Legal

Privacy policy

Last updated 28 October 2026.

This policy covers StandingBy: the mobile app, the service behind it, the texts and calls it sends, the consent page at app.standingby.io, and this website. StandingBy is made by Straight A Software LLC, a Massachusetts limited liability company ("we", "us").

Two kinds of people are involved. A user installs StandingBy and sets up check-ins. A contact is someone a user chooses to be told if they stop checking in. Contacts do not need to install anything, and we hold information about them anyway. This policy explains both.

StandingBy has not been released. Until it is, the app and service are not collecting information from the public. This policy describes how they are designed to work at launch.

1. Information about users

Your account

• How you sign in. Your email address and a password, which we store only in a form that cannot be turned back into the password. If you sign in with Apple or Google instead, we receive an identifier for your account from them, and we ask you for a backup email address, which you confirm, so you can still get in if you lose access to that account. We email you only to confirm your address, to reset your password, to answer an email you sent us, and, if you tick the box asking for it when you delete your account, to tell you the deletion is complete. Any other email is sent only if you turn on email notices; news about your contacts comes as a notification and in the app.
• Your display name. It is included in every message we send to your contacts, so they know who the message is about.
• Your phone number, which you confirm with a one-time code. It is needed to start a session. We use it for check-in reminders by text on profiles that have them, for checking in by reply where you allow it, for a text whenever your password is reset, and for codes that protect a running session after a password reset.

The people you add

For each person you add, we store the name you give them and their phone number, as well as any circles you put them in. Section 2 lists what else we hold about them, such as whether they agreed to be contacted.

If you pick people from your phone's contacts, the app receives only the contacts you pick. It does not read your address book.

Your profiles and sessions

• Profiles: each profile's name, check-in schedule, steps, the wait before each step, who each step contacts, and how.
• Style: whether a profile is Obvious or Disguised, and which cover story it uses, so a new phone can restore it and a reminder shows that cover story's buttons. The services that deliver reminders to your phone see which cover story a reminder is for.
• Sessions: when each session started and ended, your check-ins, missed check-ins, uses of SOS, the time zone the session ran in, and a record of every text and call sent, to whom, and whether it was delivered.

Profile names are never shown to your contacts.

Your location

You do not choose when each profile collects your location. Every profile collects as much as the permission you give your phone allows: a location only when you use the app or, if any phone you use with StandingBy allows location all the time, also in the background during a session. What we collect:

• During a session, a location when you check in in the app, press SOS or open the app, and, if location is allowed all the time, also when you check in from a notification and every so often in the background.
• SOS has its own setting, on by default for every profile. With it on, the texts sent when you ask for help include a link to your location when we have one, even if no step of the profile sends one, and your phone can go on sending locations until that SOS is resolved. You can turn it off. That stops your location being sent with a request for help. If your phone allows location, we still collect one when you press SOS, as we do when you check in in the app, and keep it with that alert's record.
• Outside a session, a location when you open the app, if you have given permission. We keep only the most recent one, so that a session you start soon afterwards has a last known location even if your phone cannot get one later.

How long we keep a location. Ordinarily, each location is deleted 72 hours after it was captured, so we hold a record of where your phone reported being over the last 72 hours, and no longer. While a session is running we keep your most recent location even when it is older than that. That exception ends when the session does. Ending a session starts no new 72 hours, and a most recent location that is already older than 72 hours is deleted then. Locations kept for an alert follow the rules below instead.

An alert keeps more, for longer. An alert starts in one of two ways: you miss a check-in and a step you set up runs, or our servers handle your SOS, unless a check-in you made after the SOS had already reached us. A step is one stage of what a profile does after a missed check-in: who is told, and how. Each step has a wait before it, the first included, so missing a check-in does not start an alert at that moment. A step runs when its wait is over, no check-in from you has reached our servers, and our servers decide who, if anyone, it should contact. That can be nobody, for example when the people in that step have not yet agreed to be contacted, or have withdrawn their agreement. The alert starts all the same, even though no message is sent. If your check-in reaches us before any step runs, that missed check-in starts no alert, and nothing extra is kept for it. A check-in made with no connection does not count until it reaches us.

