CompanionPrivacy policy
Last updated: 7 October 2026
This policy explains what Companion does with personal data: both the data of the businesses who use our product, on the web and in our iPhone app, and the data of their customers whose WhatsApp messages and website chats pass through it. Those are two different things and the law treats them differently, so we have set them out separately below.
Who we are
Message Companion is a trading name of DIGICORE IT LTD, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 15984126.
Registered office: 124 City Road, London, England, EC1V 2NX.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller, registration reference ZC244107.
Contact: support@msgcompanion.com, or the form on our support page.
Data protection contact: we are not required to appoint a data protection officer, so questions about how we handle personal data go to the same address, marked for the attention of the data protection contact. We answer within one month.
The two roles we play
Which role we are in decides who is answerable for the data, and who you should approach about it.
For account data, we are the controller
When you sign up, invite colleagues and run a workspace, we decide how that information is used. We are responsible for it, and this policy governs it.
For conversation data, we are the processor
The WhatsApp conversations between a business and its customers belong to that business, and so do the chats visitors start in the chat widget a business places on its own website. They are the controller. We only handle those messages on that business’s instructions, under the terms of our data processing agreement.
If you are a customer of a business that uses Companion, or a visitor who used the chat on its website, and you want to know why they hold your messages, or you want them deleted, please ask that business. We cannot make those decisions on their behalf, but we will help them act on your request.
Personal data we handle
Account data
- Name, work email address and the role you hold in a workspace.
- How you sign in. If you use Google or Apple, we receive the name and email address you choose to share with us. Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real one. If you sign in with Apple, we also keep a token Apple issues to us, encrypted, so that deleting your account can end your Apple sign-in too. If you turn on two-factor sign-in, we keep the secret your authenticator app uses.
- The business name, and the WhatsApp business numbers connected to the workspace.
- A record of significant actions taken in the workspace, kept as an audit log.
Conversation data
- Messages sent and received through a connected WhatsApp number, including text, images, documents, audio and other attachments.
- The phone number and WhatsApp profile name of the person messaging the business.
- Delivery and read receipts, and notes or assignments staff add to a conversation.
- Website chats: the messages and images a visitor sends through a business’s chat widget, any name, email address or phone number the visitor enters in its form, and the page they started from, their browser and device type, and their country. We do not store the visitor’s IP address; we keep only a salted, one-way hash of it to limit abuse.
Our iPhone app
- If you allow notifications, a push token for your device and its platform, so we can alert you to new messages. A notification can show the customer’s name and a preview of their message unless you turn previews off in the app.
- Photos, camera images and documents, only the ones you choose to send in a conversation. The app does not read your photo library or files otherwise.
- Voice notes you record to send in a conversation. The app uses the microphone only while you are recording one, after you have allowed it. We convert the recording to WhatsApp’s voice note format and pass it to WhatsApp; we keep the message record, not a separate copy of the recording.
- When you open a photo, voice note, video or document in the app, we fetch it from WhatsApp and keep a private copy so the app can play or show it. Voice notes a customer sends are converted so an iPhone can play them.
- The app does not collect your location, your contacts, advertising identifiers, usage analytics or crash reports.
Support requests
- When you contact us, through the support form, the Support page in our Shopify app or by email: your name, email address, business name if you give it, and what you write to us. From the Shopify app we also note which shop the request came from.
Booking a call
- When you book a meeting through the calendar on our website: your name, email address, time zone, the time you chose and anything you add to the booking. The calendar is provided by Cal.com, which holds the booking and sends the confirmation and reminders.
Technical data
- Sign-in session information, held in cookies. See our cookie policy.
- Error reports and usage events, where those tools are enabled.
Why we handle it, and our lawful basis
| What for | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Providing the product to a business that has signed up | Performance of a contract |
| Processing customer conversations on a business’s behalf | The business’s own lawful basis, on their documented instructions |
| Running our Shopify app for a shop that has installed it | Performance of a contract |
| Sending the notifications you have turned on, in the app and by email | Performance of a contract |
| Arranging and holding a call you have booked with us | Legitimate interests, or steps taken at your request before entering a contract |
| Answering support requests | Legitimate interests, or performance of a contract if you are a customer |
| Keeping the service secure, and investigating misuse | Legitimate interests |
| Improving the product through aggregate usage data | Legitimate interests |
| Meeting our legal and accounting obligations | Legal obligation |
WhatsApp and Meta
Companion is built on the official WhatsApp Business Platform. Messages travel through Meta’s infrastructure before they reach us and after they leave us, and Meta handles them under its own terms and privacy policy, which we cannot vary. Connecting a WhatsApp number to Companion does not change your relationship with Meta.
