Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Bourdon is a service of BOG Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada 89117, United States. For the information described here, BOG Inc. is the business responsible for the data, which some laws call the controller. This policy covers bourdon.io, bourdon.life, and the Bourdon service. It forms part of our Terms of Service and Authorization Agreement.

2. What we collect

From you, because you give it to us: your name; your email address; your telephone number if you provide one; your relationship to the deceased person; the telephone number you want preserved; the name of the deceased person if you provide it; the name of the current carrier; and anything you write to us in a message or email.

Documents you send us for verification: a death certificate or equivalent record; letters testamentary, letters of administration or a trust document, where authority needs to be proven; a recent carrier invoice; and identification of the person signing the authorization. We ask for the least we can and we ask for it only when a carrier or the circumstances require it. We do not want and will not accept a Social Security number, a full financial account number, or a photograph of a government identity document unless a carrier specifically demands it in writing, and in that case we tell you first and delete our copy as soon as the carrier accepts it.

Audio and related files: the recorded voicemail greeting of the deceased person; the processed master audio files and the text transcript we produce from it; and any voice messages left on the memorial line by callers.

Technical and service records: call detail records for the capture call and for inbound calls, meaning the numbers involved, date, time and duration; carrier correspondence and port request records; your order record, plan, amount, and a payment reference from PayPal; service event logs showing what our system did and when; and standard server logs including internet protocol address, browser type, referring page and timestamps.

What we never collect: we do not receive or store your card number, bank account details or PayPal password. PayPal handles payment and gives us only a transaction reference and the amount. We do not collect health information, biometric identifiers for identification purposes, precise geolocation, or information about your race, religion, political views, union membership, sexual orientation or immigration status.

3. Why we collect it

We use the information for these purposes and no others:

1. to check whether a number can be preserved and to tell you what we find;
2. to place the capture call and record the greeting;
3. to produce the master audio files and the transcript and send them to you;
4. to prepare and submit carrier authorization and transfer paperwork, and to correspond with carriers about it;
5. to take custody of the number and run the memorial line for the ten year term;
6. to receive and store voice messages left on the line and let you listen to and download them;
7. to verify that you have the authority you say you have, and to respond to competing claims;
8. to take payment, issue receipts and process refunds;
9. to communicate with you about your order and to send end of term notices;
10. to keep the service secure, diagnose faults, prevent fraud and abuse, and keep records of what happened;
11. to meet legal, tax, accounting, regulatory and carrier record keeping obligations, and to respond to lawful requests; and
12. to send you occasional optional email, only if you asked for it by ticking the box.

We rely on the performance of our contract with you, your consent where consent is the right basis such as for the recording and for optional email, compliance with legal obligations, and our legitimate interest in running the service securely and lawfully.

4. Voice recordings, and our hard limits

The recording is the most sensitive thing we hold and it is treated differently from everything else.

We commit, as a binding term and not a courtesy, that we will not:

1. use any recording to train, fine tune, test or improve any artificial intelligence or machine learning model, whether ours or anyone else's;
2. create a voice clone, voice model, synthetic voice, digital persona, avatar or conversational agent from any recording;
3. generate any new speech in the voice of a deceased person;
4. use any recording, or the name, voice or likeness of a deceased person, in any advertising, marketing, demonstration, case study, social post, press item or portfolio;
5. sell, rent, license, trade or otherwise disclose any recording to any third party, other than the hosting and telecommunications providers strictly necessary to deliver the service, or as compelled by valid legal process; or
6. use any recording for any purpose other than delivering the service to you.

No human listening in the ordinary course. Capture, audio enhancement, transcription and delivery are automated end to end. Our personnel do not listen to a greeting or to an inbound message as part of normal operations. A member of our team may access audio only to diagnose a specific technical fault, to act on a request you make, or to comply with valid legal process. Every such access is logged with who, when and why, and we will tell you on request whether anyone has ever accessed your audio.

Encryption. Audio is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Your own copy. We deliver the master files to you before the number is transferred, on purpose, so the recording is in your hands independently of us. Please download and keep your own copy.

