Buddy, the companion for seniors
Privacy statement
Buddy talks with you, reminds you of things and keeps your family up to date. To do that, Buddy uses personal data. Here you can read, in plain language, which data that is, why we use it, who we work with and what your rights are.
Last updated:
In short
- Buddy only listens when you talk to him. He does not record sound and does not listen in when you are not saying anything to him.
- Buddy keeps a short summary of every conversation, so he still knows you the next time. The literal text of the conversation is deleted after 10 days.
- Your family can follow along in the Buddy Portal: a short overview of the day, who called and important alerts. You and your family decide together who gets to see that.
- Medication reminders and messages about how you feel are health data. We ask for separate consent for those.
- We never sell data and we show no advertising.
- You may always ask what we have about you, have something corrected or have your data deleted.
1. Who is responsible
Buddy is made by Buddy International, a trade name of Quinventa B.V. (Dutch Chamber of Commerce, KvK 94852243). We are responsible for the data Buddy processes.
Questions about your privacy?
Email: support@hallobuddy.nl
Phone: +31 85 130 17 33
Put "privacy" in the subject line of your email and your question goes straight to the right person.
2. Who this applies to
This statement is for everyone whose data Buddy uses:
- The Buddy user: the person who talks to Buddy on the tablet.
- Family and caregivers with an account in the Buddy Portal.
- Contacts of the user: the people in Buddy's address book who get called or receive a message.
- Customers who order Buddy in the web shop.
- Visitors to our website.
Are you a contact of a Buddy user? Then a family member added your details so that Buddy can call you or send you a card. Would you rather not? Ask the family member to remove you, or email us.
3. Which data Buddy uses
Conversations with Buddy
When you talk to Buddy, your voice is converted into text during the conversation. That is how Buddy understands what you say and can answer. After the conversation Buddy writes a short summary: what it was about and how the mood was. He also remembers things you tell him, such as your hobbies, your favourite music or the names of your children. That way he gets to know you better and better.
What Buddy does not do: keep sound recordings, or listen in when you are not talking to him. The literal text of a conversation is deleted after 10 days. The summary is kept for as long as you use Buddy (see chapter 7).
Reminders
Your family can set reminders in the Portal, for example for medication, exercise or an appointment. We store what the reminder is, when Buddy mentions it and whether you confirmed that it was done. For a medication reminder, if you do not confirm a few times in a row, Buddy can send a text message to an emergency contact chosen by your family.
Contacts, calls and messages
Buddy's address book holds the name, relationship (for example "daughter"), phone number, email address, birthday and sometimes the address of your contacts. Buddy uses this to call, to send a message or a video-call invitation, or to send a birthday card. We store who you called and when, and the text of messages Buddy sends for you.
Photos, videos and calendar
Your family can add photos, videos and short instructions for Buddy to show, and put appointments in your calendar. We keep those for as long as you use them.
Day overview and alerts for your family
Every evening Buddy makes a short overview of the day: whether you talked to Buddy, whether there were calls, and whether anything special happened. Your family sees this in the Portal. Your family can also receive an alert, for example when a call was missed, when the tablet has been off for a long time or when a medication reminder was not confirmed. Your family tells you who is following along; in the Portal, what each person may see can be set individually.
Accounts of family and caregivers
For the Buddy Portal we store name, email address, language and when someone last logged in. We also store who has which permissions and which alerts someone wants to receive.
Orders in the web shop
When you order Buddy, we ask for your name, email address, phone number and address, and for the name, date of birth and town of the person Buddy is for. You pay through Stripe; we do not see your debit or credit card details.
The tablet itself
To keep Buddy working properly, we know whether the tablet is on, how full the battery is and what its serial number is. That way we can warn your family when the tablet is off and put the tablet to rest at night. The tablet also reports its location to our management system. We keep that for one month and only look at it if the tablet is stolen or ends up somewhere it should not be.
4. Why we use it
We use your data for these purposes only:
- To make Buddy work: talking, reminding, calling, messaging, photos and calendar. This is part of the agreement you make with us when you start using Buddy.
- To reassure your family with the day overview and alerts. This is why families choose Buddy; you and your family decide together who follows along.
- For health data, such as medication reminders: only with your explicit consent (see chapter 5).
- To keep Buddy safe and working: we keep track of who changes what in the Portal and whether the tablet is working.
- To comply with the law: for example keeping invoices for the tax authorities.
We do not use your data for advertising and we never sell it to others.
5. Health data and consent
Some data is about your health: a reminder for medication, a text message to an emergency contact when you are not feeling well, or a summary of a conversation in which you say how you are doing. The law gives such data extra protection. That is why we ask for your explicit consent before your family switches these features on.
You give that consent when you start using Buddy. If you cannot decide for yourself, we ask the person who decides for you, such as a legal representative.
You may withdraw your consent at any time. Email support@hallobuddy.nl or ask your family. We then switch off the medication reminders and the alerts about your wellbeing, and delete the data that goes with them. The rest of Buddy keeps working as usual.
6. Who we work with
We do not build Buddy entirely by ourselves. For the voice, the calls, the storage and the payment we use specialised companies. They work on our instructions and may use your data only to do their work for us. With each of these companies we have agreements about privacy and security. Below you can see, per part of Buddy, what kind of company it is, what it sees of you and where it processes your data.
