We can't read your messages

Last updated 10 August 2026. Most privacy policies explain what a company does with your data. The interesting thing here is structural: your messages, calls and contacts are on a server you own, and we have no copy and no access. This page is mostly about the short list of exceptions.

What we never see

Your texts, voicemail recordings and transcripts, call history, contacts, and the contents of any call. All of it lives in a database on your own server. There is no sync to us, no analytics pipeline, and no support tool that reaches into it. This is not a policy we have chosen to follow and could quietly change — it is how the software is built. If we wanted to read your messages we would have to ship you different software and hope you did not notice.

Contact photos imported from a phone's address book are cached on that phone only and are never uploaded anywhere, including to your own server.

What we do hold

Only what is needed to sell you something and support it:

• Your contact details — name, business name, email address, and any phone number you give us — so we can answer you and send you an invoice.
• Billing records. Payments are handled by our payment processor. We see the amount, the date, and the last four digits of the card. We never see or store the full card number.
• Emails you send us, and our replies, so a conversation makes sense the second time you write.
• Anything you deliberately send for support — a log file, a screenshot, a database copy. Used only for that problem, and deleted when it is closed.

This website

No advertising trackers, no third-party analytics, no cookie banner, because there is nothing to consent to. Our web host keeps ordinary access logs — IP address, page, time — for security and troubleshooting, discarded on its normal schedule. If you email us, you are emailing us.

The company you will actually be sending data to

Your calls and texts travel over Telnyx, under an account in your own name. They are the telecommunications provider and they necessarily handle your call and message traffic in order to carry it — their privacy policy governs that, not ours, and your relationship with them is direct.

We mention this plainly because "self-hosted" can be oversold: your data is not on our servers, but a carrier still carries your calls, exactly as one does for every phone system. The difference is that you chose the carrier, the account is yours, and you can leave either of us independently.

Voicemail transcription is off unless you turn it on, and there are two ways to turn it on. Your server can do the work itself, using a speech model that runs on that machine, in which case no company beyond your carrier receives the recording — note the wording: the carrier recorded the voicemail and holds it before your server ever downloads it, so "on your own machine" means no second processor, not none at all. Or you can choose a transcription service, in which case the recording is sent to that service to be turned into text. The setting in the admin console says which is which.

The app's permissions

• Contacts — only if you use "Import All Contacts". "Choose Contacts to Import" needs no permission at all: you pick names inside Apple's own screen and the app only ever receives what you tapped.
• Microphone — for calls, which is the product.
• Camera — only when you attach a photo to a message.
• Notifications — so the phone rings.

The app talks to your server and to your carrier. It sends nothing to us.

Keeping and deleting

We keep your account and billing records while you are a customer and for as long afterwards as tax and accounting rules require. Support emails are kept for two years and then deleted.

Your operational data is not ours to keep or delete — it is on your server, and you decide. Ask us to delete what we hold and we will, apart from records we are legally required to retain; email support@ringreplacer.com.

Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have the right to see the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or receive a copy. Ask and we will do it — there is no form, and the honest answer is usually that the list is short.

Children

This is a business phone system. It is not intended for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

If we change this in a way that matters, we will email customers before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.

Getting in touch

Any privacy question, including a request to see or delete what we hold: support@ringreplacer.com.