off and shift requests, shift offers and swaps, shift confirmations and checklist items you complete, clock-ins, clock-outs, and breaks, late or missed clock-in alerts sent to managers, and any corrections and approvals. If your employer uses a time clock kiosk, your kiosk PIN is stored only as a hash.
- Announcements: announcements your employer posts, and when you read and acknowledged each one.
- Team chat: messages and shared photos; conversation names and membership; sender names and identifiers; timestamps, replies, mentions, reactions, read receipts, and conversation preferences. Photos are resized and re-encoded with embedded metadata removed before storage.
- Chat reports: the reported message reference, the reporting person’s identifier, reason, optional details, submission time, and the administrator’s decision. We also keep chat posting restrictions and audit records of moderation actions.
- Location check result: whether a phone clock-in was confirmed at your workplace, as described below.
- Phone and notification details: an identifier the app creates for your phone, the push token Apple (or Google, on Android) provides for notifications, your language, and your notification choices.
- Activity: when you last used ARC Team and last signed in, and a record of changes to people, schedules, time records, and settings that shows who made each change.
Location check at clock-in. Your employer can turn on a location check for clocking in from a phone. When it is on, ARC Team may read your phone’s location once, when you clock in, and asks your permission first. It does not need your location when you clock in on a workplace network your employer has saved. The app sends that reading with the clock-in to ARC Team’s server. The server compares it with your workplace’s location and keeps only whether you were confirmed on site. Your location itself is not stored, logged, or shown to anyone. ARC Team never reads your location in the background, during breaks, or at clock-out. A clock-in from a workplace network your employer has saved also counts as on site. Your network address is compared with the saved networks, and ARC Team does not store it. When a manager saves a workplace network, ARC Team keeps that network’s public IP address as a setting of the business. If you do not allow location access, your employer’s settings decide whether you can still clock in from your phone. You can also clock in on the workplace network or at the time clock kiosk, or ask a manager to correct your time record.
Who can see it. Your employer controls access. The business owner and the people it authorizes to manage staff can see and change your record, including your personal details. Managers can see your profile, schedule, requests, time records, and location check results, and whether you have read announcements, at the locations they manage. Managers without staff-management permission cannot see your phone number, emergency contact, or hire date. Depending on your employer’s settings, coworkers at your location may see your name and published shifts, and a coworker sees your name when you offer or swap a shift with them. ARC staff access ARC Team information only when needed to provide, secure, or support the service, or when required by law.
Chat access and reports. Chat participants can see messages and photos in their conversations. Reporting a message shares that message, its photos, and your report details with authorized administrators of your business, including when they are not participants in the conversation. It does not give them access to the rest of a private conversation. The review screen does not show the reporter’s identity, but the report’s context may identify you. Your business handles routine moderation and can remove reported content or suspend chat posting. Reports are not automatically forwarded to ARC staff or an external moderation provider.
Corrections and deletion. You can update your contact details, emergency contact, and profile photo in the app. When you remove your photo or change a personal detail, the earlier version is not kept, apart from backup copies, which expire on their normal schedule. To correct or remove other information, ask your employer. Employers are often required by law to keep time and pay records, so when an employer removes someone from ARC Team, the person’s record is deactivated rather than erased. Their sign-in to that business stops, their kiosk PIN is deleted, and their work history stays available to the employer. When a business stops using ARC Team, we delete its ARC Team records as described in How long we keep information. For questions about your personal data, email [email protected]. Because we hold ARC Team records for your employer, we may need to refer your request to your employer or act on its instructions.
Calendar connections
When you connect Apple Calendar or Google Calendar, ARC shares published shift times, roles, and workplace addresses with the calendar service you choose. The full schedule also includes staff names and is available to managers and administrators for locations they manage. Drafts, availability, time off, and shift notes are excluded.
With your permission, ARC creates a separate Google calendar and reads its events to add, update, or remove ARC shifts. ARC does not read your other Google calendars or import calendar edits into ARC Team. We keep the calendar identifier, connection settings, and encrypted authorization tokens while connected and while completing disconnection. Google calendar data is used only to provide this connection, not for advertising, sale, or training AI models. ARC’s use and transfer of Google user data follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.
Apple Calendar uses a private subscription link. ARC keeps the subscription secret encrypted. Anyone who obtains the link can read the selected schedule, so do not share it. Disconnecting in ARC Team invalidates the link; remove the subscription in Apple Calendar to clear saved events.