5. Information about a deceased person

Most privacy laws give rights to living people, and the information of a deceased person often falls outside their protection. We do not rely on that gap. We apply this policy to the deceased person's information, including their voice, name, telephone number and the content of their greeting, as if it were the information of a living person, for as long as we hold it. The authority to act on that information rests with you as the authorized representative, under section 3 of the Terms. If a different person later establishes superior authority, section 10 of the Terms governs what we do.

6. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for cross context behavioral advertising. We have never done either and we do not intend to.

We disclose information only to the following categories of recipient, only the minimum they need, and only under contracts that bind them to use it solely to provide their service to us.

1. Telecommunications providers. Our carrier partner, currently Twilio Inc., places the capture call, records the greeting, holds the number and runs the line. It receives the telephone numbers involved, call metadata and the audio.
2. The losing carrier and number administrators. To transfer a number we must give the carrier the authorization, the account details, the number, the account holder name and address, and any documentation the carrier requires, including the death certificate where demanded. This disclosure is the whole point of the authorization you sign and cannot be avoided.
3. Payment processor. PayPal takes the payment. We send it the amount and an order description. It sends us a transaction reference. We never see your card details.
4. Hosting and infrastructure. Cloud hosting, storage, backup, email delivery and error monitoring providers process data on our instructions.
5. Professional advisers. Our accountant, auditor, insurer and lawyers, where needed and under professional duties of confidence.
6. Authorities and courts. As described in section 14.
7. A successor. If the business is merged, acquired or reorganized, information may transfer to the successor, which must remain bound by this policy and by the restrictions in section 4 for information collected before the change. We will notify you of any such transfer.

We will never disclose a recording to a family member, a journalist, a marketer, a data broker, an advertiser or an artificial intelligence developer.

7. How long we keep it

Master audio files and transcript: for the ten year term, and then for twelve further months so a family that has lost its copy can still ask for it. After that we may delete them. You can ask us to delete them sooner at any time.

The greeting as configured on the line: for as long as the line is active.

Inbound voice messages: for the term, unless you ask us to delete specific messages or to turn off inbound recording.

Order, payment and tax records: for seven years after the order closes, as tax and accounting law requires.

Carrier authorization, port records and call detail records: for the term plus three years, because carriers and regulators can question a transfer years later and these records are our and your evidence that it was authorized.

Verification documents such as a death certificate: deleted within ninety days of the carrier accepting the transfer, unless we must keep them to answer a dispute or a legal obligation.

Server and security logs: twelve months.

Marketing contact details: until you unsubscribe, then we keep only a suppression record so we do not contact you again.

When a retention period ends we delete or irreversibly anonymize the information. Backups are overwritten on their own cycle, within ninety days.

8. How we protect it

Encryption in transit using current transport layer security, and encryption at rest for audio and documents. Access to production systems limited to the smallest number of people necessary, with individual credentials and multi factor authentication. Staff and operator functions protected by a separate key. Access to audio logged. Least privilege applied to every subprocessor. Regular dependency and vulnerability review. Backups held separately from primary storage.

No system is perfectly secure and we do not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your personal information and creates a risk to you, we will notify you and the relevant authorities without unreasonable delay and in any event within the period the law requires, and we will tell you plainly what happened, what was affected and what we are doing about it.

9. Your rights and how to use them

Whatever state you live in, we extend the following rights to every customer:

1. Know and access. Ask what we hold about you and the deceased person, why, and who we gave it to, and get a copy in a portable format.
2. Correct. Ask us to fix anything inaccurate.
3. Delete. Ask us to delete what we hold. We will, except where we must keep something for tax, accounting, carrier, regulatory, fraud prevention, or legal claim reasons, and we will tell you exactly what we kept and why. Deleting the recording is irreversible and if you also asked us to keep the line running, deleting the greeting means the line can no longer answer in their voice.
4. Opt out of marketing. One click, permanent, in any optional email.
5. Withdraw consent to the recording or to processing that relies on consent. Withdrawal is forward looking and ends the parts of the service that depend on it.
6. No retaliation. We will not charge you more, give you worse service, or treat you differently for exercising any right.

How to ask. Email [email protected] from the address on your order, or write to the postal address in section 17. We acknowledge within ten business days and respond substantively within forty five days, and may extend once by a further forty five days if the request is complex, in which case we tell you why. We verify you by matching the email on the order and, for a deletion or access request touching audio, by a second confirmation step, so that a recording cannot be destroyed by someone who is not entitled to ask. An authorized agent may act for you with written proof of authority.

