Privacy Policy

Who we are

Birthday Buddy is a WhatsApp companion that tracks the birthdays of people you choose to import and drafts the birthday message in your voice. Birthday Buddy is a product of SSS Tech LLC, the company that operates the service. To reach us about privacy, email ssstechbusiness@gmail.com.

What data we collect

We collect only what we need to run the service.

From WhatsApp

• Your WhatsApp phone number, so we know who you are and where to send your reminders.
• The messages you send to Birthday Buddy and the messages we send back. This is how the service works: you talk to it, it replies.
• Your own picture, only if you add one. If you pick a photo of yourself in your Profile, or turn on live device link, we keep your picture so Buddy can hold it on your Profile. It is stored encrypted, shown only to you, and deleted when you wipe your data.

The people you import

• The contacts, birthdays, and anniversaries you choose to add. You can share a batch of contacts inside WhatsApp, type a person directly like "mom, March 5", connect Google Contacts, or sync your iPhone or iCloud contacts with our iOS Shortcut.
• For each person we may store a name, a birthday, an anniversary, a time zone, and small context you give us so reminders land at the right moment and sound right.
• Their profile picture, so you see a face on their card. Where a photograph comes with a person you import, from the contact file you share, from your iPhone or iCloud contacts, or from Google Contacts if one is attached there, we keep a copy so their reminder shows them rather than a placeholder. If live device link is on we also keep their WhatsApp profile picture, which is the picture WhatsApp already shows you for them. These photographs are stored encrypted, are shown only to you, are never used to identify anyone or shared with anyone, and are deleted when you remove that person or wipe your data. When we hold no picture for someone we draw their initials instead. If a picture is one you would rather we did not keep, remove that person and it goes with them.
• Your phone's contacts, only with live device link. If you turn live device link on, we save the names and phone numbers in your phone's WhatsApp contacts, so new people show up in your list without you typing them in. Turning the link off stops this, and a wipe removes them.

Google Contacts, only if you connect it

• If you choose to connect Google Contacts, we read the contact names and birthdays you allow, so you do not have to type them in.
• We ask for the narrowest access that does the job. We use this data only to import the people you want tracked, nothing else. We do not use Google user data for advertising, we do not sell it, and no human reads it except with your permission, for security reasons, or where the law requires it.
• Birthday Buddy's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Basic technical data

• Standard logs that come with running software, like timestamps and error logs, so we can keep the service working and debug problems. Our logs are built to leave out names, phone numbers and message text.

What we do not do

• We do not sell your data, and we do not use it to advertise. What we store from your chats depends on which learning option you choose (see "Chat Import & Voice Learning" below). A sensitive line filter drops anything that looks like a password, verification code, or card number before it can be saved.
• We do not sell your data to anyone.
• We do not use your contacts to advertise to you or to them.
• We do not message the people you import. Birthday Buddy drafts a message for you to send yourself. You stay in control of what goes out.

Chat Import & Voice Learning

Birthday Buddy can draft messages that sound like you, and remember a little context about the people you care about, so your messages land with meaning. There are two ways this can happen. Both are opt in and fully in your control, and we track which version of this disclosure you agreed to, so if it materially changes we ask you again.

• Chat import (available today). You choose a chat and share it with Birthday Buddy. Nothing is imported unless you start it. We keep a style profile plus short excerpts of your own sent lines, and we may note a little context about that person, like a new job. We do not keep the other person's messages word for word. One to one chats.
• Live device link (opt in, off by default). If you turn it on, Birthday Buddy reads your WhatsApp conversations the way a linked device such as WhatsApp Web does: both sides, in one to one and group chats. This lets it learn your voice and remember context about your people, like a new job, a trip, or a running joke. It also picks up the profile pictures WhatsApp already shows you for the people you track, so their birthday card carries their face, and saves the names and numbers in your phone's contacts. What it reads is stored encrypted, used only to draft messages and reminders for you, and never sold or shared. You can pause it, unlink, or wipe it at any time.

