Last updated: 2026-09-04
The short version. Your phone number is your account, and we store it only as a scrambled fingerprint — not the number itself. Calls are transcribed so she can remember you; those transcripts are deleted after 30 days. What she remembers about you is kept until you ask her to forget. We do not sell any of it, and no one browses your calls for entertainment. Say “forget me” on a call, or tap Delete my data on the pay page, and it goes.
There is nothing to sign up for. When you call, the number you are calling from is turned into a one-way fingerprint — an HMAC-SHA256 hash, computed with a secret key that lives only on the machine that answers the phone and is never stored in our database. That fingerprint is what everything else is filed under.
In practice that means the database does not contain a list of phone numbers. It contains hashes, and without the key on the calling machine they cannot be turned back into numbers. The payments side of the system never sees a phone number at all — it only ever knows an account id.
If you call with caller ID withheld, she cannot tell who you are, so she cannot bring your memory to the call.
There is no feed, no dashboard, and no browsable archive of your calls for anyone to scroll through. A very small number of people who operate the service can reach the database when something is broken or when the law requires it, and those actions are logged.
We do not sell your conversations, your memory, or your number. We do not use your calls to advertise to you, and we do not hand them to data brokers.
To actually work, the service passes audio and text through a handful of vendors: a telephone carrier to carry the call, speech and language providers to hear and speak, a database host, and a payment processor. They process this on our behalf, under their own contracts, not for their own purposes.
Card payments are handled entirely by Stripe. Card numbers are typed into Stripe's own secure fields and never touch our servers, so we never see, hold, or store a card number. We keep only what Stripe tells us: that a payment succeeded, for how much, and against which account.
We never ask for your name, your email address, or your billing address to take a payment.
She can send you a recap by email, but only to an address already on file for your account — never to an address she was told during a call. That rule is enforced in code, not by asking her politely, so a conversation cannot be mailed to someone else.
Text messaging is off while carrier registration is pending. When it is on, she texts you only after you have texted first or asked her on a call to send you something. Reply STOP to any message and the texting stops; reply HELP for contact information. Standard message and data rates from your carrier may apply.
She only calls you if you asked her to — a callback or a reminder. Those calls are placed between 8am and 9pm in your own local time, never outside that window; a reminder that would land at 11pm is refused when you set it, and you are told so on the call rather than finding out later.
Phone-Pal is an artificial voice, not a person, and she says so. She is warm, she remembers, and she is still software. She is not a therapist, a doctor, a lawyer, or a financial adviser, and she is not an emergency service.
If you are in danger, hang up and dial 911. If you are struggling and want to talk to a person, call or text 988 — the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — any time, day or night.
A deletion moves everything out of the live system immediately. It is held for 24 hours in case the request was a mistake and you call back to undo it, and after that it is destroyed for good. Payment records survive with your identity removed, because we are required to keep books.
You can also ask us what she holds about you, or ask us to correct it — say so on a call, or email richie@iris.church.
Phone-Pal is for adults. It is not designed or directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep information about them. If a child has been using the line, email us and we will delete the account.
The website uses exactly one cookie, and only after you have signed in by reading her a code: a session cookie that keeps this browser connected to your account for 30 days so you can add time without doing it again. There are no advertising or tracking cookies. Signing out or deleting your data clears it.
The whole product is built for the telephone precisely because a phone call needs no eyesight, no typing, and no app. These web pages are meant to work with large text, screen readers, and keyboard-only navigation, at any zoom level. If something here is hard to use, or you would rather do all of this by voice, email richie@iris.church or just call +1 (908) 774-8864 and ask — everything on this page can be done on the phone instead.
If this notice changes in a way that matters, we will change the date at the top and, for anything significant, say so on a call.
Email richie@iris.church, or call +1 (908) 774-8864 and tell her you have a question about privacy.
Phone-Pal is company, not emergency help. In an emergency dial 911. For mental-health support, call or text 988 any time.