Swipe the table sideways to see all columns.
| What for | Who helps us | What they see | Where, and under which agreement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Talking with Buddy | An American provider of speech recognition, speech synthesis and language models | Your voice during the conversation, its text and what Buddy knows about you in order to answer. Deleted after 10 days; no sound recordings. | United StatesData Privacy Framework |
| Buddy's memory and day overview | American providers of language models | The text of the conversation, to summarise it and remember facts. And the summaries, calls and messages of the day, to write the day overview. | United StatesEU standard contractual clausesData Privacy Framework |
| Storage of all data | A database host in Ireland | Buddy's database, photos and accounts. | Ireland (EU) |
| Buddy's "back end" | A hosting company in Germany | The tasks Buddy carries out (calls, calendar, news, weather). | Germany (EU) |
| Websites and Portal | A hosting company with a worldwide network | The pages of the website, the Portal and the web shop. | Worldwide (US)Data Privacy Framework |
| Calls and text messages | A telecom provider | Phone numbers and the text of text messages. | United States and EUData Privacy Framework |
| Video calls | A video provider | The picture and sound during the video call (not recorded). | United StatesData Privacy Framework |
| An email service | Email addresses and the content of the emails we send. | United StatesData Privacy Framework | |
| Tablet management | A French device-management service | Serial number, battery, whether the tablet is on, the user's first name and the tablet's location (one month, only against theft). | France and Ireland (EU) |
| Birthday cards | A Dutch print shop | Name and address of the recipient and the text on the card. | Netherlands |
| Payment | A payment service | Your payment details; we do not see them. | Ireland (EU) and USData Privacy Framework |
| Weather, news, knowledge, radio | Public sources and broadcasters | Only your town (for the weather) or your question (for knowledge); no name or account. For radio and podcasts the tablet connects directly to the broadcaster. | Various |
Data outside Europe
Some of these companies operate from the United States. Europe sets strict requirements for that. We therefore only work with companies that are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or that have signed the European Commission's standard contractual clauses; the table shows which of the two applies per part. That way the same rules apply to your data there as here. We are working towards having the conversations with Buddy processed within Europe in the future as well.
Our suppliers may not use your data to train their own artificial intelligence. We see to that.
7. How long we keep data
We do not keep data longer than necessary. These are the retention periods:
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Literal text of conversations | 10 days, then deleted at our supplier. We do not keep sound at all. |
| Summaries of conversations and day overviews | 12 months. Buddy mainly uses the recent summaries to know you. |
| What Buddy has remembered about you (hobbies, family, preferences) | For as long as you use Buddy. Your family can change or delete it in the Portal. |
| Contacts, photos, calendar, settings | For as long as you use Buddy. |
| Who you called and the text of messages | 12 months. |
| Reminders: whether they were confirmed | 90 days. |
| Location of the tablet | 1 month, at our management system. Only used in case of theft or misuse. |
| Alerts to your family | 12 months. |
| Portal account | Up to 30 days after the account is deleted. In those 30 days you can still change your mind. |
| Order and invoice | 7 years, because the tax authorities require it. |
| Questions to our support desk | 2 years after the last reply. |
Stopping with Buddy? Then we delete the data of the user and of the family within 30 days of your request, except what we must keep by law.
8. How we protect data
- All data travels over the internet encrypted.
- Everyone sees only what they are allowed to see: a family member only sees the Buddy they were invited to. This is enforced in the database itself.
- Our staff only have access when needed, with an extra security code, and everything they do is logged.
- The tablet only talks to our own systems, using a secret key that only that tablet has.
- We regularly have it tested whether anyone can get at data without permission. That must not be possible, and we check it.
Does something go wrong with your data after all? Then we report it to the Dutch Data Protection Authority and, if it may affect you, to you as well.
9. Your rights
You have the right:
- To access
Ask us which data we hold about you and which companies we share it with. You get an answer within a month.
- To have it corrected
Is something wrong? Your family corrects it in the Portal, or you email us.
- To have it deleted
Ask for your data to be deleted. See below how that works.
- To withdraw consent
For health data you can withdraw your consent at any time.
- To object
Do you want us to stop using certain data? Let us know.
- To lodge a complaint
With us or with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (see chapter 11).
How to delete your data
- Family member or caregiver: in the Buddy Portal go to Settings › Account › Delete account. You receive an email to confirm this. After that you have 30 days to reconsider; during that time you can still undo it. If you are the only owner of a Buddy, that Buddy is deleted as well, unless you transfer ownership first.
- Buddy user: ask your family, or email support@hallobuddy.nl. We then arrange it for you.
- Contact of a user: ask the family member to remove you from the address book, or email us.
To be sure we are talking to the right person, we may ask you to identify yourself before we share or delete data.
10. Website, web shop and cookies
Our website and web shop only use cookies that are needed to work, for example to remember your language and your login. We use no tracking cookies and no advertising cookies. We do not measure who visits our website.
If you fill in the contact form, we use your name, email address and message only to reply to you.
11. Questions or a complaint
Do you have a question, or are you unhappy with how we handle your data? Contact us at support@hallobuddy.nl or +31 85 130 17 33. We respond within a month.
Can we not work it out together? Then you can lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl), which supervises our company, or with the data protection authority in your own country.
12. Changes
Buddy keeps learning and gets new features. If that affects your privacy, we update this statement and put the new date at the top. For a major change we also let your family know by email.