Call Recording Disclosure

1. Why we record

PorchBell records calls so that:

• The business owner can review what their customers asked for and how the receptionist responded.
• The business has an accurate record of the appointment that was booked, the time discussed, and any special instructions.
• Disputes about what was promised on the phone can be resolved by listening back.
• We can fix mistakes the receptionist made and improve how it behaves for that business.

2. The disclosure in every greeting

PorchBell requires every business's greeting to include language telling the caller that the call may be recorded. The dashboard will not let an owner save a greeting that is missing this disclosure.

This is intended to satisfy the notice requirements of all-party-consent states (sometimes called "two-party consent" states) including California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington. If your business calls or receives calls from people in any of these states, the disclosure must be at the very start of the call, before any other substantive conversation.

It is each business's responsibility to keep the disclosure in place. Removing or weakening the disclosure can expose the business to civil and in some states criminal liability under state wiretap laws.

3. What the recording contains

• The full audio of the call from greeting to hang-up.
• A written transcript generated by the speech-to-text service.
• The caller's phone number as reported by caller ID.
• Any information the caller volunteers — name, address, appointment preferences, notes — for the purpose of being booked.

We ask the receptionist to avoid collecting sensitive information such as social security numbers, payment card numbers, or specific medical details, and the persona configuration enforces this. If a caller volunteers sensitive information anyway, the business should redact or delete the relevant recording promptly.

4. Who can hear or read the recording

• The business that owns the PorchBell number that was called. Staff members on that account who are granted access can listen to the recording and read the transcript from the dashboard.
• The PorchBell engineering team, only when investigating a specific issue and under a confidentiality obligation.
• The subprocessors listed in our Privacy Policy that the call passes through in real time (the phone carrier, the voice orchestration provider, and the transcription provider).

We do not sell recordings, we do not share them with advertisers, and we do not use them to train large language models for third parties.

5. How long recordings are kept

By default, call recordings and transcripts are retained for 13 months and then deleted. A business can set a shorter retention window from the dashboard, or request a longer one if their industry requires it.

6. Asking for your recording to be deleted

If you called a PorchBell number and want the recording deleted, contact the business you called. They can delete the call, recording, and transcript from their dashboard immediately. If they will not, email us at privacy@porchbell.com and we will route the request to that business and follow up.

7. International callers

PorchBell phone numbers are currently U.S. local numbers. If a caller is in a jurisdiction with stricter consent requirements than the U.S., the disclosure in the greeting still applies, and the caller can hang up before continuing if they do not consent to recording.