Privacy Policy

1. Data we collect

We collect your name, email, and payment details. For your parent, we collect their name, phone number, medications, and call preferences. After each call, AI writes a short summary from the transcript: how your parent seemed, whether they mentioned their tablets, and anything they said that you would want to know about. When you visit our public website, we also collect how you use it (see section 5).

2. How we use data

Family and call data is used solely to operate the Alongside service: scheduling calls, generating summaries, and sending alerts. Website usage data (section 5) is used only to improve our website. We do not sell data to third parties. We do not use your parent's health data to train AI models.

3. How computer programs help us decide things

Some of the work is done by a computer program, an AI (Claude, made by Anthropic), not by a person. This is what it does with what your parent says on the calls:

• It holds the chat. The voice your parent talks to is the AI, and it always tells them so.
• After each call it writes a short summary for you: how the chat went, how your parent seemed, and whether their tablets came up. If you asked for one, it also writes a short note after each chat.
• It looks for words that may mean your parent needs help, such as a fall or chest pain. When it finds them, a person in the family is told straight away by email, and by text if you gave us a mobile, so they can ring. It can miss things and it can raise a false alarm. It is not an emergency service.
• If your parent clearly asks us to stop ringing, the calls stop straight away and you are told. If someone on a call tells us your parent is in hospital or care, or has died, the calls are paused and a person on our team is told. If the words are not clear, nothing changes until a person on our team has read the call.

A person checks your parent's yes. On the first call, where we ask whether they are happy to go ahead, the program reads their answers first. The regular calls never start on the program's word alone: a person on our team listens to the recording and confirms it. If the program hears a clear no, we take that as their answer: the calls do not start, and we close your subscription so you are not charged for calls that will not happen.

Apart from closing the subscription when your parent says no, the program does not decide anything about your parent's health or care, about money, or about whether anyone can get a service. It does not diagnose anything, and its summaries are not medical advice.

If you or your parent have a question about any of this, or want a person to look again at something the program did, write to us at privacy@alongsidecalls.com. We will reply within 30 days.

4. Recordings, retention & deletion

Daily calls are not audio-recorded. They are transcribed (turned into text) instead. Daily call transcripts are kept for 30 days after each call and then permanently deleted; plain-English summaries and mood are kept while your account is open.

One call is recorded: the short first call where we ask your parent whether they are happy to go ahead. We keep that recording and its transcript as a record of their decision, in our storage in Sydney, while your account is open. Only the Alongside team can listen to it.

Family messages and what our calls remember. The messages your family writes for your parent, and anything your parent asks us to pass back, can be seen by the family members on your account. Our calls also keep short labels, such as “has died: Margaret”, or a topic your parent asked us not to raise. These labels are used only to shape your parent's calls. They are never shown to you. If your parent asks us not to read out family messages, we tell you that, so you know. Messages, replies and labels are kept while your account is open, and deleted when you delete your account.

You can delete your account and all associated data at any time from your dashboard settings — deletion is immediate and permanent, includes that first-call recording, and we also remove our voice provider's copies of your call data. You can download a copy of your data from your account settings at any time.

5. Third-party services & overseas disclosure

We use vetted providers to run the service: Vapi (voice calls), Anthropic (the AI that holds and summarises conversations), Deepgram (turns what is said on a call into text), Microsoft Azure or Cartesia (the voice your parent hears), Twilio (SMS alerts), Stripe (payments), Resend (email), Sentry (error reports, so we can fix faults), and Supabase (our primary database and the first-call recording, hosted in Sydney, Australia). Some of these providers process data outside Australia, including in the United States. We share only the minimum data each service needs to function, and providers' copies of call data are deleted within 30 days.

On our public website pages (not the family dashboard or any page you sign in to), we use Microsoft Clarity to see how visitors use the pages: clicks, scrolling and replays of a visit. Clarity uses cookies to give your browser a random ID, so it can link your visits together, and records your device, browser and rough location. It does not give us your name. Anything typed into a form is hidden before it leaves your browser. Microsoft collects this data and may store and process it outside Australia, including in the United States. You can read Microsoft's privacy statement.

6. Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Act, you have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal information. To exercise these rights, contact us at privacy@alongsidecalls.com.

7. Complaints

If you or your parent are unhappy with how we have handled your information, write to us at privacy@alongsidecalls.com. We will reply within 30 days. If you are not happy with our answer, you can contact the privacy regulator. It is the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), on 1300 363 992 or at oaic.gov.au.

8. Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@alongsidecalls.com