Privacy
Privacy Notice
Did you ring a business and an AI answered? This page is about how we handle information for our own website and clients. The notice you want is If an AI receptionist answered your call.
1. Who we are
RING ORLA LTD (“ORLA”, “we”, “us”) is a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17368852. Our registered office is given in full under Company details.
We provide an AI receptionist service that answers telephone calls for trades and small businesses.
Contact us about anything on this page: hello@ringorla.com. It is a monitored inbox and a person reads it.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller, reference ZC209734. You can check that yourself on the ICO’s public register. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer because we are not required to; raise any data protection question at the address above.
2. Who this notice covers
People we deal with directly: visitors to this website, people who enquire, and our client businesses and their staff.
If you telephoned a business and an AI receptionist answered, that business is the controller and we act on its instructions. Read the caller notice instead.
3. What we collect, why, and on what basis
| Who you are | What we collect | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website visitor | Pages viewed, approximate location from IP address, device and browser, from strictly necessary cookies and server logs | Serving and securing the site | Legitimate interests (Art 6(1)(f)) — running a working, secure website |
| Enquirer | Your name, business name, email, phone, trade, website and what you tell us about your calls | Responding to you and assessing your enquiry | Steps prior to a contract (Art 6(1)(b)), and legitimate interests |
| Caller to our own demo line | A recording and transcript of the call, your phone number, and what you told the receptionist | Demonstrating the product and answering you | Legitimate interests (Art 6(1)(f)) |
| Client business and its staff | Contact and business details, account and configuration data, support correspondence, usage and billing records | Providing and supporting the service; billing | Contract (Art 6(1)(b)) |
| Client business | Company details, VAT and payment records | Accounting and tax | Legal obligation (Art 6(1)(c)) |
| Business we approached | Business name, publicly listed business contact details, and where we found them | Offering a service relevant to that business | Legitimate interests, with an assessment on file. You can object at any time and we stop — that right is unconditional (Art 21(2)) and we do not ask why. |
Calls to our own demo and sales lines are answered by our own product, so they are recorded and transcribed on the same terms as any other ORLA call. You are told at the start of the call and can object during it. For those calls we are the controller.
4. Marketing
We contact businesses about our service. We do not send marketing email to sole traders or ordinary partnerships without consent, because PECR regulation 22 treats them as individuals. We do not use automated calling systems for marketing. Every message identifies us and gives a working way to say stop. Say stop once and you go on a permanent suppression list.
5. Who we share it with
Service providers who process on our behalf, under contract. This is the complete list.
| Provider | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Website hosting, security, and this site’s enquiry database | Global edge network. Enquiry records are stored in Western Europe. |
| Supabase | Booking, enquiry and transcript database | United Kingdom (London) |
| Railway | Runs the software that answers calls | United States (San Francisco) |
| Twilio | Telephone network, and storage of call recordings | United States |
| Vapi | Real-time voice conversation handling | United States |
| OpenAI | Understanding speech and composing replies | United States |
| Stripe | Card payments and subscription billing | United States |
| Resend | Sending our emails to you | United States |
| Deepgram | Converting speech to text | United States |
| ElevenLabs | The receptionist’s voice | United States |
| Calendar, and only for a client who has chosen to connect their own Google Calendar. Not used by any other client. | United States and global |
If we add or change a sub-processor, we will email you before it happens, not after. You will get at least 30 days’ notice, and if you object we will either find another way to do it or let you leave without penalty, including a refund of anything you have paid in advance. A published list is only worth something if it is kept honest as it changes, so this is a commitment rather than a courtesy.
We also share with professional advisers, and with anyone we are legally required to tell. We do not sell personal data, we do not share it for anyone else’s marketing, and we do not permit it to be used to train third-party AI models.
6. The channels ORLA answers on, and who handles each
ORLA currently answers telephone calls and text messages. Text messages sent to ORLA’s own number are processed and answered using our AI receptionist, but SMS is not currently enabled for client accounts, so texting that number means you are contacting Ring Orla Ltd directly, not a client business. WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram messaging are still being built and are not live, so no one’s messages are being handled on those channels yet. We are explaining all of these channels now so the information is in place before each one is enabled for client accounts.