You can disconnect in ARC Team’s calendar settings or revoke Google access in your Google Account. Disconnecting Google removes the entire ARC-created calendar, including events you added to it, and removes the connection and stored credentials when disconnection completes, apart from backups retained on their normal schedule. If Google access has already been revoked, ARC cannot remove that calendar; remove it in Google Calendar. Calendar providers handle the information you send them under their own policies.
Phone permissions and notifications
The apps ask for a phone permission only when you first use the feature that needs it. You can change your choice at any time in your phone’s settings.
- Camera: ARC Control uses the camera when you take a photo to send in team chat. ARC Team uses it when you take a new profile photo.
- Photos: to attach an existing photo, the apps use your phone’s photo picker, which shares only the photos you choose. ARC Control asks to add to your photo library only when you save a camera snapshot.
- Location: only ARC Team uses location, and only at clock-in where your employer has turned on the location check, as described above.
- Local network: ARC Control uses your local network to find and connect to the venue’s ARC computer.
- Notifications: both apps work without notifications. You turn them on in each app’s settings.
Push notifications. To deliver notifications, your phone gives the app a push token, which Apple (on iPhone) or Google (on Android) uses to route notifications to your phone. Notification content passes through Apple’s or Google’s delivery service. ARC Team notifications are sent by ARC’s servers and keep lock-screen text general, for example “Shift starts soon.” An announcement notification shows the announcement’s title. ARC Control chat notifications are created by the venue’s ARC computer. They show the sender, location, and conversation name, plus the message text unless you turn off “Show message text” in the app. When you turn notifications off, or sign out of ARC Team, notifications to that phone stop. ARC does not use push tokens for advertising or tracking.
Stored on your phone. The apps keep sign-in and connection keys in your phone’s secure storage (the Keychain on iPhone, the Keystore on Android). They keep settings, saved locations, and recently viewed information on the phone. Pages the apps open from our website or the ARC Portal, such as Help, Privacy, Terms, or the Portal sign-in, are handled like any other website or Portal visit.
How we use information
- Create and secure accounts, authenticate Portal sessions, verify email addresses, and recover accounts.
- Provide trials, subscriptions, software downloads, licensing, activation, billing, cloud services, and connected integrations.
- Provide ARC Team scheduling, time clock, and announcements to the businesses that use it, and carry out the location check an employer turns on.
- Deliver the app notifications you turn on and connect ARC Control to the locations you are allowed to reach.
- Send transactional messages about accounts, trials, payments, installations, backups, security, and service changes.
- Respond to support requests, investigate problems, prevent abuse, and maintain audit and security records.
- Measure website and product usage, understand product reliability, and improve ARC, our documentation, and customer experience.
- Comply with legal obligations, enforce our agreements, and protect ARC, our customers, and others.
We do not sell personal information, rent customer lists, or use your information for third-party behavioral advertising.
How long we keep information
We retain information for as long as reasonably needed to provide the services, maintain security and business records, comply with law, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. Retention varies by the type of information and why we hold it.
- Account, subscription, license, transaction, and audit records may be retained after an account closes when needed for tax, accounting, fraud prevention, security, or legal purposes. These include security activity records and the IP addresses in them, a record of the account’s deletion with the owner’s email address and business name, the log of emails sent to the account, download history, records of computers that have run ARC Software under the account, with their last IP address and approximate location, and records of phones connecting to the account’s locations. Security activity records are not deleted on a fixed schedule.
- Portal session and recovery credentials expire or are revoked according to their security settings; sensitive tokens are stored in hashed form where the product supports it.
- Backup archives are scheduled for deletion within 30 days after the add-on ends or the account is terminated, subject to operational backup cycles and legal requirements.
- Slack and Discord installation credentials and channel mappings are retained until you disconnect the integration, close the account, or they are no longer needed to provide the service.
- ARC Team records are kept while the business uses ARC Team. When a business removes a person, their record is deactivated rather than erased, so the business keeps its work history. We delete a business’s ARC Team records within 180 days after its ARC Team add-on ends, or sooner if the business owner asks, apart from backup copies, which expire on their normal schedule.
- Push tokens stop being used when you turn notifications off, when you sign out of ARC Team, or when Apple or Google reports that a token is no longer valid.
