Privacy Policy
March 10th, 2009
The Google Privacy Policy describes
how we treat personal information when you use Google's products and services,
including information provided when you use Google Voice. In addition, the following
describes our privacy practices that are specific to Google Voice.
Personal information
- You need a Google
Account to access Google Voice. Google asks for some personal information when you
create a Google Account, including your alternate contact information and a password,
which is used to protect your account from unauthorized access. A Google Account allows
you to access many of our services that require registration. You will also be asked to
choose a Google Voice phone number that will be assigned for your use, and any
forwarding telephone numbers that may be used in conjunction with the service.
- Google Voice stores, processes and maintains your call history, voicemail
greeting(s), voicemail messages, Short Message Service (SMS) messages, recorded
conversations, and other data related to your account in order to provide the service
to you.
- When you use Google Voice, Google's servers automatically record certain
information about your use of Google Voice. Similar to other web services, Google Voice
records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of
log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, links); and other
log information
(including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer
URL). Google's servers also automatically collect telephony log information (including
calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls,
SMS routing information, and types of calls).
Uses
- Google maintains and processes your Google Voice account and its contents to
provide the Google Voice service to you and to improve our services.
- Google's computers process the information in your messages for various purposes,
including formatting and displaying the information to you, playing you your messages,
backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Google Voice.
- Google may send you information related to your Google Voice account or other
Google services.
- Voicemail Transcription - if you use Google Voice's voicemail transcription
service, Google may transcribe voicemail messages into text and email and/or SMS the
resulting text to the email account or phone number(s) designated in your user
settings. Google's computers process the information in your messages for various
purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering
related links, backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you
Google Voice.
Information sharing and onward transfer
- We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal information with any third
parties except in the limited circumstances described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when we believe
we are required to do so by law.
Your choices
- You may change your Google Voice account settings and you may upgrade or downgrade
your account through the "settings" section.
- You may organize or delete your call history, voicemail greeting(s), voicemail
messages (both audio and/or transcriptions), Short Message Service (SMS) messages, and
recorded conversations through your Google Voice account or terminate your account
through the Google Account section of Google Voice settings. Such deletions or
terminations will take immediate effect in your account view, except that call history
for billable calls will remain visible on your account. Residual copies of deleted data
and accounts, except call record information, may take up to 90 days to be deleted from
our active servers and may remain in our backup systems. Anonymized copies of call
record information, with no personally identifiable information will be retained in our
systems to meet our reporting and auditing requirements.
More Information
Google adheres to the US Safe Harbor privacy principles. For more information about the
Safe Harbor framework or our registration, see the Department of Commerce's web site.
For questions concerning the product or your account, please check out the Google Help page.