From then on we keep a record for that alert. It contains:

• the locations from the 72 hours before the alert started that we had not yet deleted, including any from an earlier session,
• every location we accept from your phone while the alert is open,
• your last known location at the moment the alert started, even if it was captured more than 72 hours before. If your phone had been off or out of reach for days, this is the one location we have.

These are what your phone reported, not proof of where you were. A location that arrives after the alert is resolved is not included in the alert's record.

We keep that record while the alert is open and for 30 days after it is resolved, which happens when a check-in clears that alert or the session ends. Neither proves you are safe, and the record may be the best one there is of where your phone was, so a record of your movements around an alert can be kept for longer than 72 hours. A location in more than one alert's record stays until every period that applies to it has ended, including any extension under "When a record is kept longer" below. All of this happens whether or not any text sent for that alert included a location link.

The location link never shows that record. It shows only your phone's most recent reported location, and only while the alert is open. Who can open a link, and any other disclosure, is in section 6. Deleting your account changes none of these periods, as section 8 explains.

When a record is kept longer. An alert's record is kept past those periods in three cases only:

• A legal requirement that binds us, such as a court order. We check that it is genuine, and keep what it covers for as long as it requires. This is the one case with no time limit of our own.
• A request to preserve it that we approve. Only you, or someone with legal authority to act for you, such as a guardian or someone you or a court formally appointed, can ask. We may also preserve a record without a request when we verify a missing-person case or receive a request from law enforcement. We verify each: you as the account holder, a representative by their legal documents, law enforcement independently. Being one of your contacts, holding a location link, or being forwarded one, gives no right to ask. A contact worried about you can go to the police, who can ask us. A person at StandingBy reviews each request and needs a reason to approve it. An approval covers only the locations it names that, when we approve it, are still within their period or still held under one of these cases. Other locations from the same alert whose retention has already ended are not included. It lasts 30 days. We extend it only after a fresh review finds it is still needed, and extending it never adds anything to what is kept.
• A short hold while we review a request. Once per alert, a verified request can hold the locations in that record whose retention has not yet ended for up to 72 hours from when we receive it, if they would otherwise be deleted within those 72 hours. Asking again does not restart that.

Approval to preserve a record gives the person who asked no access to it. Disclosure is a separate decision, described in section 6, and keeping a record longer never reopens the account or a location link.

The session history and message records described in section 7 never include a location. Session history may record that a location was sent, never where.

Before your phone first asks you for location permission, the app warns you that your phone's settings and status bar can show that an app is using location, and that with location allowed all the time your phone sometimes asks you to review it. Setting up a Disguised profile repeats that warning.

Your devices

To remind you to check in, to show your sessions correctly and to decide when your profiles collect your location, we collect for each device:

• a push notification token,
• whether notifications are allowed, including higher-priority ones,
• whether location is allowed, and how precisely,
• app version, operating system and version, language and region, and time zone.

When you contact us

If you email us, we have your email address and whatever you write.

2. Information about contacts

If a user added you, we hold information about you even if you have never used StandingBy.

What we hold

• Your phone number, and the name the user gave you. If more than one user added you, each has their own entry.
• Whether your number can receive texts and calls, which a phone number lookup service checks when a user adds you.
• The StandingBy number assigned to contact you.
• Introduction and consent status: whether the user sent you an introduction, and whether you agreed to be contacted or opted out.
• Consent records: that you confirmed your number with a one-time code, sent by text or read out in a call, when you agreed or withdrew, the exact version of the wording you were shown, whether you tapped to save our contact card, and technical details of the request such as IP address and browser type.
• Message records: each text and call we sent you, when, and whether it was delivered, along with any replies you send.

We cannot tell whether you saved our number to your contacts, and we do not try to find out.

Where it comes from

From the user who added you, from you (on the consent page or by replying to us), and from phone carriers and the lookup service.