The split is the same on every channel. If you contacted one of our client businesses, that business is the controller and decides why your message is handled, and we are its processor and act only on its instructions. If you contacted us directly, we are the controller. Read the caller notice for what a caller to one of our client businesses is told.
On every channel an AI assistant reads the message and writes the reply. It is not a person, and we tell the people who reach us that.
| Channel | Status | Who carries and handles the message | What is collected |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone calls | Live | Twilio carries the call. Vapi, Deepgram, OpenAI and ElevenLabs handle the live conversation and the transcript, as listed in the table above. | The recording, a transcript, the caller’s number, and the time and length of the call. |
| SMS | Live on our own number, not enabled for client accounts | Twilio carries the message, and our own software with OpenAI reads it and composes a reply. | The message text, the sender’s number, and the time. |
| Coming soon | Meta (WhatsApp) carries the message, and our own software with OpenAI reads it and composes a reply. | The message text, the sender’s WhatsApp number and profile name, and the time. | |
| Instagram and Facebook messages | Coming soon | Meta carries the message, and our own software with OpenAI reads it and composes a reply. | The message text, the sender’s account name, and the time. |
Before any messaging channel goes live we will add its provider, including Meta, to the sub-processor list above and give you at least 30 days’ notice, as we promise for any sub-processor. Meta, Twilio and the AI providers named here handle messages outside the UK, under the safeguards set out in the international transfers section below. We hold message content in our active systems for up to 90 days and then delete it under our retention process, the same basis as calls, set out in the retention section below. Copies in backups or security records, and copies held by a provider, may follow separate retention periods. We require appropriate data-protection terms from our providers, and we do not claim that deleting our active copy immediately deletes every copy a provider holds.
Where we handle messages for a client business, you would normally exercise your rights through that business, which is the controller, and we help it respond as our contract requires. Where ORLA is the controller, the rights and contact details set out later in this notice apply directly, including your route to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
7. Connecting your Google Calendar
This section is for our client businesses. Connecting a calendar is optional and the service works without it — ORLA keeps its own diary. If you do connect one, this is exactly what happens.
What we ask Google for, and what we actually do
When you connect, Google shows you a consent screen and you approve access to your calendar. Here is everything we do with that access.
| What we do | What we get from Google, or send to it |
|---|---|
| Check when you are already busy | Only the start and end times of entries already in your diary, from Google’s free/busy service. We do not receive the titles, the notes, the guests, the locations, or any other detail of anything already in your calendar. We cannot see what you are doing, only that you are not free. |
| Put a booking in your diary | We create a new event and send Google the job type, the customer’s name, their postcode and address, their phone number, what they said they need, any price actually agreed on the call, and a booking reference. |
| Move a booking a caller changed | We change the start and end time of an event ORLA created. No other field, and never an event we did not create. |
| Cancel a booking a caller cancelled | We delete an event ORLA created. Never an event we did not create. |
That is the complete list. We do not read your existing appointments, we do not copy your calendar into our systems, and we do not touch any entry that ORLA did not put there.
The permission Google asks you for is wider than what we do, and we would rather say so than let you find out. Google’s consent screen currently reads “See, edit, share and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar”. That is Google’s standard wording for the permission we currently request, not a description of our software. In practice we only ever read busy times and only ever change events ORLA created, as the table above sets out. We are working to request a narrower permission so the screen matches the behaviour.
How it is used
Busy times are used for one thing: working out which appointment slots the receptionist can offer a caller. That happens during the call, in memory, and the busy times are never written to our database. The receptionist is told which times are free. It is never told what you are doing at the times that are not.
Events we create are the point of the whole feature: they are how a booking taken on the phone reaches the diary on your own phone.
How it is stored, and for how long
| The key that lets us reach your calendar (your Google refresh token) | Encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it is stored, in our database in the United Kingdom. The encryption key is held only in our server environment and never in the database, so a copy of the database on its own does not open your calendar. Kept while you stay connected. Deleted when you ask us, and when your account is closed. If you remove our access at Google instead, the key we hold stops working the moment you do it — see below for how to have the dead key removed too. |
| Your busy times | Never stored. Used during the call and discarded. |
| The bookings ORLA creates | The event lives in your calendar and is yours. Our own copy of the booking sits in our database and follows the retention table in the next section. |
What we never do with it
We do not sell information from your Google account. We do not use it for advertising of any kind, ours or anyone else’s. We do not use it to train any AI model, ours or a supplier’s. We do not transfer it to anyone except as needed to provide the booking feature you switched on, or where the law requires it.
