Privacy, in plain language.

What happens during a call

Your phone number identifies your calls and available minutes. Live audio is carried by Twilio, transcribed by Deepgram, sent to Anthropic so Carl can respond, and turned back into speech by Cartesia.

The Carl application does not save raw audio or full transcripts to its database. Audio and words still pass through those service providers while the conversation is happening, subject to their service terms.

What Carl keeps

• Your phone number, first and most recent call times, call duration, and identifiers needed to operate the line.
• Minute balances, purchases, gift records, and Stripe payment identifiers. Carl does not receive your full card number.
• Service measurements such as estimated cost, response time, token usage, and how a call ended.
• A timestamp and event category when Carl gives a crisis referral or another safety event occurs. This record does not contain a transcript of what you said.

Memory is opt-in

Carl may ask once whether you would like to be remembered. If you say no, stay silent, or give an unclear answer, no conversational memory is saved.

If you clearly agree, Carl stores a short summary and a small set of facts, never the raw transcript. Saved memory is removed after 12 months without a call.

Your controls

Text FORGET ME to Carl's number. Carl sends a four-digit confirmation code before deleting the saved memory and turning memory off.

Text STOP to stop service text messages. These commands remove saved conversational memory or stop texts. Operational, payment, and safety records may still be retained as needed to run and protect the service or meet legal duties.

Asking Carl to forget you during a call does not delete anything on its own. Deletion runs over text, so that a confirmation code can be sent to the handset that actually holds the number.

If you are in California

California residents have specific rights over personal information under the CCPA, as amended by the CPRA. Carl honours these for everyone, not only Californians.

• Know and access. Ask what personal information Carl holds about you, where it came from, why it is held, and who it has been disclosed to.
• Delete. Ask for your information to be deleted. Carl may keep what is needed to run the line, complete a payment, or meet a legal or safety duty.
• Correct. Ask for inaccurate personal information to be fixed.
• Limit sensitive information. Voice recordings can count as sensitive personal information. Carl uses live audio only to hold the conversation you called for, and never to infer characteristics about you.
• No retaliation. Exercising any of these rights will not get you worse service, fewer minutes, or a higher price.

Carl does not sell or share your personal information, and has never done so. There is no advertising on this service, and nothing you say is used for cross-context behavioural advertising or sold to data brokers.

Carl does not use your conversations to train AI models.

To make any of these requests, text FORGET ME to Carl's number for deletion. For anything else, email hello@callcarl.fyi. Carl will ask for a code sent to your phone number before acting, because a phone number is the only identifier here and it should not be enough on its own to reach someone's information. An authorised agent may act for you with written permission and the same verification.

Children and young people

Carl is meant for adults. The service is not directed to children under 13, and Carl does not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has used Carl, text FORGET ME from that number or get in touch and it will be deleted.

Carl never asks your age and never guesses it from your voice, which would be both unreliable and intrusive. If you tell Carl you are a minor, that is recorded as a safety signal so the protections California's SB 243 requires for companion chatbots can apply.

Calls are capped at 20 minutes each and 60 minutes a day for everyone, so no conversation runs long enough to need the break reminders that law requires for extended sessions.

Carl is not a substitute for a parent, a teacher, or a counsellor, and he will say so.

Who helps provide the service

Carl relies on Twilio for phone and text delivery, Deepgram for speech recognition, Anthropic for language generation, Cartesia for speech synthesis, Stripe for payments, PostgreSQL hosted through Supabase for durable records, and Fly.io for application hosting.

Safety

Carl is not a therapist or crisis service. The published crisis protocol explains how self-harm concerns are handled and what limited safety information is recorded.