- Records of phones connecting to a location through the ARC Portal, and the phone connection keys used with Connect, are kept as part of the location’s security records. A connection key stops working when it is revoked.
- Booking updates held in Connect are deleted once the venue’s ARC computer collects them, and otherwise after the service’s retention period (24 hours by default, never more than 72 hours).
- Our hosting provider keeps its request logs, which include IP addresses, for up to 30 days.
- Support, roadmap, and feedback records may be kept to maintain product history, respond to requests, and improve ARC.
Website Chat conversations expire under a service deployment retention setting, defaulting to 30 days from conversation creation and bounded from 1 to 90 days. This is not a per-business setting, and activity does not restart that retention period. Closing a conversation, the optional 15-minute inactivity close, or disabling chat does not itself erase records. Chat settings, business knowledge, and credentials remain until deleted. Contact support for the current service retention setting or a verified export or deletion request. Required legal records and any separately retained operational backups follow their applicable, documented retention requirements.
ARC Team chat messages expire according to the business’s selected retention period of 3, 6, or 12 months from when each message was sent; the default is 12 months. Expiry removes the message, its photos and reactions, and related reports. Archiving a conversation or turning chat off does not erase its history. Administrator removal erases the reported message’s text, photos, and reactions from the service, while a message placeholder and moderation records remain. Separately retained audit records and backups follow the retention rules above.
Security
We use administrative, technical, and organizational measures intended to protect information, including access controls, secure session handling, encryption in transit where appropriate, credential hashing, scoped service credentials, and monitoring. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be lost, accessed, or disclosed improperly.
You are responsible for securing your ARC computer, local network, Portal credentials, connected services, and any staff access you authorize. Please contact us promptly if you believe your account or installation has been compromised.
Website Chat uses encrypted network connections and encrypts the supplied AI API key in stored settings. Conversations must be readable by Connect to provide chat and optional AI, so they are not end-to-end encrypted. This statement does not describe Backup archive encryption; Backup has separate terms.
Your choices and privacy requests
- Review and update available account and business details in the ARC Portal, and your ARC Team contact details and photo in the ARC Team app.
- Disconnect Slack, Discord, or other optional integrations and disable optional cloud add-ons.
- Control functional cookies and local storage through your browser, understanding that blocking them may prevent sign-in or preference features from working.
- Turn app notifications, and camera, photo, and location access, on or off in the app or in your phone’s settings.
- If you use ARC Team or ARC Control through your employer, ask your employer to correct or remove information in your employee record or to end your access. Employers may be required to keep work records.
- Business owners manage and cancel their subscription in the ARC Portal. Neither app creates or deletes accounts. To have an account and its data deleted, email [email protected] from the account owner’s email address. Some records are kept afterwards, as described in How long we keep information.
- Request access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information by emailing us. We may need to verify your identity and may retain information when permitted or required by law.
Depending on where you live, you may have additional privacy rights. We will respond to valid requests in accordance with applicable law and will not discriminate against you for exercising a privacy right.
Business use, children, and teen workers
ARC is offered to escape room businesses and their authorized staff. It is not directed to children. No one under 13 may use ARC, the ARC Portal, or the ARC Control or ARC Team apps or provide personal information to us, and ARC Team is only for workers aged 14 and older. Escape room businesses are responsible for their own collection and use of player, guest, employee, and camera information and for complying with the laws that apply to their operations.
Some businesses employ workers under 18. A business that invites a worker aged 14 to 17 to ARC Team, or gives a worker under 18 access to ARC Control, is responsible for doing so lawfully, including any notice or consent that applies to its minor employees. We handle their information as this policy describes and only on the business’s behalf. If you believe someone under 13 is using ARC, or someone under 14 is using ARC Team, contact us and we will investigate and take appropriate steps.
Website Chat is not intended to collect sensitive information or personal information from children under 13. Businesses must not knowingly use it for that purpose and should direct visitors to appropriate alternatives. If you believe a child’s personal information was submitted, contact the business and ARC support so the request can be investigated.
Changes and contact
We may update this policy as ARC changes. We will post the current policy here and revise the effective date above. If a change materially affects how we use personal information, we will provide additional notice when required by law.
Questions or privacy requests can be sent to [email protected]. Please include enough detail for us to understand and respond to your request.