Privacy Policy

Sidekick Tel is provided by Maverick Systems (company number [company number], registered office [registered address]). We are the controller of the personal data described here, under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. Contact us about privacy at hello@sidekicktel.com.

If you use Sidekick through your employer's Team plan, your employer decides who is in its company and can see the details listed under Companies below.

• Your account. Your name, email address, username and, if you set one up, a passkey. Sign-in is run by our provider Clerk, which also holds your sign-in details and the devices you're signed in on.
• Your card. What you choose to put on your profile: name, company, handle, phone numbers, email addresses and photo.
• Your handle and friends. The handle you choose, the friend requests you send and receive (with any message you add), who you're friends with, and who you've blocked.
• Your lines. The settings of each phone line on your account, such as the server, extension and display name, so they appear on all your devices. Not the passwords: the SIP and messaging passwords are kept only in your iPhone's Keychain, and in iCloud Keychain if you use it, which is end-to-end encrypted. They are never sent to us.
• Your phone line on the Sidekick phone system. When we set up a line for you, we create an extension on our phone system with your name and email address. The phone system handles your calls and holds your chat messages and everything you send in them (photos, videos, voice and video notes, files, link previews and location pins), your voicemail and your call records, as any phone system must to deliver them.
• Meetings. For each meeting room you start: its name, number, type (video or audio) and PIN. The room itself is on the phone system, which also sees who joins while it's open.
• Call history. Who you called or who called you (name and number), when, for how long, whether it was answered, and the line used, so your history is the same on every device.
• Contacts. The contacts you add in Sidekick and, if you allow it, the contacts on your iPhone that have a phone number (names, company, phone numbers, email addresses and photos), so they're on all your devices and calls show who's calling. While access is on, Sidekick keeps them in step with your iPhone. Signing out stops this on that iPhone; the copies on your account stay until you delete them or your account.
• Recordings and photos. Call recordings you choose to make, and profile or contact photos. These are stored as files under a random name, with the original file name kept alongside.
• Feeds. Your radio favourites, the podcasts and news feeds you follow, where you left each podcast episode, and which news stories you've read, so they're the same on every device.
• Chat settings. Which conversations you've removed on your devices.
• Your devices. A notification token for each iPhone you sign in on, so we can tell you about friend requests. It's removed when you sign out.
• Your plan. Which plan you're on, whether you're in a trial, and the status of any subscription. If you pay on our website, Stripe processes the payment and gives us a customer reference and the subscription's status; we never see your card details. If you pay in the app, Apple processes the payment and gives us a signed record of the subscription.
• Companies. If you're in a company on Sidekick, the company's name and your role in it.
• Technical records. Our servers keep logs of requests and errors, such as the time, the endpoint called and the account and email address involved, to keep the service secure and working.

• Mentor, the assistant, runs on your iPhone, using Apple's on-device model. What you ask it, and the calls, voicemail and messages it reads to answer, don't leave the phone. If we later offer Apple's Private Cloud Compute for harder questions, it will be off until you turn it on, and only the question you choose to send will go to Apple.
• Dictation is transcribed on your iPhone.
• Your location is only used when you choose to send a place in a chat. Apple Maps shows the map and finds the place's name, and it's then sent as a map picture and link in that message. We don't track or store where you are.
• Microphone and camera are used only for calls, video calls, meetings, recordings, voice and video notes, and the photos you choose to take.
• Screen sharing sends your screen only to the people on that call, while you share it. Nothing is recorded or kept.
• Storage location. You can choose to keep recordings and other files in your own iCloud Drive instead of on the iPhone alone. Apple holds those under its terms.
• Signing out removes your lines, contacts, calls, chats and recordings from that iPhone. They come back from your account when you sign in again.

• People you call and message see your caller name and number, and what you send them, as with any phone.
• Anyone on Sidekick who types your exact handle can see your name, company and photo, so they know it's you before sending a request. Your phone numbers and email addresses are never shown. People you've blocked can't find you.
• Your friends get a contact card for you with your name, company, handle and photo, which stays up to date when you change your name or photo. Your Sidekick extension is added to it so they can call you, and is removed if either of you ends the friendship.
• People in a meeting see and hear the others in it. The host can see who's in the room and mute or remove them.

