Last updated 20 May 2026

Privacy Policy

Ancilla Help is a WhatsApp assistant for family appliance support and home technology. This policy explains what data is handled when you contact us, use the beta service, or visit this website.

Who we are

Ancilla Help is an independent UK-based service operated for the website ancilla.help. For privacy requests, email privacy@ancilla.help. For general support, email support@ancilla.help.

Information we collect

  • WhatsApp messages you send to Ancilla, including photos or media you choose to attach.
  • Your WhatsApp phone number and messaging metadata needed to send and receive replies.
  • Conversation history used to keep recent context and improve service reliability.
  • Email address and message contents if you contact us by email.
  • Basic website and security logs processed by Cloudflare when you visit this site.

How we use information

  • To reply to your WhatsApp messages and provide appliance, scam-check, or home tech support.
  • To understand recent conversation context so you do not have to repeat yourself.
  • To monitor reliability, investigate abuse, and fix technical problems.
  • To respond to support, privacy, deletion, and access requests.
  • To comply with legal, safety, platform, and security obligations.

We do not sell personal data. We do not use WhatsApp messages for targeted advertising. During beta, we do not send marketing broadcasts.

Storage and minimisation

The backend stores conversation records against a hashed phone identifier where possible, so the long-term conversation table does not need your raw phone number as its primary key. WhatsApp, Meta, Twilio, operational logs, and support emails may still process phone numbers or message metadata where needed to deliver and operate the service.

We keep beta conversation data only for as long as it is reasonably needed to provide the assistant, improve reliability, handle support, or comply with law. You can request deletion at any time.

Service providers

Ancilla uses third-party providers to run the service. Depending on the current production configuration, these may include:

  • Meta and WhatsApp for WhatsApp messaging.
  • Twilio for WhatsApp transport, delivery, and media retrieval.
  • Supabase for database hosting.
  • Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google for AI-generated replies.
  • Langfuse for optional tracing, quality monitoring, and debugging.
  • Cloudflare for DNS, website hosting, security, and performance.

These providers process data only as needed to provide their services to Ancilla, subject to their own security, privacy, and platform terms.

Safety and sensitive information

Do not send payment card numbers, account passwords, government ID numbers, health information, or other sensitive information through Ancilla. If an appliance issue could involve gas, mains wiring, burning smells, flooding, or other danger, the assistant should stop troubleshooting and direct you to qualified help.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, restrict, object to, export, or delete your personal data. To make a request, email privacy@ancilla.help from an address we can use to contact you. We may ask for enough information to verify the WhatsApp account or email address linked to the request.

Deletion requests

You can request deletion of Ancilla-held conversation data by emailing privacy@ancilla.help with the subject "Delete my data". Include the WhatsApp number you used with Ancilla, including country code, so we can locate the relevant records.

More detailed instructions are available on the data deletion page.

Changes

We may update this policy as the beta becomes a production service. The updated version will be posted on this page with a new last updated date.