What we keep

• A style profile: writing style patterns like your typical length, emoji use, casing, and sign offs.
• Short excerpts of your own sent lines that guide the drafts so they sound like you.
• Facts and context about the people you track, like a new job or a trip, so your messages land at the right moment and sound right.
• With live device link turned on, an encrypted archive of the conversations it reads, used only to generate your drafts and reminders.
• A voice note you send to Birthday Buddy is transcribed to text so you can talk instead of type, then acted on exactly as if you had typed it. We keep the text, not the audio. See "Third parties" for who does the transcription.
• With live device link turned on, voice notes in those chats are transcribed to text so a message someone spoke counts the same as one they typed. The transcript is stored encrypted with the rest of the archive. See "Third parties" for who does the transcription.
• With live device link turned on, photos shared in those chats are described in words (for example "a birthday cake with candles"), so a picture of a celebration can still tell us something. We keep the description. See "Third parties" for who produces it.
• With live device link turned on, the fact that a one to one call happened: who it was with, when, and how long. Never the audio, and never anything said on it. It is used to tell how close you are to someone, so reminders reach the people you actually talk to.
• With live device link turned on, the WhatsApp profile pictures of the people you track, stored encrypted and shown only to you, so their cards and reminders carry their face.
• A sensitive line filter drops anything that looks like a password, verification code, or card number before it can be saved.

What we never do

• We never message your contacts. Birthday Buddy hands you a draft. You decide what to send.
• We never sell your data, and we never use it to advertise, to you or to your contacts.
• We do not build profiles of your contacts for any purpose other than helping you remember and celebrate them, and we do not share their information with anyone.

The style we learn is used only to draft messages that you review, approve, and send yourself. We never message your contacts. Birthday Buddy hands you a draft. You stay in control of what goes out.

You can delete everything Birthday Buddy has learned at any time. Message Birthday Buddy and ask to wipe your data: that clears your contacts, birthdays, their photographs, the learned style profile, every saved excerpt, the context we noted about your people, and any encrypted conversation archive from live device link. A full wipe also switches live device link off and unlinks your device, so nothing new gets read after it. The wiped data is held, unreachable, for up to 180 days so you can restore it if you come back, then permanently deleted, and you can reply erase everything now to delete it immediately instead. See "How long we keep it, and deleting it" below. You can also stop the reading on its own at any time, by turning live device link off or asking Birthday Buddy to wipe your learned voice. Because this is consent based, we track which version of this disclosure you agreed to, so if these terms materially change we will ask you again.

How we use your data

• Track the birthdays you import, with the right time zone.
• Nudge you a day or two before a birthday.
• Draft a birthday message written to sound like you, and offer you a couple of versions to tweak or send.
• Run, secure, and improve the service.
• Handle billing if you go Pro.
• Reply to you when you contact support.

We do not make decisions about you with legal or similarly significant effects using automated processing alone.

Why we are allowed to use it

Where the law asks us to name a legal basis, for example under the GDPR, these are ours:

• To give you the service you asked for (performing our contract with you): your account, the people and dates you add, reminders, drafts, voice notes you send us, and billing if you go Pro.
• Your consent: live device link, learning from a chat you share, and connecting Google Contacts. You can withdraw it at any time, which stops it from then on.
• Our legitimate interests, weighed against yours: keeping the service secure, fixing what breaks, understanding which features get used, and holding the few details you give us about the people in your life so you can remember them. You can object to any of these by emailing us.
• The law: keeping billing records for as long as tax rules require.

If someone added you

If you are in someone's Birthday Buddy, we hold only what they added or what their own phone already shows them: your name, number, birthday or anniversary, a picture, and small notes that help them remember you. We never message you, never sell or share your details, and never use them for anything except helping that person remember you. To see what we hold about you or to have it removed, email ssstechbusiness@gmail.com from or with the phone number concerned, and we will answer within 30 days.

