Privacy

Who operates Ask Carl

Ask Carl is a free educational service operated by Carl Zacharia. Ask Carl is not a law firm. Zacharia Frey PLLC and Senior Care Resources LLC are separate organizations.

Information we collect

When you submit a question, we collect the information you provide, including your name, email address, state, county, the person your question concerns, and your description of what is happening. You may also provide a telephone number and other optional information.

Because people often describe health, family, financial, or caregiving circumstances when asking a question, your narrative may contain personal information. Please provide only what is reasonably necessary and do not submit Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, passwords, medical records, or other highly sensitive documents or information.

The form does not accept attachments.

How we use your information

We use your information to receive, review, organize, and respond to your Ask Carl question; operate and secure the service; prevent spam and abuse; and maintain appropriate internal records.

Carl or authorized staff may identify a resource that may be useful to you, including Senior Care Resources LLC, Zacharia Frey PLLC, Medicaid In A Minute, MyLifeFolio, or MyLifeMemoir. Asking a question does not engage any of those organizations or services.

We do not sell your personal information.

Attorney-client confidentiality

Ask Carl is not a law-firm intake. Information submitted through Ask Carl is handled as private business information under this Privacy Policy, but it is not accepted as attorney-client confidential or privileged information merely because Carl Zacharia is a lawyer.

If individualized legal advice is appropriate, Zacharia Frey PLLC must separately complete its intake and conflict-review process and agree to representation.

Service providers

Ask Carl uses service providers to operate the website and process information on our behalf.

Supabase provides database infrastructure used to store Ask Carl submissions and related records.

Resend provides transactional email services used for acknowledgements and Ask Carl communications.

Cloudflare Turnstile helps protect the form against automated abuse. Turnstile processes browser and security signals needed to perform that function and does not receive the contents of the Ask Carl narrative as part of the form entry.

Deepgram provides speech-to-text processing only when you choose the dictation feature.

These providers process information as necessary to provide their respective services and are subject to their own terms and privacy practices.

Dictation

Dictation is optional.

When you press the Speak button, your audio is transmitted to Deepgram so that it can be converted into text. Ask Carl configures these transcription requests to opt out of Deepgram’s model-improvement program.

Ask Carl does not retain the audio recording after transcription. The resulting text is placed in the form so that you can review and edit it. The text becomes part of your Ask Carl submission only if you choose to submit the form.

If you do not use dictation, your typed narrative is not sent to Deepgram.

Abuse prevention

Ask Carl uses technical measures to detect spam and abusive submissions. The system does not store your raw IP address with the Ask Carl submission. It stores a one-way value derived from the address for security and rate-limiting purposes.

Email

If you submit a question, Ask Carl may send you an acknowledgement and later responses by email. Our email provider necessarily processes the email address and message information needed to deliver those communications.

Routine internal alert emails do not contain the full narrative you submitted. Authorized staff review submissions through the secured staff dashboard.

Retention

Ordinary Ask Carl submissions are generally scheduled for deletion after 24 months.

A different retention period may apply if the matter is referred to Senior Care Resources LLC or Zacharia Frey PLLC, is placed on a legal or administrative hold, must be retained for legal or security reasons, or becomes subject to another applicable record-retention policy.

A de-identified educational Ask Carl Answer created from the general subject of a question is maintained separately and may remain published after the original private submission has been deleted.

Security

Ask Carl uses administrative and technical safeguards designed to limit access to submitted information to authorized people and systems. No Internet-based service can guarantee absolute security.

External websites

AskCarlZac.com links to other organizations and services. Their websites and privacy practices are governed by their own policies.

Privacy questions

Once Ask Carl is live, you may use the Ask Carl form to raise a privacy question or request concerning information you previously submitted. Do not include additional confidential or highly sensitive information in that request.