Privacy policy

When Standby answers a customer for a business, that business decides what its customers are told and is responsible for its relationship with them. In data-protection terms the business is the controller of its customers' information, and Standby is a service provider (processor) acting on its instructions. Standby is responsible, as controller, for information about its own account holders and website visitors.

From businesses and their staff, when they sign up and use Standby:

• Name, email address, mobile number for alerts, and a password, stored only as a bcrypt hash we can't read.
• Business details: name, category, hours, services, prices, booking link, tone of voice and language.
• Billing identifiers from Stripe. Card numbers go to Stripe directly and never reach our servers.
• Connections the business sets up, such as its Google Business Profile, Instagram account or booking provider.

From customers of those businesses, when they contact the business:

• Phone numbers and the content of text messages.
• Instagram usernames and the content of direct messages.
• Google review text, rating and author name, as Google publishes them.
• Call details (number, time, duration), and — where the AI receptionist answers — call recordings, transcripts and summaries.
• Booking requests: name, contact details, requested service and time.
• Whether someone has opted out of texts.

From everyone else:

• Email addresses people give us to hear about Standby updates.
• Basic website analytics: which pages are visited, the referring site, and approximate country and device type. This is collected without cookies and isn't used to identify individuals — see the Cookie policy.
• A count of taps on businesses' booking links, by channel (text, Instagram, call or web). We don't record who tapped.
• Technical information needed to run and protect the service, such as IP addresses in server logs.

• To answer customers on a business's behalf, using the information that business gave us.
• To show the business its inbox, calls, reviews and bookings, alert it when a conversation needs a person, and send its weekly summary.
• To run accounts, take payments and provide support.
• To keep the service secure, prevent abuse and fraud, and enforce our terms.
• To send product updates to people who asked for them. You can unsubscribe at any time by emailing us or replying to any update.
• To comply with the law, including honouring opt-outs.

We do not sell personal information, share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, or use it to build advertising profiles. Message content is not used to train AI models.

Standby texts people only in reply to their own contact with a business — for example, when they call and the business can't pick up. Message frequency depends on the conversation. Message and data rates may apply.

Reply STOP to any Standby text to opt out, and you will not receive further texts from that business through Standby. ALTO, PARAR, BAJA and ARRÊT work too. Reply START to opt back in, or contact us at pmventures.team@gmail.com for help.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text-messaging opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties. The service providers listed below receive phone numbers only to deliver the service.

Standby uses AI to do work a front desk would otherwise do, on behalf of the business you contacted:

• Answering phone calls, when the business has the AI receptionist turned on.
• Replying to text messages and Instagram messages.
• Drafting replies to Google reviews, which the business can approve before they're posted.
• Summarizing calls, so the business can see what was said.

What the AI sees. To write a reply, the AI sees the recent messages in that conversation and the information the business has given Standby, such as its hours, services, prices and booking link. It doesn't see other businesses' conversations or information.

It doesn't make decisions about you. Standby's AI answers questions, shares booking links, takes booking requests and passes messages to the business. It doesn't make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you, such as decisions about credit, employment, housing, insurance or access to essential services. Appointments are booked through the business's own booking system, or confirmed by the business.

You'll know it's automated, and you can reach a person. On calls, the receptionist introduces itself as the business's virtual assistant at the start of the call. In texts and Instagram messages, if you ask whether you're talking to a person, it tells you it's an automated assistant. If you ask for a person, or the AI can't answer, it tells you the business will get back to you and alerts the business, which can take over any conversation at any time.

When the AI receptionist answers, it tells the caller at the start of the call that the call may be recorded, before anything else is discussed, as Illinois law requires. Recordings, transcripts and summaries are available to the business that received the call, and to the service providers that process them for us.

Standby does not create voiceprints, does not use recordings to identify who is speaking, and does not collect biometric identifiers or biometric information of any kind.

Who processes it. Replies are generated using Anthropic's Claude models. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, the content we send is not used to train their models. Calls are handled by Vapi, together with the speech-to-text and voice providers it uses. Standby does not use message or call content to train AI models. AI providers may keep content for a limited time to run their service and prevent abuse, as set out in their terms.

AI can be wrong. If something the AI tells you matters, such as a price or an appointment time, confirm it with the business.

Your choices. You can ask for a person at any time, reply STOP to stop texts, and ask for your information to be deleted as described below. Businesses can turn off the AI receptionist and Instagram replies, require their approval before review replies are posted, and pause the AI in any text conversation.

Standby runs on the service providers below. Each receives only what it needs to do its job, under contract, and may not use it for its own purposes. We also share information with the business a customer contacted, when the law requires it, to protect people's safety or our rights, or with a company that takes over Standby, which would remain bound by this policy.

Account, business, conversation, call and review records

While the account is open. After it closes, we delete them within 30 days of the business asking us to, and in any case within 12 months of closure — except anything the law requires us to keep.

Call recordings

On the same schedule as the account, or sooner if the business asks us to delete them.

Opt-out records

Kept for as long as the business uses Standby, so nobody who asked us to stop is messaged again.

Update emails

Until you unsubscribe.

Billing records

As long as tax law requires.

Wherever you live, you can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Depending on where you live — including California, other US states with privacy laws, and the UK and EU — you may have further rights, such as to object to or restrict processing, or to appeal a decision we make on your request. We will not treat you differently for using any of these rights.

If you are a customer of a business that uses Standby, the record belongs to that business, so asking it directly is often fastest — but write to us at pmventures.team@gmail.com and we will help, or pass your request to the business. We respond within 30 days and may need to confirm your identity first. You can also ask someone to make a request for you, with your permission.

We honour Global Privacy Control signals. Since we don't sell or share personal information for advertising, there is nothing further to opt out of.

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Sessions use signed, HTTP-only cookies sent only over HTTPS. Webhooks from Twilio, Stripe and Instagram are signature-checked so we only act on events those services actually sent. Access to the production database is limited to the people who run Standby. No system is perfectly secure, so we can't guarantee security, but if a breach affects your information we will notify you as the law requires.

Standby is run from the United States and data is stored and processed there. If you contact a business from outside the US, your information is transferred to the US to answer you.

Standby is a tool for businesses and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

If this policy changes, we will update the date at the top and, for significant changes, tell account holders by email or in the app before they take effect. Questions or requests: STANDBY AI LLC, Chicago, Illinois — pmventures.team@gmail.com.