• To provide Sidekick, including your line, calls, messages, friends, meetings, Feeds, syncing between your devices and the features of your plan. This is necessary for our contract with you.
• To take payment and manage subscriptions, including trials, renewals and refunds. This is necessary for our contract with you, and for our legal obligations on tax and accounting.
• To keep the service secure and working, such as preventing abuse, fixing faults and verifying that messages from Stripe, Apple and Clerk are genuine. This is in our legitimate interests, and yours.
• To contact you about your account, such as sign-in codes, receipts, friend requests and important changes to the service or these terms. We don't send marketing email unless you ask for it.
• Contacts you import are other people's details. We hold them only so they appear on your devices, on your instruction, and never contact those people or use their details for anything else.

We use a small number of providers who process data for us, under contract and only on our instructions:

• Microsoft Azure hosts our service, database and file storage, and our server logs, in the UK (UK South).
• Clerk runs sign-in and company membership. Clerk is based in the United States.
• Stripe processes payments made on our website. Stripe acts as a controller for some payment data, under its own privacy policy.
• Apple processes App Store purchases, and delivers call, message and friend-request notifications to your iPhone through the Apple Push Notification service. A friend-request notification carries the other person's name, not their message. Apple acts under its own privacy policy.
• GIPHY provides GIF search. Your search words go to GIPHY from our servers, so GIPHY doesn't learn who searched.
• Vercel hosts our website.

We don't sell personal data or share it for advertising. We'll disclose data if the law requires it, and only as much as it requires.

Some features fetch things straight from the services that provide them. Those services see your iPhone's internet address and what's requested, under their own privacy policies, and we don't send them anything about your account.

• Feeds. The station directory from Radio Browser, podcast charts and search from Apple, and news-feed search from Feedly. The stations you play, the podcast episodes you listen to and the news feeds you follow are fetched from whoever publishes them, as are their logos and artwork.
• GIFs. GIF pictures are loaded from GIPHY, including GIFs other people send you.
• Links and YouTube. When you send a link, your iPhone visits the page once to make the preview, which is sent with your message, so the people you send it to don't visit the page until they open it. YouTube links show YouTube's picture and title, and play in YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode without keeping cookies.
• The built-in browser works like Safari: the sites you open there see your visit and can keep cookies, under their own policies.
• Maps. Apple Maps, when you send a location.

When a company invites you and you join, its admins can see your name, email address and role in the company, and whether you have one of its Team seats. Through Sidekick they can't see your calls, messages, recordings, contacts, friends, call history or what you listen to. If you leave or are removed, you go back to your own plan and keep your line and everything on your account.

Our service and your data are hosted in the UK. Clerk, Stripe, Apple and GIPHY may process data in the United States. Where they do, the transfer is protected by the UK's adequacy regulations for the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, or by the International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

• While you have an account, we keep your account data so the service works. You can delete contacts, recordings, meeting rooms, Feeds favourites and other items at any time, and they're deleted from our service too. Ending a friendship deletes the contact cards it made on both sides.
• When you delete your account, in the app under Account, Delete Account, we delete your account, everything synced to it, your files and meeting rooms, your friendships, requests and blocks, the contact cards your friends have for you, and the extension we created for you on the phone system. Your sign-in with Clerk is deleted at the same time. An extension your company gave you belongs to the company and stays with it.
• Server logs are kept for up to 90 days.
• Payment records are kept by Stripe and Apple for as long as the law requires them to.

Everything between your devices, our service and the phone system is encrypted in transit. Calls on lines we set up use encrypted signalling and media (TLS and SRTP). Files are kept in private storage and can only be reached through links that expire after 15 minutes; a link to someone's photo found by their handle expires after 10. Phone-system passwords are kept only in your Keychain.

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of your personal data;
• have inaccurate data corrected;
• have your data deleted, which you can do yourself with Delete Account;
• object to, or ask us to restrict, how we use it;
• receive the data you gave us in a portable format.

Email hello@sidekicktel.com to use any of them. We'll reply within one month. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though we'd like the chance to put it right first.

Our website uses only the cookies needed to keep you signed in, which are set by Clerk, and one that remembers the language you choose. There are no analytics or advertising cookies, so there's nothing to opt out of.

Sidekick isn't meant for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data.

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll tell you by email or in the app before the change takes effect. The date at the top shows when it was last updated. Our Terms of Use cover the rest of our agreement with you, and our Support page explains how to manage or delete your account.