Privacy Policy

CARROTEC, LDA, with its registered office at Bairro Calemba 2 (Jacinto Tchipa), Viana, Luanda, Angola, runs the Carrotec workshop for motor vehicle maintenance and repair, and makes the MECANIX apps available on the App Store and Google Play.

For any privacy question, contact us at info@carrotec.ao or by phone on +244 900 000 000.

• Carrotec workshop customers, website visitors and app users: CARROTEC, LDA is the controller of your data.
• Customers of other workshops that use MECANIX: the workshop repairing your vehicle is responsible for the data of that repair. We process that data on the workshop's behalf, only to provide the platform service.
• Workshop staff (MECANIX Technician and MECANIX Workshop): the workshop you work for decides on work records such as job cards and logged time. We process your account data to provide the apps.

Device permissions. The apps only access your camera and photos when you choose to take or pick a photo, and ask for permission to send notifications. You can refuse or withdraw these permissions in your phone settings; everything else keeps working.

What we don't collect. We don't collect your precise location, your contacts, health data or advertising identifiers.

• Provide workshop services: vehicle drop-off, diagnosis, quotes, repair and handover.
• Run your account and app features: repair tracking, quote approval, bookings, invoices and vehicle history.
• Contact you about your repair by notification, SMS, WhatsApp or email.
• Process payments, issue invoices and meet tax and accounting obligations.
• Handle insurance claims with insurers and serve company fleets.
• Send service reminders, if you want them.
• Keep our services secure, prevent fraud and fix technical problems.
• Improve our services using aggregated information that does not identify you.

We process data to perform our contract with you (providing the service you asked for), to meet legal obligations (such as invoicing and tax), with your consent (such as reminders and artificial intelligence features) and for our legitimate interests (security and fraud prevention), under Angola's Personal Data Protection Law (Law No. 22/11 of 17 June).

Some MECANIX platform features — such as the AIDA assistant, which helps prepare quotes and analyse photos and insurance claim documents — use third-party AI providers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (Gemini) and Groq.

We only send the data each task needs, such as vehicle photos, the fault description and vehicle or claim details. Results are suggestions reviewed by the workshop team: no decision about you is made solely by automated means.

We ask for your explicit permission before sending your personal data to these providers, and you can withdraw it at any time.

We only share data with the service providers we need in order to operate:

Where needed, we also share data with:

• your insurer and its assessors, for insurance claims;
• the fleet manager, when the vehicle belongs to a company fleet;
• the company that develops and maintains the MECANIX platform, as our service provider;
• public authorities, such as the Angolan tax authority (AGT), when the law requires it;
• professional advisers, such as auditors and lawyers, who are bound by confidentiality.

Every third party we share personal data with — including service providers, SDKs and any related entity with access to that data — must give it the same or equal protection as described in this policy, and may only use it for the purposes stated here.

We don't sell personal data, don't share it for advertising and don't track you across other companies' apps or websites.

Some providers process data outside Angola, for example in the European Union and the United States. In those cases we apply the safeguards required by Angolan data protection law, including authorisation from or notification to the Data Protection Agency (APD) where applicable.

• Account: while it is active. When you delete your account, we delete or anonymise your data within 30 days, except data the law requires us to keep.
• Vehicles, job cards and photos: while you are our customer and for as long as needed for warranties and possible claims; then they are deleted or anonymised.
• Invoices, receipts and accounting records: for the period required by Angolan tax and commercial law, even after you delete your account.
• Booking requests received by email: for as long as needed to reply and manage the booking.
• Technical logs: for a limited period, for security and troubleshooting.

Encrypted backups may contain deleted data for a limited period until they are overwritten.

Under the law, you have the right to be informed about how your data is processed, to access it, to ask for it to be corrected, updated or deleted, to object to processing in certain cases and to withdraw consent at any time, without affecting processing already carried out.

To exercise these rights, email info@carrotec.ao. We may ask you to confirm your identity. We reply within 30 days at most. If you believe your rights have not been respected, you can complain to Angola's Data Protection Agency (APD).

You can also, at any time:

• Notifications: turn them off in your phone settings.
• Camera and photos: remove access in your phone settings.
• Reminders and messages: ask us to stop sending them.
• Artificial intelligence: withdraw your permission in the app settings or by contacting us.

You can delete your account directly in the app, under Profile → Delete account. If you can't access the app, follow the instructions on our Delete account page, which also explains which data is deleted and which we must keep by law.

We use encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS), role-based access control, separation of data between workshops and encrypted storage of credentials. Only people who need the data for their work can access it, under a duty of confidentiality.

No system is completely secure. If an incident affects your data, we will act immediately and inform the people affected and the authorities, as required by law.

Our services are intended for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect children's data; if you believe this has happened, contact us and we will delete it.

Our website does not use advertising or analytics cookies. It only stores your language preference in your browser. Our hosting provider (Vercel) logs technical data such as IP addresses for security and to run the service.

The booking form opens your email app with the request filled in; the data only reaches us if you choose to send that email.

We may update this policy. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page, and if the changes are significant we will let you know in the apps or by email.

CARROTEC, LDA (NIF 5000919837) — Bairro Calemba 2 (Jacinto Tchipa), Viana, Luanda, Angola.