What we tell the user about you

Whether you agreed to be contacted, whether you opted out, whether your number can receive texts and calls, and what we sent you and whether it was delivered. If you opt out, we tell each user affected straight away that you can no longer be reached.

What we tell you about the user

Their display name, and that they have checked in, have not, have asked for help or have stopped monitoring. If the user chose to share their location with you, an alert can include a link to a page showing where their phone last reported being and when. Section 6 says when it stops working. We never tell you their phone number, their profile name, why they set it up, or anything about other contacts.

3. This website

standingby.io uses no cookies, no analytics, no advertising and no trackers. Fonts are served from our own site. The site is hosted by Cloudflare, which processes technical information such as IP addresses to deliver pages and protect against attacks.

If you email hello@straightasoftware.com to hear when StandingBy is available, we use your address only for that, and delete it once we have told you or you ask us to.

4. How we use information

We use information only to:

• run StandingBy: remind users to check in, contact the people they chose when a check-in is missed or the user asks for help, show those people the user's last known location where the user chose that, and tell them when the user checks in or stops monitoring,
• show users whether their contacts can be reached,
• honor opt-outs, and keep records of consent and of what we sent,
• keep the service reliable and secure, and prevent misuse,
• answer support requests,
• comply with the law.

We do not use it for advertising, we do not build marketing profiles, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

Reminders, texts and calls pass through phone carriers and other services we do not control. They can be delayed, filtered or lost, and we cannot promise that anyone is reached. Section 3 of the terms of service explains how.

5. Phone numbers

We use a phone number only to send the texts and calls described in our text message and call terms, to check whether it can receive them, and to keep the records described above. We never use a contact's number to promote StandingBy to them.

6. Who we share it with

We share personal information only with service providers that help us run StandingBy, and only as much as they need to do it:

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, such as in response to a valid court order. Where the law allows, we will tell the affected person first.

Location is sent only to the contacts a user chose, as a link. Each contact gets their own link, and anyone they forward it to can also open it for as long as it works. It stops working for all of them when the alert it was sent for is resolved, or sooner if that contact withdraws their agreement to be contacted about the user, which does not affect other contacts' links. We do not ask for proof of identity first, because that would slow down someone trying to find the user. Otherwise location is disclosed only when the law requires it or to protect someone's life in an emergency. The page that shows it loads no maps or other services from anyone else, so no map or address company receives it from us. The page offers buttons to open the location in Apple Maps or Google Maps. If the person viewing it taps one, their own device sends the location to that company, under its own privacy terms.

If Straight A Software is sold or merged, information may pass to the new owner, who must keep to this policy or ask for permission to do otherwise.

7. How long we keep it

Why some records are kept for 4 years. People can bring legal claims about automated calls and texts for up to 4 years. Records of what we sent, and of who agreed and who opted out, are how we show we acted lawfully. If you delete your account or ask us to delete your information, those records are kept but reduced to what that purpose needs: phone number, times, message type and delivery status. A consent record also keeps your display name, as your contacts were shown it, so we can show whose name they agreed to. A contact's request to delete their information also keeps which users it covered, as the table above says. Profile names and other details are removed.

What a deadline means. This is about information held in the StandingBy service, not our email. Wherever this policy says such information is deleted at a certain time, including "at once", that time is when its period ends. Removal from our systems follows in a cleanup that finishes within 3 days of that time. Backups are separate: we do not go into a backup to remove something from it. Instead, no backup is kept for more than 7 days, so information we have removed can remain in encrypted backups for up to 7 more days. If we need to keep a copy longer to investigate a problem with the service, we first remove the personal information from it: names, phone numbers, email addresses, locations and anything a user wrote. If we ever have to restore our systems from a backup, anything removed since that backup was made comes back with it, and we remove it again within 3 days of the restore. In the meantime it gives nobody access: a deleted account stays closed, and a location link that had stopped stays stopped. A request to preserve cannot revive a period that has ended. Only a binding legal requirement can still cover information whose period has ended and which we have not yet removed.