WhatsApp is a trademark of Meta Platforms, Inc. Companion is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of Meta.
Our Shopify app
This section applies to merchants who install Companion: WhatsApp Chat from the Shopify App Store. It adds a WhatsApp button to their storefront. A shopper who clicks it sees a small chat, types a message, and sending it opens WhatsApp with that message ready to send to the merchant’s own number.
What Shopify shares with us when you install
- Your shop’s name, its myshopify.com address and its own domain if it has one.
- The shop owner’s email address, its currency and its time zone.
- An access token that lets the app act for your shop. We store it encrypted.
We use the owner’s email address to set up the free Companion workspace that holds your button’s settings, to send you emails about the app, and to fill in the support form in the app for you.
What the app reads from your shop
The app asks Shopify for no permissions to your shop’s data. It does not read your products, inventory, customers or orders, and holds no copy of any of them.
What the app keeps about you
- Your button’s settings: your WhatsApp number, the name, colours and images you choose, your welcome message and greeting.
- Images you upload for the button or the chat’s header.
What the button collects from shoppers
What a shopper types in the chat does not reach us. It is written into the link that opens WhatsApp, in the shopper’s own browser, and goes from there to your WhatsApp number directly. The conversation that follows is between the shopper and you in WhatsApp, and does not pass through Companion.
So that you can see how the button is used, we record when a shopper opens the chat, when they send to WhatsApp and when they close it. With each we keep the time, the page it happened on without its query string, and whether the device was a phone, tablet or computer. We do not keep the shopper’s name, contact details, messages or IP address with these, and we do not record page views. These are kept as set out in the retention table.
The button sets no cookies. If a shopper closes the greeting beside the button, their browser remembers that for 30 days so it does not come back on every page; this is stored in their browser, not sent to us.
When you uninstall
- The access token is destroyed at once, and the button stops appearing on your storefront, including any copy of it pasted into an older theme.
- Your settings are kept, so that reinstalling restores them.
- About 48 hours after an uninstall, Shopify asks us to erase the shop’s data. We then delete the shop’s record, the button and its settings, the images you uploaded and its usage records. If nobody ever signed in to the Companion workspace made for your shop, that is deleted too.
Requests from your customers
When one of your customers asks you, through Shopify, for their data or for it to be erased, Shopify tells us. The app holds nothing that identifies a shopper, so there is normally nothing to find. We still look, matching on the email address or phone number Shopify sends.
- For a data request, we email you what we found, or confirm that we hold nothing, so you can answer them. Shopify expects you, not us, to answer the customer.
- For an erasure request, we delete anything we found. Nothing of that customer is left in Companion.
Either way, the request is noted in your workspace’s audit log with the date. The erasure note does not keep the customer’s details. Both are completed as soon as Shopify sends the request.
Who else processes your data
We use a small number of suppliers to run the service. Each is bound by a written contract that holds them to the same standards this policy sets.