Third parties we share data with

We use a small number of service providers to run Birthday Buddy. They only get what they need to do their job, and they are not allowed to use your data for their own purposes.

• WhatsApp / Meta. The service lives inside WhatsApp. Meta processes the messages between you and Birthday Buddy as the messaging layer. Meta's own terms and privacy policy apply to your use of WhatsApp.
• Google, only if you connect Google Contacts. If you connect it, Google passes us the contact data you authorize. You can disconnect access anytime in your Google account settings. Our use of data from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
• Supabase. Our database and backend hosting, where your contacts, birthdays, and settings are stored.
• Fly.io, only with live device link. Fly.io runs the service that keeps your link connected, on servers in Frankfurt, Germany. It holds the session WhatsApp gives a linked device, including your WhatsApp contacts list, and passes what it reads straight on to our database. Unlinking ends the session there.
• Vercel. Hosting for our website and parts of our infrastructure, and aggregate website analytics: how many people opened a page and which start button they tapped, with no cookie and nothing that identifies you.
• Our AI provider (OpenAI). To draft a message in your voice, we send the relevant context, like a contact's name and the occasion, to OpenAI's API, which generates the draft. We send only what is needed. OpenAI processes this data under its API terms. API content is not used to train or improve its models by default. Retention depends on the API feature and applicable account controls: abuse monitoring logs may include prompts and responses and are generally kept for up to 30 days, with longer retention possible for legal or safety reasons. Some features also keep application data. See OpenAI's data controls for the applicable details. Voice notes. A voice note you send to Birthday Buddy is sent to the same provider to be turned into text, so we can act on what you said. This happens whether or not device link is on, because you sent it to us directly, and we keep the text rather than the audio. If live device link is also on, a voice note in one of your chats is transcribed the same way, and a photo shared in one of your chats is sent to be described in words. These inputs are sent to produce the requested result, under the API terms and retention controls described above. If you would rather we never transcribe a voice note, type to us instead, and leave live device link off or turn it off and wipe what it learned. Web search, only when you ask for it. If you ask us to look someone or something up, we run a web search through the same provider. That means the words you searched, which can include a contact's name, are sent to a search engine and we read the public pages it returns. We do this only on request, never in the background, never for everyone in your contacts, and we do not publish anything about anyone. If you would rather we never search for a person, simply do not ask us to, and tell us their birthday directly instead. To read a page the search found, we fetch it through Jina Reader, and to show you a picture of a source we may ask thum.io for a screenshot of it. Both receive only the address of a public web page, never your name, your number or your messages. Limited Use: Birthday Buddy's use of raw or derived user data received from Google Workspace APIs (the contacts and birthdays you import) adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not use, transfer, or sell Google user data, raw, aggregated, or derived, to develop, train, or improve any generalized or foundational AI/ML models.
• Looking people up online, only when you ask (Pro). If you ask Birthday Buddy to look someone up, it sends their name and the context you gave to OpenAI's web search, which reads public web pages and returns a short summary to you in the chat. If it finds a public profile, we show you its picture so you can tell whether it is the right person, without keeping the picture. If you confirm it is them, we save the profile's link as a note on that person. A birthday found this way is only a suggestion and is saved only if you tap to save it.
• PostHog. Product analytics and error reports for the service: events such as a draft being created or how many contacts were imported, tied to an internal account number, so we can see what works and fix what breaks. These events are designed not to include the content of your chats or your contacts' details.
• Stripe. If you subscribe to Pro, Stripe processes the payment and keeps your card details. We never see your full card number. Stripe's own terms and privacy policy apply to the payment itself.

We may also share data if the law requires it, to protect the service or people's safety, or as part of a business transfer, for example if SSS Tech LLC is acquired. If that happens, your data stays subject to a policy at least as protective as this one.

