Last updated August 5, 2026
OBDai is software used by independent auto repair shops to manage vehicle repairs: diagnostic scans, estimates, customer approvals, and invoices. There are two parts: the web platform a shop uses in a browser, and the OBDAI mobile app, which connects to a plug-in diagnostic adapter to read a car and answer questions about it.
This policy covers three groups: shop staff who hold accounts, a shop's customers whose vehicle and contact details the shop records in order to do the work, and anyone who uses the mobile app — including someone using it on their own car, with no shop involved.
The app does not collect your location. It does not read your contacts, your photo library, or any other app's data.
The app uses Bluetooth for one purpose: to talk to the OBD2 adapter plugged into your car's diagnostic port. Android requires apps to ask for Bluetooth permission, and on some versions that permission is technically capable of inferring location — so we explicitly declare that we do not use it for that, and the app requests no location permission at all.
Reading a car requires an adapter you have physically plugged in. The app cannot reach a vehicle you are not at.
When the app reads a VIN from a car, it keeps the full VIN on your phone, in the app's own storage, so it can recognise the vehicle next time and keep its history together. Deleting the app's data or uninstalling the app removes it.
A VIN leaves your phone in one case: when a mechanic who is signed in to a shop account pushes a scan to that shop, so the scan lands on the right vehicle record. It is never included in error reports, crash logs, analytics, or anything sent to our error-monitoring provider — those are stripped on the phone and stripped again when they reach us.
Voice mode is off until you turn it on. While it is on, the app records what you say and sends it to our speech provider to be turned into text, and sends the assistant's reply back to be spoken aloud.
Audio is never written to disk and never logged — not on your phone and not on our servers. A clip is passed straight through for transcription and discarded. Transcripts are treated the same way, because a spoken sentence can contain a VIN.
If you attach a photo — a part, a leak, a code on a screen — it is resized on your phone and sent to our AI provider so the assistant can look at it. Photos are removed from the saved conversation, so they are not kept on your phone after the exchange and are not part of the history the app reloads later.
To answer a question the app sends the conversation to our AI provider: what you asked, the vehicle's year/make/model, any trouble codes or sensor readings just read from the car, and any photo you attached. Requests go through our own server so that our provider key is never in the app — which also means we can count usage against the free allowance.
The assistant's answers are guidance for a person working on a vehicle. They are not a substitute for a qualified mechanic's judgement.
A shop may send you text messages about your own vehicle — an estimate ready for your approval, that work has started, that your vehicle is ready, or that an invoice is ready. These are service messages, not marketing.
No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third party, and are never sold.
Phone numbers and message content are passed only to our messaging provider for the sole purpose of delivering the message you asked to receive. You can reply STOP at any time to stop receiving texts, or HELP for help. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. An opt-out is recorded permanently and cannot be undone by the shop.
To operate the service: to show a shop its own work, to send the notifications described above, to produce estimates and invoices, to answer questions about a vehicle, to count usage against the free allowance, and to keep an audit trail of who changed what. We do not sell personal information, we do not use customer contact details for our own marketing, and we do not use your conversations or photos to advertise to you.
Each shop's records are separated from every other shop's. Staff see only their own shop's data. A customer's approval page is reachable only through a private link sent to that customer, is excluded from search engines, and expires. If you use the app without signing in to a shop, your vehicles stay on your phone and no shop sees them.
We use third parties to deliver the service, and they may process information only to provide those functions to us:
Repair records are kept for as long as the shop keeps its account, because a vehicle's service history is the point of the product. If you are a shop's customer and want your details corrected or removed, ask the shop that serviced your vehicle — they control their own records. If you are a shop and want your account and data deleted, contact us and we will delete it.
If you use the mobile app: the vehicles and conversations it keeps are on your phone, and clearing the app's data or uninstalling it removes them. To have the usage records tied to your device deleted from our servers, contact us at the address below and we will delete them.
Traffic between the app, the web platform and our servers is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as hashes. Provider keys stay on our servers and are never shipped inside the app. Access to production data is limited to people who need it to run the service.
OBDai is a tool for vehicle repair and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.
If how we handle information changes, we update this page and the date at the top. Material changes will be highlighted here rather than made quietly.
Questions about this policy: info@obdai.us.
See also our Terms of Service.