There is no charge for a reasonable request. If you are not happy with our response, tell us and we will look again. You may also complain to your state attorney general.

10. California and other state privacy rights

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act gives you the rights to know, access, correct, delete, opt out of sale or sharing, limit the use of sensitive personal information, and not be discriminated against. Those rights are already extended to every customer in section 9.

Required disclosures. The categories of personal information we collect, the purposes, the categories of third party we disclose to, and our retention periods are set out in sections 2, 3, 6 and 7. The categories of sensitive personal information we may collect are: audio recordings, and in the narrow circumstances described in section 2 an identity document, where a carrier demands it. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross context behavioral advertising. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for any purpose other than performing the service, so there is nothing to limit, and we have no financial incentive programs. Because we do not sell or share, there is no Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information mechanism to offer, and we honor any Global Privacy Control signal your browser sends as an opt out of any future sale or sharing in any event.

Residents of Nevada may under NRS 603A.340 direct a business not to sell their covered information. We do not sell covered information; you may still send a verified request to [email protected] and we will confirm.

Residents of Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have rights to access, correct, delete, obtain a portable copy, and opt out of targeted advertising, sale and certain profiling. We do not conduct targeted advertising, sale or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects. Where a state law gives you a right to appeal a denied request, you may appeal by replying to our response with the word Appeal, and we will respond within the period that law requires.

This service is offered in the United States and is not directed to residents of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, and we do not offer goods or services to, or monitor, individuals in those regions.

11. Cookies and analytics

This site uses no advertising cookies, no tracking pixels, no social media buttons that report back, no cross site trackers, and no third party analytics that profile you. We use only what is strictly necessary to make the pages work and to take a payment.

PayPal sets its own cookies when the payment button loads, which is necessary for fraud prevention and to process your payment, and is governed by PayPal's own privacy notice. Our fonts are loaded from Fontshare, which sees the request for the font file.

Our server keeps standard access logs as described in section 2 and deletes them after twelve months. We do not build advertising profiles and we do not track you across other sites, so browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals have nothing to switch off here, and we honor them regardless.

12. Callers who leave messages

If you call a Bourdon memorial line, the announcement tells you before the tone that the line is a memorial line, that messages are recorded, and that messages are kept and can be heard by the family. Continuing to speak after that notice is your consent to being recorded. We collect your telephone number, the date, time and duration of the call, and your recording. We use them only to store and deliver the message to the family, and we do not use them to market to you, do not add you to any list, and do not disclose them to anyone other than the family and our infrastructure providers. If you leave a message and want it removed, email [email protected] with the number you called from and the approximate time, and we will delete it, subject to any legal hold.

13. Children

The service is not directed to children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under thirteen. Only an adult of at least eighteen years may place an order. A greeting or an inbound message may contain a child's voice, which we treat with the same protections as any other recording and use only to deliver the service. If you believe we hold a child's information improperly, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Legal process and disclosures

We may disclose information where we are legally required to, or where we reasonably believe it necessary to comply with a subpoena, warrant, court order or other valid legal process; to enforce our Terms; to respond to a competing claim under section 10 of the Terms; to protect the rights, property or safety of any person; or to prevent fraud or unlawful activity.

We narrowly interpret every request, we require valid legal process rather than an informal ask, we object to requests that are overbroad, and unless we are prohibited from doing so by law or a court, we will notify you before we disclose your information or a recording in response to legal process, so you have a chance to object.

15. Where data is held

Information is stored and processed in the United States. Our carrier and hosting providers may operate infrastructure or provide support from other countries, in which case they are contractually bound to protect the information to the standard in this policy. By using the service you understand that information is processed in the United States.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. We will post the new version with a version number and effective date. If a change is material, and in particular if it would ever affect the commitments in section 4, we will email you at least thirty days before it takes effect and give you the chance to delete your data first. We will not apply a materially less protective policy to information we already hold without your affirmative consent.

17. Contact us

Privacy requests, and anything else: [email protected]
Post: BOG Inc., doing business as Bourdon, Attention Privacy, Las Vegas, Nevada 89117, United States.

A person reads these and a person answers.