Where your data is stored

Your data is stored with our hosting providers and may be processed in the United States, in Germany (the live device link service), and in other countries where our providers operate. When personal data from the EU, the UK or Switzerland is sent to a country without an adequacy decision, we rely on the safeguards the law provides, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses in our providers' data processing terms.

How long we keep it, and deleting it

We keep your data while you use Birthday Buddy. You are in control.

• Wipe. Message Birthday Buddy and ask to delete everything. One message wipes your contacts, birthdays, anniversaries, their photographs, settings, learned style profile, and saved excerpts, and unlinks your device if live device link was on.
• 180 day recovery window. When you wipe, your account immediately stops working as if the data were gone: it is hidden from the app, no reminders or messages are sent, live device link is switched off, and nothing new is read or added. We keep the data itself for up to 180 days so that if you come back you can restore your contacts, birthdays, and anniversaries instead of starting over, and you can do that yourself from the chat at any point in that window. If you cannot, email us and we will restore it for you. After 180 days it is permanently deleted automatically.
• Immediate deletion. If you do not want the recovery window, you can skip it. Reply erase everything now to Birthday Buddy after you wipe, or ask us by email, and we delete everything straight away instead of waiting the 180 days. Choosing to start fresh when you return also deletes the held data immediately.
• Your messages with Birthday Buddy. The text of the messages between you and Birthday Buddy is cleared after 90 days, and the record that a message was sent is deleted after 180 days.
• A copy of your data. There is no in app export. To get a copy of the personal data we hold, email ssstechbusiness@gmail.com and we will handle your request.

Your subscription is separate from your data. Wiping does not cancel Birthday Buddy Pro, and cancelling Pro does not wipe your data. To cancel, message Birthday Buddy and reply billing, which still works while your data is in the recovery window.

When data is deleted, whether at the end of the 180 days or immediately at your request, we delete it from our live systems promptly. Copies may remain in routine backups for a short period before they roll off, and we may keep a minimal record where the law requires it, for example billing records.

Security

We protect your data with reasonable technical and organizational measures, including encryption in transit, encryption at rest for conversations and photographs, and access controls. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities the law requires us to tell, without undue delay. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot promise absolute security, but we work to keep your data safe and to fix problems quickly.

Cookies

Our website does not set cookies, does not store anything in your browser, and does not use advertising or tracking pixels. Its fonts are served from our own site, not a font service. The website analytics we use (Vercel) count visits without cookies and without identifying you. Birthday Buddy itself lives inside WhatsApp and uses no cookies of its own, so there is nothing to accept or decline.

Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control. We do not track you across other websites and we do not sell or share your data for advertising, so these browser signals have nothing to switch off. We treat every visitor as if they had sent one.

Children

Birthday Buddy is not for children. You must be at least 16, or 13 where local law allows, to use the service. We do not knowingly collect data from children under that age. If you believe a child has used Birthday Buddy, email ssstechbusiness@gmail.com and we will remove the data.

Your rights

If you are in the EU, UK, or a similar region (GDPR). You can ask to access, correct, or delete your data, get a copy of it, object to or restrict certain processing, and withdraw consent you have given. Where we rely on consent, for example connecting Google Contacts, you can withdraw it anytime. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

If you are in California (CCPA/CPRA). You can ask to know what we collect, ask us to delete it, and ask for a copy. We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for cross context behavioral advertising. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights.

To delete your data, message Birthday Buddy in WhatsApp and ask to wipe it. For any other request, including access or a copy of your data, email ssstechbusiness@gmail.com. There is no self serve export, so we handle these requests by email, and we answer within 30 days (45 days for California requests, as that law allows). We may need to verify your request, usually by confirming the WhatsApp number tied to your account.

Stopping messages. Birthday Buddy only writes to you about the people you track. Reply stop at any time and the reminders and digests pause until you turn them back on.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service changes. When we do, we will update the date at the top, and for important changes we will let you know in WhatsApp.

Contact

Birthday Buddy, a product of SSS Tech LLC.
Email ssstechbusiness@gmail.com.