Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 22, 2026

Answa LLC ("Answa", "we", "us") provides an automated phone answering service to small businesses. When you call a business that uses Answa, the call is answered by an automated AI system, not a person, and what you say is converted to text as you speak so the business can see what you asked for. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices available to you.

Who this policy covers

Three groups interact with Answa. Business customers subscribe to the service and use our app. Callers are the customers of those businesses, who reach Answa when they phone a business we answer for. Visitors read a shop page that a business publishes with Answa, or look up a shop through an AI app — see Public shop pages and AI apps. This policy applies to all three.

Information we collect

• From business customers: name, business name, email address, phone number, business address, billing information, and any photo of a menu or price list you upload to build your catalog.
• From callers: the phone number you call from, a written transcript of the call, and the details you provide during it — such as the items you order, the appointment time you request, your name, and any notes you give.
• Automatically: basic technical logs such as call times and durations, and app usage data needed to operate and secure the service. Visits to this website and to our app are counted separately and anonymously — see Website and app analytics.

We do not record or store call audio. Your speech is turned into text as you speak, by the providers described under Who we share information with, and only that written transcript is kept. Under its own terms, our AI voice provider can keep what it receives for up to 30 days, to check for abuse of its service.

A business that registers for texting also gives us the details that US mobile carriers require: its legal business name, business tax ID (EIN), website, and business address. We encrypt the tax ID and show only its last four digits. We send these details only to our messaging provider and to the carriers’ registry, to register the business’s number for business texting.

A business that builds its catalog by photographing a printed menu or price list uploads that image to us, and we send it to our AI provider (described below) so the items and prices can be read off it. We keep the catalog text the business confirms; the image itself is not stored and is not logged.

Website and app analytics

We count visits to this website and to our app so we can tell whether anyone is reading it. We do this ourselves, with our own software on our own servers. There is no third-party analytics product, no advertising pixel, and no analytics company involved — nothing on these pages talks to a third party.

No cookies are set and no cookies are read, on this site or in the app. Nothing is stored on your device. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to.

What a visit records:

• The page you opened, and whether you pressed a link to contact us.
• The website that linked you here — the site's name only, never the full address you came from.
• Any campaign tag in the link you followed (the utm_source style parameters).
• Your browser's time zone, and whether you are on a phone, tablet or computer.

Your IP address is not stored. It is combined with a secret that changes every night to produce a one-way code, purely so that one person reading three pages counts as one visitor rather than three. The code cannot be turned back into an address, and tomorrow the same browser produces a completely different one — so it cannot be used to recognize you, to follow you between days, or to link you to anything else we hold. That is a deliberate limit on what we can learn, not an oversight: it means we can count visitors and genuinely cannot identify them.

We honor Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control: if your browser sends either signal, nothing is sent at all.

Public shop pages and AI apps

A business that uses Answa can publish a public page about its shop. This is off by default, and only the business owner can turn it on, in the app. While it is on, the page shows:

• The shop name.
• For each open location: the city, state and ZIP code, the Answa phone number that answers its calls, and its opening hours.
• The street address, only if the owner turns that on.
• The live menu or service list, with prices.

Anyone can read a published page, including search engines and AI assistant platforms. We also publish a list of all published pages, so that search engines can find them. When the owner turns the page off, we stop publishing it at once. We cannot recall copies that other people or services already took.

The same published information is available through our app for AI assistant platforms. When a person asks an AI assistant about a shop and the assistant uses our app, the platform sends us:

• The search words.
• A city, state or ZIP code, if one is given.
• The shop, and the day, that the person asks about.
• Possibly a general location, such as a city, if the platform adds one.
• The language, and an identifier for the request.

We do not receive the person's name, email address, phone number or conversation. We use what we receive only to answer that request and to count it as described below, and our answer holds only what the business published. We do not store the search words. Our logs keep the time, which of our tools was used and the number of results, for 30 days.

