Privacy policy

01The short version

PhoneShield answers the calls you forward to it, decides what each one is, and shows you the result. To do that we keep your account details, the numbers and names on your lists, and a written transcript of what callers say to the front desk and to Nora, the assistant. We keep no audio of your calls, with one exception: when the front desk asks a sales caller to stop calling you, it keeps its recording of that conversation as evidence for you. We do not sell or rent anything about you, and we do not run advertising trackers.

02Who we are

PhoneShield.ai is operated by Who Can It Be, LLC, a Florida limited liability company. This policy covers the website at phoneshield.ai, the customer dashboard, the PhoneShield app for iPhone and Android, the phone numbers we answer on your behalf, and the emails and notifications we send. It applies to you as a customer and, in the parts marked as such, to people who call a PhoneShield number.

03What we collect

From you, the customer

• Your name, email address and password (the password is stored only as a salted hash).
• The phone number you forward to PhoneShield, the number where vetted calls should ring you, and the PhoneShield number we assign to you.
• Your lists: favorites, contacts and blocked numbers, with the names you give them. If you import contacts from your phone, only the names and numbers you chose to import are stored, and only on your own account.
• Your settings: the screening mode, greeting, assistant name and voice, and any temporary passes you grant.
• Sign-in records: when and from which network address you signed in, and, for the app, a device token and the push notification token Apple or Google issues for that device.
• In the app: microphone access, used only to carry your voice on a call you answer in the app. Those conversations are not recorded, transcribed or analyzed.
• Crash and error reports from the app (the app version, the device model, what went wrong and your account ID), so we can fix problems. They do not contain your calls, messages or contacts.
• Billing status from Stripe. Card numbers never reach our servers; Stripe holds them under its own policy.

If you share your story

• The words you write, your first name, last initial and town, and, if you add them, your photo and whether to show your own call numbers. We show them on our website, in the app and in our ads only after you agree, and we may shorten your words without changing what you meant. Withdraw any time in the app: we take the story down and delete the photo.

From each call

• The caller's number, the time, how long the call lasted, and what happened to it.
• A written transcript of what the caller said to the front desk or to Nora, the classification we made, and any message the caller left.
• Signals that arrive with the call from the phone network, such as caller-ID attestation, and whether the number appears in the FTC's public Do Not Call complaint data.
• Do-not-call evidence. The front desk records its conversation with callers you don't know, and says so at the start of the call. The recording is deleted as soon as the call ends, except when the front desk asked a sales caller to put your number on their do-not-call list, or a company called again after being asked. Then the recording, the call's records and a fingerprint (SHA-256) of each are kept, so you have evidence if you want to take action against the company.

Nothing from your own conversations. Once a call rings you and you answer, PhoneShield stops transcribing and no assistant is on the line: what you and the caller say is not transcribed, analyzed or stored. The front desk stops recording before your phone rings, so your own conversations are never recorded.

From your browser

Server logs with network addresses and the pages requested, kept briefly for security and debugging. We set the cookies described in the cookie policy and nothing else.

04If you called a PhoneShield number

When you call someone who uses PhoneShield, a front desk answers, says so, and asks who is calling and what it is about. Your words are transcribed in real time so the customer can decide whether to take the call. The transcript belongs to the customer you called, the same way a note taken by a receptionist would.

The front desk also records the conversation, and says so at the start. The recording is deleted when the call ends, unless you were calling to sell something and the front desk asked you to put the number on your do-not-call list, or you called again after being asked: then it is kept as evidence of that request for the customer you called. If the customer marks the call as a scam, or the front desk confirms a known scam script, your number and a short reason are added to the shared list described below. To dispute an entry, contact us with the number and the date of the call.

05If you turn on the text filter (iPhone)

The PhoneShield app can sort texts from unknown senders on your iPhone. It only does so if you switch it on in your iPhone’s settings (Settings, Apps, Messages, Text Message Filter; on older iPhones, Unknown & Spam), and you can switch it off there at any time.

