September 2024

Blaze Messenger and VoiceBeam GmbH are committed to upholding the privacy of our users by fighting against ads, trackers, and other invasions of privacy. We will never profit by monetizing your data but instead seek to fulfill our company mission by delivering a great product and service.

Our commitment to privacy and data protection is reflected in this Privacy Statement which describes how we collect and process “personal information” that identifies you, like your name or email address. Any other information besides this is "non-personal information." If we store personal information with non-personal information, we’ll consider that combination to be personal information. Only if we remove all personal information from a set of data would we consider the remainder non-personal information.
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Information Gathering & Use

We continually improve our service for our users. To that end, we learn information about you when:

• You directly provide it to us (including phone number, SMS, contacts list, video, audio, photos and other data uploaded to Blaze Messenger)
• Someone else tells us information about you; or
• When we try and understand more about you based on information you've given to us.
• We collect it automatically through our products and services

‍We use your information only as you’ve permitted and in the service of bettering your user experience. Example uses of information include: importing messages to be displayed in your chat history, using contact list on-device to match contact names to phone numbers, and sharing images or video from camera roll with friends in chat.
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Information Sharing

‍We share information about you:

• When we’ve asked & received your consent to share it
• As needed to process or provide services or products to you, but only if those entities agree to provide at least the same level of privacy protection we’re committed to under this Privacy Statement
• To comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process, provided that we’ll notify you unless we’re legally prohibited from doing so. We’ll only release personal information if we believe in good faith that it’s legally required.
• Only if we reasonably believe it’s necessary to prevent harm to the rights, property or safety of you or others; or
• In the event of a corporate restructuring or change in our organizational structure or status to a successor or affiliate.

‍We use your information only as you’ve permitted and in the service of bettering your user experience. Example uses of information include: importing messages to be displayed in your chat history, using contact list on-device to match contact names to phone numbers, and sharing images or video from camera roll with friends in chat.
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Information Protection

‍Blaze Messenger implements physical, business and technical security measures to safeguard your personal information. In the event of a security breach, we'll notify you so that you can take appropriate protective steps. We only keep your personal information for as long as is needed to do what we collected it for. After that, we destroy it unless required by law.

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Voice Message Transcription and Summary

As part of Blaze Messenger’s features, we provide AI-based transcription and summary of voice messages. For this purpose, we utilize WhisperAI, a service provided by OpenAI, to automatically transcribe and summarize voice messages sent through our platform.

When a user sends a voice message, the audio data is temporarily processed by WhisperAI’s secure servers for the purpose of creating a text transcription and/or a summary. This processing is necessary to deliver this feature to our users.

• Data Usage: The voice message data is transmitted to WhisperAI only for the purpose of transcription and summarization. Blaze Messenger does not use this data for any other purpose, and it is not shared with third parties beyond this service.
• Data Retention: The original voice message and its transcription are stored securely in line with our general data retention policy. Transcriptions are not used to train WhisperAI models or improve any AI functionality. For more information on how OpenAI handles data, you can refer to their OpenAI API Data Usage Policies.
• Data Security: We implement industry-standard security measures to protect your voice message data during transmission and processing. All audio data is encrypted both in transit and at rest. WhisperAI does not store or retain voice messages after processing. You can read more about OpenAI's security practices in their Data Privacy.

By using the transcription and summarization feature, you agree to the processing of your voice messages in this manner. Please note that this service is optional, and you can disable voice message transcription and summarization in the Blaze Messenger app settings.

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Other Information
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As part of our normal operations, your information may be stored in computers in other countries outside of your home country. By giving us information, you consent to this kind of information transfer. Irrespective of where your information resides, we’ll comply with applicable law and abide by our commitments herein.

We don’t want your personal information if you’re under 13. Do not provide it to us. If your child is under 13 and you believe your child has provided us with their personal information, please contact us to have such information removed.

EU, EEA, Swiss and California users
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These regions have data protection laws that require us to specify the following:

Our lawful bases for collecting and processing personal information under the European General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) include:

• Performing our contract with you and providing our services
• Legitimate interests: we receive technical and interaction data of users, which may include IP addresses, to improve the security and reliability of our services and prevent abuse, and to understand where people learn about Blaze Messenger
• Consent: where we ask for your consent to process your information, you can always withdraw this consent.

The following rights are granted under the GDPR and California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). Blaze Messenger applies these rights to all users of our products, regardless of your location:

• The right to know what personal data is collected
• The right to know if personal data is being shared, and to whom
• The right to access your personal data
• The right to exercise your privacy rights without being discriminated against

If you have a question or concern, please contact us and we will aim to resolve it. If we cannot, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
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Data Subject Access Requests
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If you wish to update, delete or change personal information Blaze Messenger may hold, contact us at privacy@blazemessenger.com
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Changes
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We may need to change this privacy statement and our notices from time to time. Any updates will be posted online with an effective date. Continued use of our services after the effective date of any changes constitutes acceptance of those changes.
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Contact Us
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You can get in touch by emailing us at privacy@blazemessenger.com

Blaze Messenger is a product of VoiceBeam GmbH.