Privacy Policy for Comfort Companions Apps
(Dorothy, Edith, Frank, Malcolm and Rosie)
Last Updated: 4th November 2025
This Privacy Policy explains how Comfort Companions CIC (“we”, “us” or “our”) protects and handles your information when you use any of our digital companion apps.
The apps include Dorothy, Edith, Frank, Malcolm and Rosie. Each app is part of the Comfort Companions service, which is provided by Comfort Companions CIC, a not-for-profit community interest company. The service provides friendly voice-based digital companionship designed to support wellbeing and connection for older adults in the UK.
1. Information We Collect
When you use one of our apps, you can speak freely with your digital companion.
We do not record, transcribe or permanently store what you say.
To generate your companion’s spoken reply, your voice audio is briefly transcribed in memory by Microsoft Azure’s speech-to-text systems. The only data temporarily retained is a short audio file (MP3) of your companion’s reply.
We do not:
- Keep recordings or transcriptions of what you say
- Store your conversation history anywhere after the app is closed or restarted
- Collect personal information
It is not possible for us to identify you personally from the information we store.
2. Microphone Access
The apps require access to your device’s microphone so that you can speak with your companion.
Your voice audio is processed in real time to enable conversation. Neither the audio nor text transcription is saved or stored, and no one can listen to it.
The app only accesses your microphone when you choose to start a conversation by tapping your companion’s face. It is not always listening and does not use an open microphone. No audio is captured or stored outside these short recording moments.
3. How We Use Data
We use the limited data we store (your companion’s replies) to:
- Diagnose and fix technical issues
- Maintain service reliability and monitor overall system performance (e.g., uptime and error rates)
These replies are automatically deleted after 48 hours and cannot be linked back to you personally.
4. Data Security
Comfort Companions CIC follows UK data-protection law (including the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018) to keep your information safe.
Microsoft provides the cloud infrastructure used to deliver the Comfort Companions service and acts as our data processor. All data is stored within Azure’s UK data centres, which are certified to ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus standards for information security.
Access to the Comfort Companions service is protected by passcodes and short-lived, device-specific authentication tokens. Each passcode is bound to a single device and automatically expires after its licence period, preventing unauthorised access. All servers are patched and monitored according to Microsoft’s UK security baselines.
All communication between your device and our servers is encrypted in transit using HTTPS (TLS 1.2 or higher), and data stored within Azure is encrypted at rest using AES-256-bit encryption.
No one at Comfort Companions CIC can access or listen to your conversations. Audio and text are processed automatically to generate your companion’s replies; they are not stored permanently or reviewed by staff.
5. Data Retention
Your companion’s audio replies to you are kept for up to 48 hours on secure servers solely to allow us to diagnose and fix technical service issues if they occur. After this short retention period, they are automatically and permanently deleted. We do not manually review or archive any reply files.
This short retention period allows us to investigate technical issues if a widespread system problem is reported.
Each reply file has a randomised filename that contains no identifiers and cannot be linked to you or your device. No voice recordings or other conversation data are stored.
6. Your Control Over Data
We follow strict UK data protection laws to keep your information safe.
No one at Comfort Companions CIC can access or listen to your conversations.
Your chats exist only while the app is running on your device, although your companion’s most recent replies are stored temporarily on our servers for technical purposes as described above.
You remain in control of your data at all times. Conversation data is never permanently stored and you may delete your companion’s temporary data at any time by closing or restarting the app.
7. Data Collected
The apps do not collect any personally identifiable information.
The only data temporarily stored is your companion’s audio replies, which are stored on secure UK servers for up to 48 hours to help diagnose technical issues. This data cannot be linked back to you.
8. Data Linked to You
The apps do not link any information to your identity.
No data can be associated with you personally.
9. Sharing of Information
The Comfort Companions service analyses only the words you speak to generate an appropriate conversational response. No profiling, advertising or behavioural analysis takes place.
We do not sell, rent or share your data with anyone.
We will only disclose information if we are legally required to do so.
10. Your Rights
You have the right to:
- Request access to any personal data we hold (if any)
- Request correction or deletion of that data
We will respond to all valid data-rights requests within one month. To protect user privacy, we may ask for limited information to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.
Because we do not store any personal data, it may not be possible to identify information that relates specifically to you, but we will always explain this if you make a data-rights request.
11. Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please contact us:
Comfort Companions CIC
Email: privacy@comfortcompanions.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 117 251 06 96
Address: 56 Heron Gardens, Portishead, Bristol, BS20 7DH, United Kingdom