Privacy
This covers the public website and the three sign-in areas behind it: the customer portal, the builder portal and the staff portal. It is written to be read, not to be scrolled past.
Who we are
Elegant Automation, a home automation, lighting and audio-video company serving Greater Houston, Texas. Phone (713) 955-5908. We build and host this site ourselves.
What we collect, and where it comes from
The contact form. What you typed: your name, phone number, your email address if you gave one, the project type you chose, and your message. Along with it our server records the date and time, your IP address and your browser's user-agent string, which is how we tell a person from a spam script.
Server logs. Like every web server, ours keeps a log of the requests it receives: the date and time, the page or file asked for, the IP address it came from, and the browser's user-agent string. We use it to diagnose faults and to spot and block abuse. Each day's log is deleted automatically after about two weeks. It is separate from the visit count described under Cookies and tracking below, and we do not combine the two.
Being our customer. When we do work for you we keep a customer record: your name, phone, email, the addresses we work at, the visits we have booked and completed, and notes about the job. That record exists whether or not you ever sign in.
A portal account. If you accept an invitation to the customer or builder portal, we hold your sign-in email, your mobile number, your name, a password that is stored only as a one-way hash (we cannot read it and nobody here can look it up), and your display preferences. We record sign-in attempts, with the IP address, so that we can lock out guessing.
Getting-in details. Gate codes, door codes, alarm codes and access notes, if you choose to give them to us. They exist so that a technician is not standing at a locked gate. They are shown only to our staff and to the people who have access to that property in the portal.
360° photographs and documents. For a project where we photograph the framing before drywall, we store those photographs. Builders and homeowners may also upload plans and documents to a project. These are images and files of a private home, and we treat them that way: they sit behind a sign-in, there are no public or shareable links to them, and they are never used in our marketing without the owner's permission.
Details a builder gives us about a homeowner. A builder may add the name, phone number and email of the person buying a home, so the project record is complete at hand-over. We hold those details against the project. We do not use them to market to that person, and we do not send them automatic messages on the strength of a builder having typed them in.
What we do with it
We use it to answer you, quote and schedule work, get into the property on the day, keep a record of what we did, and give you and your builder access to the photographs and documents for your home. That is all.
We do not sell it, rent it, trade it, or add you to a marketing list. Mobile numbers and text-message consent are never shared with or sold to third parties for their marketing.
Text messages and email
If you send the contact form with a mobile number, we text you once to confirm it arrived. If you are a customer, we text or email you about your own visits: a booking, a reminder, a change, a cancellation, and the link that sets up your portal account. After a visit is finished we may send one more, asking whether you would leave us a review — at most one per visit, and never more than once or twice a year. Message frequency depends on how much work we are doing for you. Message and data rates may apply.
To stop the texts, sign in to the customer portal and switch them off on your Account page, where the booking confirmation and the review request have a switch each. Or ask us — call, text, or use the contact page — and we will switch them off for you. Replying STOP to a text does not do it; nobody reads replies to that number automatically. We will still call you about a booked visit if we need to reach you.
Who else handles it
A small number of service providers necessarily handle parts of this information in order for the site to work at all:
- DigitalOcean, which hosts our server, database, file storage and backups, in the United States.
- Our email host and our text-messaging service, which carry the messages described above.
They process the information on our behalf; they are not given it for purposes of their own. We do not take payment through this website today. If we add online payment, a payment processor will handle your card details directly, we will not store card numbers, and this page will say so before that goes live.
We will also disclose information if the law requires it, such as in response to a valid court order.
Cookies and tracking
The public pages set no cookies. When you sign in to a portal, we set the cookie that keeps you signed in and, if your sign-in covers more than one account, one that remembers which you were looking at. They are essential, unreadable to scripts on the page, sent only to this site, and gone when you sign out or when they expire. Those are the only cookies we use, which is why there is no cookie banner.
We count visits ourselves, and only count them. When you open a public page it tells our own server which page it was, the website that linked you here if there was one, any campaign tag on the link you followed, and roughly how wide your screen is. From that we know how many people looked at a page in a day and what sent them. It sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser.
To count one person once rather than once per page, the server briefly combines your IP address and browser type with a random value that is thrown away at the end of each day, and keeps only the scrambled result. Your IP address is not stored with the count, the result cannot be turned back into one, and once that day's random value is gone nobody, including us, can tell that today's visitor is the same as yesterday's. If your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, the page does not report the visit at all.
We run no third-party analytics, no advertising and no social-media trackers, and the site makes no third-party requests: everything a page loads, including the typefaces, is served from this domain. Visiting a page here does not announce your visit to anyone but us.
If any of that changes, this page changes with it, before the change goes live.
How we protect it
Every page is served over an encrypted connection. Portal pages require a sign-in, and each account can reach only the properties it has been given access to. Passwords are hashed, sign-in links expire, repeated failed sign-ins are locked out, and the stored photographs and documents are backed up nightly. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise; if we learn of a breach affecting your information, we will tell you.
How long we keep it
We keep enquiries and customer records for as long as we may reasonably need them: to answer you, to do the work, and afterwards as the record of a job we did. Photographs and documents for a home are kept so that they are still there years later, which is the point of taking them. If you would like something deleted, ask and we will delete it, unless we are required to keep it for tax or legal reasons.
Children
This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Asking us about your information
Ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it: call or text (713) 955-5908 or use the contact page. There is no form to fill in and no department to be transferred to.
Changes
If this policy changes we will update this page. Last updated 21 September 2026.