Privacy Policy
Helping someone with their technology means we end up seeing some of their information. This page says what, plainly. Last updated 14 November 2026.
Who We Are
The Makers, LLC provides in-home technology help for older adults and their families in St. Louis County, Missouri. You can reach us on (314) 207-3800 or through the form at themakers.com/contact. This policy covers https://themakers.com/ and the family portal we run for clients.
Information We Collect
When you contact us. The help request form collects your name, a phone number or email address, and whatever else you choose to put in it. Please do not put passwords, bank details or medical records into it — it reaches us as ordinary email, which is not a safe place for any of those.
When we help you with a device. Sorting out a phone or a computer means we will sometimes see what is on it. We look at what we need to fix the problem and nothing else. We do not copy anything off your devices, and we never keep your passwords. Where a password needs setting up, you choose it and you keep it.
If you use a family portal we set up. Some of what we build — a FreeStyle Libre 3 setup, for instance — includes a private page your family can sign in to. It can hold a calendar, notes about visits and calls, and, where there is consent on file, health information such as current glucose readings, insulin given, and medicines due.
If you agree to text messages. Your name, the mobile number you give us, the date you ticked the consent box, the exact wording you were shown when you ticked it, and a record of what we sent you and when. We do not take a mobile number for messaging unless you tick that box.
How We Use Your Information
To answer you when you ask for help, to do the work you have asked us to do, to run the family portal for the people named on it, and to send the text messages described below to the people who asked for them. That is the whole list. We do not sell information, we do not share it for anyone else's marketing, and we do not send marketing email.
SMS Text Message Communications
If you tick the box when you set up your portal account and give us a mobile number, you will receive text messages from The Makers Care Reminders. The categories are:
- a reminder each morning to record the insulin that was given, which you answer with two numbers;
- a reminder that a medicine is due, at the times the family sets;
- a notice that the person you look after has had a call or a text — who and when, never what was said;
- a notice when her equipment stops reporting, and one when it starts again.
The box is optional and never ticked for you, and the mobile number field is not shown until you tick it, so a number cannot be given to us without the consent that goes with it. The portal works perfectly well without any of this.
- Message frequency varies; a typical household receives two to five messages per day.
- Message and data rates may apply, depending on your mobile carrier.
- You may opt out at any time by replying STOP to any message. One confirmation follows, then nothing further. Reply HELP for help, or call (314) 207-3800.
- Messages are sent from a dedicated The Makers phone number through Twilio, our SMS delivery provider.
- We send no marketing or promotional text messages. Ever.
We do not share, sell, rent or provide your mobile phone number or your messaging consent data to third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes at any time. No mobile information, including phone numbers collected via SMS opt-in, will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes at any time.
For full details of our opt-in process, the exact consent wording, and samples of every message we send, see our SMS Opt-In Disclosure.
Information Sharing
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing. Information goes to other companies only where it is needed to provide the service, and only for that purpose:
- Twilio carries our phone calls and text messages.
- Microsoft 365 carries our email.
- Amazon Web Services hosts the portal and holds its encrypted backups.
- Cloudflare sits in front of the website.
- Apple iCloud syncs a household's calendar, where the family asked for that.
- Abbott, through its own LibreView service, is where a client's glucose readings come from.
Within a household, information is shown only to the people that household's administrator has invited, and health information only to those separately granted it. We will disclose information if the law requires it, and we will tell you if that happens unless we are forbidden to.
Data Security
Accounts are by invitation only, with no public sign-up, and each person signs in under their own name. Everything travels over an encrypted connection. Sessions sign out after thirty minutes idle and twelve hours absolutely. Every view of health information is recorded with who and when, in a log that cannot be edited or deleted. Passwords are stored hashed. Backups are encrypted before they leave our server.
Data Retention
We keep the smallest amount that makes the service useful, for as long as we are helping you, and then as our client agreement says. Access logs are kept for six years because they are the record of who saw what. Glucose readings are read from the monitoring system a minute at a time and are not accumulated here. You can ask us to delete things, and we will say so if something has to be kept and why.
Consent
Nobody's health information goes into the portal without their agreement, or the agreement of whoever holds the legal authority to give it. That agreement is written down, dated, and kept on file, and it says who it covers. It can be narrowed or withdrawn at any time, by telling us — and if it is withdrawn, access stops.
Children's Privacy
This service is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe we have, tell us and we will delete it.
About HIPAA
The Makers, LLC is a technology services company. We are not a doctor, a hospital, a health plan or a clearinghouse, so we are generally not what HIPAA calls a covered entity. If we ever work under contract for one, we would be a business associate, we would sign the agreement that comes with that, and we would meet the obligations in it.
Either way, we have built this system to the standard we would have to meet if HIPAA applied in full: named accounts, access granted per person and no wider than necessary, an audit trail of every view, encryption in transit, automatic sign-out, and written consent on file.
Your Rights
You can ask what we hold about you or about the person you care for, ask for a copy, ask for it to be corrected, or ask us to delete it. Use the contact form and say what you would like; we will reply to the email address or phone number you give us there. Some records we have to keep for a period to meet our own legal and insurance obligations, and if that applies we will tell you which and for how long.
Changes to This Policy
If we change this policy we will change the date at the top. If a change affects something you have already agreed to — the text messages in particular — we will tell you before it takes effect.
Contact Us
The Makers, LLC · St. Louis County, Missouri · (314) 207-3800 · themakers.com/contact. Our terms and conditions are here.