| Provider | What they do for us | What they handle | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd | The WhatsApp Business Platform (Cloud API) that carries the messages | Message content, phone numbers, WhatsApp profile names | Per Meta’s own terms |
| Supabase, Inc. | Database, sign-in and file storage | All workspace and conversation data | United Kingdom (London) |
| Vercel, Inc. | Application hosting | Requests in transit; no durable message storage | United Kingdom (London) |
| Stripe, Inc. | Subscription billing for the businesses that use Companion | Billing contact name, email address and payment details. Not conversation data | United States, with UK data transfer terms |
| Resend, Inc. | Sending sign-in codes, invitations and billing emails | Email addresses and the content of those emails. Not conversation data | United States, with UK data transfer terms |
| Nango, Inc. | Holds the connection to a store you link by hand in the Companion dashboard, such as Shopify, so we can look up products. Not used for installs of our Shopify app | Store credentials and catalogue data. Not conversation data | United States, with UK data transfer terms |
| Shopify Inc. | The platform merchants install our Shopify app through, and the source of the shop details it uses | Shop name, domains, owner email address, currency and time zone. Not conversation data | Per Shopify’s own terms |
| 650 Industries, Inc. (Expo) | Delivers push notifications to the iPhone app | Device push tokens, and the notification text: a customer’s name and a message preview unless previews are off | United States, with UK data transfer terms |
| Apple Inc. | Sign in with Apple, and delivering notifications to iPhones | Your Apple sign-in identifier and the email you share; notification text in transit | United States, with UK data transfer terms |
| Google LLC | Sign-in with Google, when you choose it | Your Google account name and email address | United States, with UK data transfer terms |
| Cal.com, Inc. | The booking calendar on our website | Name, email address, time zone and what you write when you book a call. Not conversation data | United States |
| Zoho Corporation B.V. | Our business email, including the support inbox | Support requests and correspondence. Not conversation data | European Union |
| Inngest, Inc. | Background processing of incoming messages and delivery receipts | Message content, sender numbers, delivery statuses | United States |
| Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry) | Error monitoring, when enabled | Technical error data. Not message content | United States |
| PostHog, Inc. | Product analytics, when enabled | Usage events and account identifiers | European Union |
We do not sell personal data, and we do not use messages or customer details to train machine-learning models, ours or anyone else’s.
Where your data is held
Workspace and conversation data is stored in the United Kingdom, in London. Some suppliers listed above operate outside the UK. Where personal data is transferred abroad, we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, together with the checks those require.
How long we keep it, and how to have it deleted
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account data, after a workspace is closed or an account deleted | 90 days, then permanently deleted |
| Conversation data, after the agreement ends | Deleted or returned within 30 days, sooner on request |
| Workspace audit log | 24 months |
| Website chat analytics events (widget opened, message sent and similar) | 90 days, after which only daily totals are kept |
| Shopify app: the shop’s access token | Destroyed when the app is uninstalled |
| Shopify app: shop details, button settings, uploaded images and usage records | Until Shopify asks us to erase them, about 48 hours after an uninstall, then deleted |
| Copies of photos, voice notes, videos and documents opened in the iPhone app | 30 days, then deleted; sooner if the customer’s data is erased |
| Support requests and our replies | 24 months after the request is closed |
| Records we must keep by law, such as accounting records | As long as the law requires |
Deleted data may persist briefly in encrypted backups. Those are overwritten within a further 30 days, so nothing survives more than 120 days past deletion.
One exception, stated plainly: if you delete your own account but the workspace you belonged to stays open, we keep the empty shell of your record so the workspace’s audit log does not develop holes. At the 90-day mark your name, email address and sign-in are erased from it and your sign-in credentials are destroyed. What is left identifies nobody and cannot be used to sign in.
Asking us to delete your data
If you hold a Companion account, you can delete it yourself in the iPhone app under You → Delete account, or on the web under Settings → Account, or delete an entire workspace under Settings → Workspace. Any of these will start the retention clock above. If you signed in with Apple, deleting your account also ends your Apple sign-in with us.
You can also email support@msgcompanion.com from the address on the account and ask us to delete it. We will confirm once it is done, and in any event within one month.
If you are the customer of a business that uses Companion, that business decides whether your conversation is deleted. Ask them directly. If you tell us, we will pass the request on and help them carry it out.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask for a copy of your personal data, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how it is used, and to receive it in a portable form. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time.
To exercise any of these, email support@msgcompanion.com. We respond within one month. There is no charge unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, or by calling 0303 123 1113. We would rather you came to us first so we can put it right.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access to production systems is limited to the people who need it, sign-in is by one-time email code, Google or Apple rather than a password we store, with optional two-factor sign-in through an authenticator app, and a workspace’s data is isolated from every other workspace at the database level. Significant actions are recorded in an audit log.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data and is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell you and the ICO within the time limits the law sets.
Children
Companion is a product for businesses and is not intended for children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe we have, tell us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. If a change materially affects you we will tell you before it takes effect, by email or in the product. The date at the top always shows the current version.
Contact us
For anything in this policy, including a request about your own data, email support@msgcompanion.com or write to us at the registered office above.
