Privacy policy

Caballus is operated by Rob Heckart and used by one horse rescue in Maryland. This policy covers the application at caballus.tech and the text messages and emails it sends.

There is no public sign-up. A Volunteer Coordinator at the rescue creates your record, so everything here starts with somebody at the rescue entering your details rather than with you filling in a form.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. All other categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

In plain words: your mobile number and your agreement to be texted are not sold, not rented, not passed to anybody else’s marketing, and not shared outside the rescue and the company that puts the message on the network for us. There is no advertising in Caballus and there never has been.

Message frequency varies and is low. A text goes out only when a shift you could work is short of people, or when there is rescue news that will not keep. In a normal month that is a handful of messages or none at all, and the application refuses to send more than 120 in any twenty-four hours across the whole roster.

Message and data rates may apply. Caballus charges you nothing; your own mobile plan is between you and your carrier.

Your sign-in code is separate from all of this. It is not part of the alerts, and stopping the alerts never stops you signing in.

• Your record — your name, your email address, your mobile number if you gave one, whether you agreed to be texted and the date you agreed, the roles you hold, and the orientation, release and — if you are under 18 — parental consent that let you be put on a roster.
• Your date of birth, where the rescue has it. The day and month are shown to volunteers because the rescue has a party; the year and your age are not, and being under 18 is shown as a fact rather than as a number.
• What you did — the shifts you were rostered on, when you arrived and left, the checklist items you ticked, the notes and reports you wrote, and who recorded each of those.
• An audit trail of changes to records, carrying who made the change and when. Care records are a history rather than a current value, so an entry is added rather than an old one erased.
• Sessions — a row saying you are signed in on a device. Signing out deletes it.

Caballus carries no message between two people. There is no chat, no inbox and no read receipt, and nothing tracks where you are.

Inside the rescue: other volunteers see the barn’s working information — the horses, the roster, who is on a shift. Your contact details, your age and the hours you worked are behind an officer’s permission rather than open to everyone.

Outside the rescue, only the companies that run the plumbing:

• Twilio delivers the text messages and the sign-in codes sent to a mobile. It receives your number and the message.
• Our mail provider delivers sign-in codes, the evening staffing summary and report notices. It receives your email address and the message.
• Our hosting provider runs the server and the database the records sit in.
• Anthropic, through OpenRouter, reads a photograph of the barn’s whiteboard when somebody at the desk asks it to. The photograph is not stored anywhere, and it is a picture of a board about horses.
• A weather service receives the barn’s coordinates and nothing about any person.

None of these is given anything for their own purposes, and none of them is given your mobile number for marketing. We also hand over information if the law requires it.

The care record of a horse is kept for as long as the rescue exists, including after the horse has left — that history is the point of the application. What you did on a shift is part of that record.

Sessions last about a year and are deleted when you sign out. If you leave the rescue, your account is revoked and you can no longer sign in; ask us if you want your contact details removed as well.

• Stop the texts. Reply STOP to any text from us. You can still sign in afterwards.
• Change or remove your number and email yourself, once signed in, under your own details.
• Ask what we hold, or ask us to correct or delete it — write to rob@heckart.me and we will answer.

Volunteers under 18 are on the roster only with a parent or guardian’s signed consent, held by the rescue. A parent or guardian may write to us about their child’s record at the address above.

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. A change that alters what we send by text or who sees your number is told to volunteers directly rather than left on this page to be noticed.