• Apple only gives the filter texts from senders who are not in your contacts. Texts from your contacts never reach us.
• For each of those texts, your iPhone sends us the sender’s number and the text, without your name, your number or your account. Like any internet request it comes from a network address, which we use only to prevent abuse and do not store.
• An AI model reads the text and decides whether it is a scam, a political or marketing text, an out-of-the-blue message from a stranger, a code or a reminder, or an ordinary message. Your iPhone then files it in Spam, Promotions, Transactions or your inbox. A sender on the shared scam list goes to Spam without the AI, and a one-time code is never put in Spam.
• We do not keep the text or the sender. We count how many texts were checked each day and where they went, with nothing that ties a count to a person.
• On your iPhone, the filter also keeps a count of how many texts it sorted each month and where they went. The app shows you those numbers and adds them to your account, so you and your family can see what was kept away. Only the numbers, never a text or a sender.

06How we use it

• To answer, screen, route and summarise the calls you forward to us. That is the service.
• To ring you on the number you verified, and to whisper who is calling before we connect you.
• To show your call history, messages and lists in the dashboard and the app.
• To send the emails and push notifications you asked for: a message was taken, a number is ready, a receipt.
• To bill you through Stripe and to count Nora minutes against your plan.
• To keep the shared scam list accurate and to stop abuse of the service.
• To improve how the front desk and Nora handle calls, using transcripts in aggregate.

We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not build profiles of callers beyond whether a number has been confirmed as a scam.

07The shared scam list

PhoneShield refuses known scammers before your phone rings. That knowledge comes from three places: numbers you blocked yourself, numbers reported as scams by customers or confirmed by the front desk, and repeated complaints in the FTC's daily Do Not Call data, which is public.

A shared entry contains the phone number, a reason such as “Medicare rebate robocall”, and a count of reports. It does not contain the customer who reported it or anything they said. Entries age out and can be removed on request when a number was reported in error.

08Who helps us run the service

A few companies process data on our behalf, only to provide their part of the service and under contracts that forbid any other use.

Beyond these, we share personal data only when the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or with your direction, for example when you ask us to connect a caller to you.

09How long we keep things

• Call history, transcripts and messages: as long as your account is open, or until you delete them.
• Technical call events used to run a live call: deleted automatically within days, except for calls kept as evidence of unlawful calls, such as do-not-call violations or illegal robocalls.
• Do-not-call evidence (the front desk's recordings and records of those calls): four years, the time within which a claim can be brought, or until you close your account.
• Your National Do Not Call Registry record (the registry's emails, kept exactly as they arrived, and the steps you took): as long as your account is open.
• Sign-in history: 90 days.
• Billing records: seven years, as tax law requires.
• Shared scam list entries: kept while reports keep arriving; a quiet number ages out.

When you close your account we delete it, and the calls, lists and transcripts on it, within 30 days, apart from the billing records above and copies in backups that are overwritten on their own schedule.

10Your choices and rights

• See, correct or export your data from the dashboard, or ask us and we will send it to you.
• Delete a call or a contact from the dashboard, and delete your whole account from Settings, in the app or at phoneshield.ai/delete-account.
• Turn notifications off per channel, and revoke an app device from the dashboard.
• Stop the service at any time by removing call forwarding on your phone.
• Object to, or ask us to restrict, a particular use, and complain to your local data protection authority.

If you live in California, the CCPA gives you the rights above by law, and we do not sell or share personal information as those words are defined there. If you live in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our legal bases are the contract with you, our legitimate interest in running a safe service, and your consent where we ask for it.

11Security

Traffic to and from PhoneShield is encrypted, passwords are hashed, app device tokens are stored only as hashes, secrets are kept out of the code, and access to production is limited to the people who run it. No system is perfect. If we learn of a breach affecting you we will tell you promptly and say what we know.

12Children

Accounts are for adults. Many customers set PhoneShield up for a parent; the parent does not need an account, and we hold about them only the phone numbers involved and the calls we answered. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16.

13Changes to this policy

When we change this policy in a way that matters we will email account holders and show the new date at the top. The plan is currently $29.99 a month with 150 assistant minutes included; pricing lives on the pricing page, not here.