No one at ORLA reads your calendar. There is no screen anywhere in our system that shows it, because we never fetch its contents in the first place. The only exception is the ordinary one: if you ask us for help with a specific booking, or the law requires it, or we must look into a security problem.
Limited Use. ORLA’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
In plain English, that means we only use what we get from your Google account to run the booking feature you can see in the product, we do not pass it on to anybody else, we never use it for adverts, we never use it to train AI models, and no person reads it except in the narrow cases named just above.
How to disconnect, and what happens then
Either of these works, and you do not have to give a reason.
- Cut us off at Google. Go to myaccount.google.com/permissions, find ORLA, and choose Remove access. This takes effect immediately, does not need us to do anything, and from that moment the key we hold cannot open your calendar. It does not by itself erase that now-useless key from our database, so if you want it gone as well, tell us at the address below and we will delete it.
- Ask us. Email hello@ringorla.com and we delete the stored key and confirm when it is done.
What happens after you disconnect:
- ORLA stops reading your busy times and stops writing bookings into your calendar. It goes back to using its own diary, and it keeps answering your calls exactly as before.
- Appointments ORLA already put in your calendar stay there. They are your records in your account, and we would rather not delete your working diary out from under you. Remove any you do not want in the normal way.
- The encrypted key is deleted from our database once you ask us, or automatically when your account is closed — our offboarding process deletes it and writes a receipt recording that it was deleted.
8. International transfers
As the table above shows, several providers are in the United States. Where personal data goes there we rely on the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified and has opted into it, and otherwise on the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. We re-check certification quarterly. Our first check was carried out on 30 July 2026 and four supplier agreements remain outstanding from it.
Being specific about recordings: written records — your booking, your contact details, the transcript — are stored in the United Kingdom. The audio recording itself is stored by our telephone provider, Twilio, in the United States, under one of the transfer mechanisms above. The software that handles a call in progress runs on Railway in the United States, so records pass through the United States on their way to being stored here.
9. How long we keep it
| Website and server logs | Up to 30 days |
| Recordings of calls to our own lines | 90 days, then deleted, including from our telephone provider. Our demonstration number is handled by a US supplier, Vapi, whose own terms let it keep a copy — see the note below. |
| Transcripts of calls to our own lines | 90 days, then deleted. Copies held by our AI suppliers are governed by their retention terms, not ours. |
| Enquiries that go nowhere | 12 months from last contact. We do this by hand at present, not automatically. |
| Client account and configuration records | Term of the contract, then 12 months |
| Your calendar connection (the encrypted key) | Until you disconnect or your account is closed, then deleted. See Connecting your Google Calendar. |
| Invoices, accounts and tax records | 6 years after the end of the financial year, as HMRC requires |
| Suppression list | Indefinitely — we have to keep it to keep our promise not to contact you |
About our demonstration numbers, 020 4538 1650 and 07727 263393. Both of those lines are handled for us by Vapi, a supplier in the United States. Under Vapi’s own terms it may retain recordings and transcripts and use them to improve its AI models, and our 90-day deletion does not reach the copy it holds. We are moving that number onto our own system to close this. In the meantime, please treat the demonstration line as a demonstration: don’t use it for anything confidential.
10. Your rights
You have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, and portability; the right not to be subject to solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects; and the right to withdraw consent where consent is the basis.
Email hello@ringorla.com. We answer within one calendar month. There is no charge unless a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.
11. Cookies
This site uses only strictly necessary cookies. We run no analytics, no advertising cookies and no third-party trackers. That is why you have not been shown a cookie banner — none is required for strictly necessary cookies under PECR regulation 6. If that ever changes we will ask your consent first, and it will actually block the tags until you give it.
12. Complaints
Please raise it with us first at hello@ringorla.com. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint · 0303 123 1113 · Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
13. Changes
We post any change here and update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your data we will tell you directly.
Company details
RING ORLA LTD, registered in England and Wales, company number 17368852. Registered office: 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX. Contact: hello@ringorla.com. Not currently registered for VAT. All prices shown on this site are the total payable, with no additional fees.