Our WhatsApp assistant: how we handle your messages

Chido is run by Vincent Chido King, a sole trader in the United Kingdom, at 66 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NA. He is the controller of the messages you send to our WhatsApp assistant.

Our WhatsApp assistant, My Shadow, is on 07337 465552. It answers only the people we have agreed to use it with: our clients' named contacts and our own household. It also takes part in a few private WhatsApp groups that invited it. It ignores everyone else's messages and does not read them.

Your WhatsApp number and the name we hold for you, the messages you send, when you sent them, and our replies.

We use your messages to sort them, draft a reply for Vincent Chido King to check, and send the reply he approves. We may do this because of our legitimate interest in answering business contacts who chose to write to us, with their organisation's agreement.

We keep a record of events (when a message arrived and when a reply went, never what you wrote) to keep the service secure. That is our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure.

An AI, Anthropic's Claude, reads each message from a client contact to sort it and draft a reply. A person, Vincent Chido King, approves every reply to a client before it is sent. Numbers and email addresses are removed before the AI sees a message. The AI takes no action of its own: it cannot send, change or approve anything. Anthropic does not use these messages to train its models.

In the groups that invited it, the assistant answers with the same AI. It sees the last few messages in memory only, to follow the conversation, and keeps no copy of them.

WhatsApp (Meta) carries the messages. Meta Platforms Ireland and its group handle them around the world.

Anthropic provides the AI that sorts and drafts, in the United States.

Vultr provides the server that runs the assistant, in Toronto, Canada.

Where a provider is outside the United Kingdom, we rely on a lawful safeguard: a UK adequacy decision or data bridge (the United Kingdom recognises Canada), or the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum in our contract with them.

Messages, drafts and replies: 90 days, then deleted automatically. The record of events: 90 days as well. None of it is copied into our backups.

The chats also stay in the WhatsApp app on our business phone, as with any WhatsApp chat, until we delete them. WhatsApp keeps its own copies under its own terms.

Please do not send anyone else's personal details this way, such as candidates' names, numbers, CVs, health or right-to-work details.

Send STOP at any time. The assistant switches off for you at once, nothing more you send reaches the AI, and we contact you directly.

You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, or object to how we use it. Write to us through the form on our Contact page at chido.co.uk/contact, and we reply within one month. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).