8. Deleting and accessing your information

Deletion follows the periods in section 7, which also says when removal from our systems follows and how long a copy can remain in backups.

Users

You can delete your account in the app, or by emailing support@straightasoftware.com. Deleting your account ends any running session, which resolves any alert still open, and stops all new collection at once. From then on nobody can sign in to the account or open a location link.

Deleting does not shorten how long anything is kept, but nothing that identifies you is kept more than 30 days after we accept your request, except the records section 7 keeps for 4 years or more, our opt-out list, emails you sent us, which are kept as long as needed to deal with them, and a location record under the cases in "When a record is kept longer" in section 1. That covers your profiles, the people you added and your session history. An ordinary location still keeps its 72 hours. Locations kept for an alert are not deleted early, so that deleting an account cannot be used to destroy such a record, and they stay until their own 30 days end, which is at most 30 days after we accept your request unless one of those cases applies. If we approve a hold on location from an alert, for you, the police or someone legally acting for you, or the law requires us to keep something, we keep it, with your phone number and email so we can check who is asking, for as long as that lasts.

Before you confirm, the app tells you how long your locations are kept after deletion. Once you delete, it tells you the date deletion will be complete, and emails you when it is done only if you tick the box asking for that. We cannot take back a message or a location that someone has already received or saved.

Contacts

• To stop being contacted: withdraw online (on the consent page while its link works, or at any time after confirming your number with a one-time code) to stop contact about one person who added you, or reply STOP to a text from the StandingBy number that contacts you, to stop contact about everyone who added you. You can also tell us any other way, and we act on what you ask. Each stops texts and automated calls alike.
• To have your information deleted: confirm your number on our website with a one-time code and choose to delete your information, or email support@straightasoftware.com with your phone number, and we may ask you to confirm you control the number. From then on we do not contact you about anyone, and each user you agreed to be contacted about is told straight away that you can no longer be reached and when your entry will be removed. 30 days after we accept your request, we remove your entries from those users' lists, remove your name and number from their session history, and from the history of any user you agreed to who has since removed your entry, so that it shows only that someone was contacted, and delete what we collected about you, such as the record that you confirmed your number. We keep a record of your request, as section 7 describes, so your information is not used again. A user who added your number but whom you never agreed to is not told anything and their entry stays as it is, because confirming the number shows that you hold it now, not that you are the person they meant. We keep your number on our opt-out list, so that we do not contact you about anyone unless you agree to be contacted about them, and keep the records described in section 7 as kept for 4 years or more. Anything a binding legal requirement, such as a court order, requires us to keep stays for as long as it requires.
• If you change your mind within those 30 days: agreeing to be contacted about any one person, again online or on an invitation from any user, cancels your request, and nothing is deleted. You stay opted out for everyone else until you agree for them too, and the other users you had agreed to be contacted about are told that your entry will not be removed but that you still cannot be reached. After the 30 days, anyone can invite you again, and agreeing on their invitation is a fresh start. Asking again while a request is pending does not change its date. A request made after you cancel one, or after the 30 days, starts its own 30 days.

Access and correction

Anyone can ask what we hold about them, or ask us to correct it, by emailing support@straightasoftware.com. Some US states give their residents specific privacy rights. We give these rights to everyone, wherever they live, and we will not treat you differently for using them.

9. Security

Information is encrypted in transit. Our database and its backups are encrypted where they are stored. Access to information is limited to people who need it to run the service. StandingBy is not end-to-end encrypted: our servers must know who your contacts are and their numbers in order to contact them. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will tell you as the law requires.

10. Children

StandingBy is for adults. Users must be 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe we hold information about a child under 13, email support@straightasoftware.com and we will delete it.

11. Changes

If we change this policy, we will update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will also tell users in the app before it takes effect.

12. Contact

Straight A Software LLC
support@straightasoftware.com

StandingBy is based in the United States, and information is processed and stored in the United States.