1. Who we are.
“Herbie” refers to the team and the website at callherbie.comand any associated domains. We’re the people who built the waitlist and the demo call you tried on the home page. Reach us anytime at hello@callherbie.com.
2. What we collect.
When you join the waitlist, we store the email address you typed in. If you arrived from an ad or referral link with UTM parameters, we keep those too so we can tell which channel sent you.
When you try the demo call, we collect the phone number you entered (so we can dial you back) and, if you chose to share it, the first name of the person you were thinking about while you talked to Herbie. The phone number is sent to our voice provider, Retell, which places the call.
Whenever you visit any page, our hosting provider (Vercel) sees the standard web-server information any site sees: the IP address your request came from, the user-agent string of your browser, and the URL you asked for. We don’t store the raw IP — instead we hash it with a server-side secret so we can tell if the same actor is hammering the form, without ever being able to recover the original IP. We do store the user-agent string, capped at 512 characters, for abuse forensics.
For analytics, we use Vercel Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights to understand which pages are popular and how fast they load. Vercel anonymizes this data by default — we don’t see individual visitors, only aggregate traffic patterns.
For paid advertising on Meta(Facebook and Instagram), we use the Meta Pixel and the Meta Conversions API. The Pixel is a snippet of JavaScript that runs in your browser and tells Meta when you visit a page or join the waitlist. The Conversions API is the same signal sent directly from our server to Meta — it exists so the data stays accurate even if your browser blocks the Pixel. Both channels share an event ID so Meta counts each event once. We send your hashed email address (one-way, irreversible), your IP address, and your browser’s user-agent string so Meta can match the conversion to the ad you clicked. That’s the full set; we don’t pass them anything else about you.
3. About the demo call specifically.
The voice you hear is generated by AI — Herbie is not a person. The call is placed and processed by Retell, our voice infrastructure provider. Retell records and transcribes calls as a standard part of its service so the agent can respond to you in real time and so we can troubleshoot if a call goes wrong.
We don’t currently store call audio or transcripts on our own infrastructure. Recordings and transcripts that exist sit with Retell under their privacy and retention policy, and we will request their deletion on your behalf if you email us asking us to.
By submitting your phone number through the demo form you consent to Herbie placing a single, short outbound call to that number for the purpose of demonstrating what the service sounds like. We won’t use that phone number for marketing, and we won’t call it again.
4. How we use it.
We use the information we collect to:
- Email you about the launch of Herbie if you joined the waitlist.
- Place the demo call you asked us to place, and pass enough context (an elder’s first name, if you shared one) for the call to feel personal.
- Detect and slow down abuse — both of the waitlist form (so a bad actor can’t spam-sign-up email addresses) and of the demo line (so the same bot can’t place a hundred calls).
- Understand how visitors find and move through the site, in the aggregate, so we can make the next version better.
- Comply with the law when the law tells us we have to.
That’s the full list. We don’t sell your data, and we don’t use your call recording to train AI models. The one piece we do share with an advertising platform — a hashed copy of your email when you join the waitlist after clicking one of our ads — exists only so Meta can tell which ad worked, and is described in the section above.
5. Who we share it with.
We share data only with the service providers we use to run Herbie itself:
- Vercel — hosts the website, runs the backend code, and provides analytics + speed insights.
- Neon — managed Postgres database where waitlist signups are stored.
- Upstash — managed Redis used to track demo call state in real time.
- Retell — voice infrastructure that places and runs the demo call.
- Resend — sends the waitlist confirmation email.
- Meta — receives a Pixel page-view signal when you visit any page (so Meta can tell its own ad system that someone visited callherbie.com) and, if you join the waitlist, a Conversions API event with a hashed copy of your email plus your IP and user-agent so Meta can match the signup back to the ad you clicked. Used only for ad-conversion tracking, as described in §2.
Each of those providers has their own privacy practices. We chose them because their practices align with ours; we don’t use providers we wouldn’t hand our own family’s information to.
We may also disclose information when we’re legally compelled to (a subpoena, a court order), or in the unlikely event of a corporate transaction (a merger, an acquisition). If that happens we’ll update this page.
6. How long we keep it.
Waitlist email addresses stay in the database until you ask us to delete them or until we decide we no longer need the waitlist (after which we will delete it).
Phone numbers from the demo call are passed through to Retell at call time and not stored in our own database. Hashed-IP and user-agent records associated with the call attempt are kept for up to 90 days for abuse forensics and then deleted.
Hashed IP and user-agent from any visit are kept for up to 90 days and then deleted.
Aggregate analytics data (page views, vitals) is kept by Vercel under their retention policy. The ad-conversion signals we send to Meta are kept by Meta under their retention policy and used to attribute conversions to the ads you saw.
7. Your choices.
You can ask us to:
- Tell you what we have on file about you.
- Correct anything that’s wrong.
- Delete your record entirely.
- Stop emailing you (every email we send has a one-click unsubscribe link).
- Have us request deletion of your call recording and transcript from Retell.
Send any of those requests to hello@callherbie.com. We’ll respond within 30 days, and usually within a couple business days.
8. Children.
Herbie is built for older adults and the families who care about them. The site isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you’re a parent or guardian and you think your child has signed up, email us at hello@callherbie.com and we’ll delete the record.
9. Security.
All traffic to the site uses HTTPS. Database connections are encrypted in transit. Secrets — API keys, the IP-hash salt — live in our hosting provider’s environment configuration and never reach the browser. We don’t accept payments on this site today, so we don’t handle any cardholder data.
No system is perfectly secure, and we won’t pretend otherwise. If something does go wrong and your information is exposed, we’ll tell you, the relevant authorities, and the public — quickly, accurately, and in plain English.
10. International visitors.
Herbie’s servers are in the United States. If you’re visiting from outside the US, your information travels to and is processed in the US, which may have different data-protection laws than your country. We rely on standard contractual clauses with our processors where applicable.
If you’re in the European Union, the United Kingdom, California, or another jurisdiction with data-subject rights (right to access, correct, delete, port, restrict processing, object to processing) — those rights apply, and you can exercise them by emailing us at the address above.
11. Changes to this policy.
If we change this page in a way that meaningfully affects what we collect or how we use it, we’ll bump the effective date at the top of the page and — for material changes — email everyone on the waitlist before the change takes effect. The current version always lives at this URL.
12. Questions.
Send them to hello@callherbie.com. A real person reads it.