We also keep a daily count, for each shop, of how many times each AI assistant platform found or read the shop through our app, and of how many visits to the shop's page came from an AI assistant's website. We tell the platforms apart only from the request itself — the name that the platform's app sends, or the website or link that a visitor came from — and we keep only the platform's name, in these counts and in our logs. The counts never include the search words, the conversation, an IP address or anything else about the person. The business can see its counts for the last 7 days in the Answa app, and we delete the counts after 30 days.

How we use information

• To answer calls, take orders, and book appointments on behalf of the business you called.
• To send you text messages about that order or appointment.
• To pass your order or booking to the business so they can fulfill it.
• To process payments, when you choose to pay through a link we send.
• To charge a card you have agreed a business may keep on file — for a deposit, a missed-booking fee, or an order you did not collect. The card is stored by our payments provider, not by us; we keep only the brand and last four digits and the terms you were shown when you saved it. It is charged only for that stated purpose, only up to the amount shown at the time, and we text you whenever it happens. Reply CARD to any message from that business to remove it.
• To show a card you saved for next time. When you pay from a link we text you, our payments provider's page may offer to save your card. If you tick that box, the card is stored by our payments provider, not by us; we keep only a reference to your record with that provider. On a later order that you pay from a link we text you, that page can show the saved card, and you choose whether to use it. It is never charged unless you pay on that page, and it is never shown from a QR code at the counter. Remove it on that page, or reply CARD to any message from that business.
• To count calls, so we can bill the business for its use of Answa.
• To operate, secure, support, and improve the service.
• To comply with legal obligations.

Text messages

When you give your phone number during a call, you consent to receive text messages related to that order or appointment — confirmations, payment links, status updates, and reminders. These are sent from the business's own phone number.

Message frequency varies with your order and appointment activity. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, or HELP for help. The text message page sets out the full program: the words said on the call, what we send, how often, and how to stop.

Some businesses also offer an optional offers-and-specials list. That is a separate opt-in: you are asked on the call, and you are only subscribed if you reply JOIN to a confirmation text. It is not part of the order and appointment messages described here, and STOP ends either one.

Who we share information with

We share information only as needed to run the service. We describe each provider by what it does and what it receives, so you can see where your information goes.

First, the business you called — your order or booking details and the transcript of your call, so they can serve you.

Second, the public — only what a business publishes, and only while its owner keeps its shop page on. No caller information is ever part of it. See Public shop pages and AI apps.

Then these providers:

• Telephony and messaging — our phone and text provider carries the call itself, so it handles the call audio in real time, your phone number, and the text of every message we send you or you send back.
• Live conversation — on most calls, our AI voice provider receives the call audio from our servers as you speak, understands it, and speaks our assistant's replies. It also returns a written transcript of the call. For a business explicitly classified as standard, it may also receive the limited relationship context described under AI language models.
• Speech to text — on other calls, a transcription provider receives the call audio as you speak, either by way of the telephony provider above or directly from our servers, and returns the written transcript.
• Text to speech — on those other calls, our voice provider receives the words our assistant is about to say, so it can say them in a natural voice. It does not receive your side of the conversation. A second voice service, reached through our telephony provider, speaks the short fixed lines Answa plays without opening the live assistant: a closed-for-the-day announcement, the goodbye at the end of a call, and the apology if nobody can be reached. Not every call plays one. Both receive only the words Answa is about to say, never anything you say.
• AI language models — our AI provider receives the call transcript after the call, to pull out the order or appointment details. On the calls that our AI voice provider does not handle, it also receives the transcript during the call, so the assistant can answer you. For a business explicitly classified as standard, the live assistant may also receive limited relationship context that business already holds about you — for example, your name, a usual order, a previous service, or returning status — so it can assist the call. It does not receive that context for medical or unclassified accounts. It also receives message text where a business has us translate its conversation with a customer, and any photo of a menu or price list a business uploads, so the items and prices can be read off it. Our AI voice provider above is also the backup for the after-the-call step, when the first cannot be reached.
• Stripe — payments. Collects your card details directly on its own hosted page; those details never reach us. Stripe receives the amount, a short description of what you are paying for, and a reference to your order. It also holds business customers' billing and payout details.
• Cloud hosting and email — our hosting provider stores the application, database and backups, in the United States, and delivers our email (password resets and sign-in codes).
• Push notifications — our push provider delivers alerts to the business's own phone. It receives an alert title, a short body, and record identifiers. Customer names, phone numbers and message text are deliberately kept out of these, because a notification shows on a lock screen.
• Error monitoring — our diagnostics provider receives technical information when something breaks. Call transcripts, caller names, phone numbers, addresses and order notes are stripped out before a report leaves our systems.

