Privacy policy
Last updated
What Bettercom collects, why, who helps us run it, and what you can ask us to do with it. Written to be read, not skimmed past.
Who we are#
Bettercom is a product of Code Skogens LLC ("we", "us"). This policy covers the Bettercom dashboard, the chat widget our customers put on their websites, and this website.
Questions about it go to contact@codeskogens.com.
Two kinds of people, two roles#
Customers. If you sign up for Bettercom, you are our customer. We decide how your account data is used, as described here.
Visitors. If you chat through a Bettercom widget on someone else's website, that website's owner is our customer. They decide to collect your chat and the details below, and we store and process them on their behalf and on their instructions. For questions about that data, contact the website first; we will help them answer you.
What we collect from customers#
- Your account: your name and email address, and your password, which we store only as a one-way hash. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email address from Google.
- Your profile, if you fill it in: a photo, a short bio, a status, your working hours, and preferences such as notification settings and starred channels.
- Sign-in sessions: a record per signed-in device so you stay signed in, and cookies in the dashboard that hold your session.
- What you and your team create: messages, channels, canvases, saved replies, FAQs, help articles, workflows, files you upload, and the knowledge sources you give the AI agent.
- Presence: the minutes each teammate is connected to the dashboard, used for reports and kept for 90 days.
- Billing: your plan and the identifiers of your Stripe customer and subscription. Card details go straight to Stripe; we never see or store them.
What the widget collects about visitors#
On behalf of the website the widget is installed on:
- A visitor id and a secret token, stored in the visitor's browser so a returning visitor keeps their conversations. Anonymous visitors are shown to the team under a generated nickname.
- Page views: the hostname, path and hash of each page the visitor views on that site, with the time, and when the visitor opens the chat.
- Device: operating system, browser, rendering engine, device maker and model, and processor type, read from the browser's user agent.
- Approximate location: country, region, city, postal code, approximate coordinates and time zone, looked up from the IP address in a GeoIP database on our own servers, plus the browser's time zone. The IP address itself is not saved with these details.
- The conversation: messages, files, images and voice messages the visitor sends, their reactions, any rating they give a conversation, and feedback on help articles.
- Voice calls: the audio goes between the visitor's browser and the teammate's browser, through our relay server when a network needs one, and is not recorded or stored. The conversation keeps a record that a call took place, when, and how long it lasted.
- Name and email, if given: typed into the widget, asked for before the first message if the website turned that on, or passed in by the website for signed-in users.
The exact cookies and browser storage keys the widget uses, and how long each lasts, are listed in Data the widget stores. Page views, chat opens, device and approximate location are recorded only while tracking is on for the visitor. A website can turn it off for one visitor through the widget's consent call, or in its widget settings for every visitor its page has not reported consent for. Chat works the same either way.
How we use it#
- To run the service: deliver messages, show your team who they are talking to, and keep you signed in.
- To produce the reports in your dashboard.
- To bill you and enforce the limits of your plan.
- To send email the product needs: sign-in, verification, password reset, invitations, and transcripts a workspace has turned on.
- To protect the service: rate limits, the allowed domains check, and investigating abuse.
We do not sell personal data, and we do not use it for advertising.
The AI agent#
The AI agent is off until a workspace turns it on. When it is on, the visitor's messages, the earlier turns of that conversation, and the workspace's knowledge sources are sent to Anthropic, which provides the language model that writes Aura's replies. When a teammate uses AI compose in the dashboard, the draft and the conversation it belongs to are sent the same way.
Who helps us run it#
| Provider | What for | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | AI replies and AI compose, when a workspace turns them on | Conversation text and knowledge sources needed for the reply |
| Stripe | Payments and subscriptions | Billing contact and payment details you enter at checkout |
| SendGrid | Sending email | Recipient address and the email's content |
| Sign in with Google. Its script loads on the dashboard's sign-in and sign-up screens for everyone who opens them | The request for that script; if you sign in with Google, the sign-in request, and Google returns your name and email |
We also use hosting providers to run our servers and store data. We share personal data with anyone else only when the law requires it.
This website#
This website runs no analytics or advertising scripts. It does run the Bettercom widget, so that you can talk to us; the widget stores and sends what is described above, with us as the website owner.
How long we keep it#
- Widget open events and teammate presence minutes: 90 days.
- Everything else: for as long as the account or workspace exists, unless you delete it sooner.
When the deletion of your account or a workspace takes effect, we remove its data from our live systems within a day.
Your choices#
You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it, by writing to contact@codeskogens.com. Most of this you can also do yourself in the dashboard: the workspace owner can export or delete a workspace under Settings, Overview, and you can delete your own account under Settings, Account. A deletion takes effect 7 days after you confirm and can be undone until then. Visitors should ask the website they chatted with first; we will help that website answer.
Depending on where you live, you may have further rights under local law, including the right to complain to a data protection authority.
Security#
Passwords and visitor tokens are stored only as hashes, and widget requests are checked against a workspace's allowed domains when it has set them. No system is perfectly safe; if we learn of a breach that affects your data, we will tell you.
Children#
Bettercom is a tool for businesses and is not meant for children under 16.
Changes to this policy#
When we change what we collect or how we use it, we update this page and its date. For changes that matter, we also email workspace owners before they take effect.