And these, only where a business chooses to connect them:

• Square or Clover — if the business runs its orders through one of these point-of-sale systems, we send the order lines together with your name and phone number, so the ticket reaches the counter with enough on it to serve you.
• Delivery address check — if a business delivers with its own drivers and you ask for delivery, we send the delivery address that you give us to Google's address validation service. Google checks that the address exists, and returns the corrected address and its map location. We use it to find the store that delivers to you. Google receives only the address text, not your name or phone number. Google handles it under its own privacy policy. We keep the address that you confirm with your order. We do not keep Google's map location.

And one that is not a connection anyone chooses, which is why it is listed apart from the ones above:

• Address lookup — when a business saves its own address in our location form, we send that one line of text to an address-lookup provider, which returns the map coordinates for it and a tidied-up version of the address that we store in place of what was typed. We send it once, when the address is first saved or later changed — not as it is being typed. This runs on our own key for every business, with no connect step and no way to switch it off from inside the app. No caller information is sent to this provider — only the address the business itself typed.

We use those coordinates to work out the business's time zone, so that a closing time it enters means the right moment of the day. That step sends nothing anywhere: the time zone is derived on our own servers from a map of time zone boundaries shipped inside our software. No third party is involved in it, which is why none is listed here for it.

Finally, legal — where required by law or to protect rights, safety, and the integrity of the service.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not authorize any of these providers to use it to market to you.

Retention

Plainly: we do not delete records on a timer. Call transcripts and order and appointment records are kept for as long as the business's account is open, so that the business keeps a record of its own customers. Assume they are held indefinitely unless one of the following happens.

• You ask us to remove them. Email support@answa.net and we will delete what we hold about you. We handle these by hand; there is no automatic expiry to wait for. When we delete, we remove your name, phone number, email, notes, messages and call text. We keep the record of whether your number agreed to texts or asked us to stop, so that we never text a number that said stop. We also keep order and booking records without those details (the items, the amounts and the payment reference numbers), because the business needs them for its books. Our payment and messaging providers keep their own records, and a backup of our database can keep a copy.
• The business closes its account. We then overwrite the personal data — caller numbers and names, call transcripts, order notes, service addresses, printed tickets — and disconnect the outside services above. The account record itself is kept in anonymized form, because bills already sent and taxes already filed were calculated from it.
• The account is a healthcare business. Where an account is classified as a clinic or med spa, a daily job overwrites the raw call text once it is more than 30 days old. Our Terms of Service say healthcare practices may not use Answa and signup refuses them, so this applies only to an account we have enabled by hand under a separate written agreement — the rule exists so that if such an account is ever opened, its transcripts are already on a timer.

The website and app visit counts described under Website and app analytics are the one thing here that is on a timer: a daily job deletes them after 400 days. They identify nobody, and they are deleted anyway.

Separately, the business you called keeps its own copy of your order or booking, on its own terms. You can ask them to remove it.

Security

Information is transmitted over encrypted connections and stored on access-controlled infrastructure. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect information against unauthorized access, loss, and misuse.

Your choices

• Opt out of text messages at any time by replying STOP.
• Request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information by emailing us.
• Ask the business you called to remove records they hold about your order or appointment.
• If you own a business that uses Answa, turn off its shop page in the app at any time. We stop publishing it at once.

Children

Answa is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.

Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top reflects the most recent revision.

Contact

Answa LLC, Frisco, Texas
support@answa.net