Privacy Policy

Last updated November 5, 2026

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The Privacy and Security Policies apply to your access and use of all products and services that are made available by Slow Talk, PBC through our websites and mobile applications that link to these Policies (the "Services"). These policies explain how we collect, use, disclose, keep safe, and otherwise process personal information in connection with our Services. The Privacy and Security Policies are not a contract and do not create any legal rights or obligations.

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Who We Are

We are Slow Talk, PBC, a public benefit corporation that facilitates structured conversations for organizations seeking to understand and engage their stakeholders. We work with healthcare systems, professional associations, foundations, government agencies, and other organizations to conduct small-group audio discussions that surface insights, build understanding, and inform decision-making. Our Services combine human facilitation with AI-powered analysis to transform participant contributions into actionable deliverables for the organizations that engage us ("Partners").

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In this Privacy Policy, we use "Users" to refer to all individuals who access or use our Services. In Slow Talk's methodology, session participants are referred to as "Stakeholders," and the organizations sponsoring engagements are referred to as "Partners."

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What is Personal Information?

When we use the term "personal information" in this Privacy Policy, we mean information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to you. It does not include aggregated or deidentified information that is maintained in a form that is not reasonably capable of being associated with or linked to you.

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Our Collection of Personal Information

From the first moment you interact with us, we are collecting personal information about you. Sometimes we collect personal information automatically when you interact with our Services and sometimes, we collect the personal information directly from you. At times, we may collect personal information about you from other sources and third parties, even before our first direct interaction.

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Personal Information You Provide

We collect the following personal information you provide in connection with our Services:

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Registration Information including first and last name, affiliation, e-mail address, mobile phone number and, if you choose, a recording of how to say your name.
Demographics Information including age, gender, race or ethnicity, and employment status.
User-Generated Content including post-session survey data and in-app session feedback.
Other Identifiable Information including audio recordings of every session you join, and transcripts made from them.
Session Information including the one-time codes we send you, when you join and leave a session, when you speak, and any help requests you make during a session.

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Please do not share information in a session that could identify a patient, or anyone else who is not taking part. We do not ask you to share your own health conditions. If you mention them anyway, we use what you share only to provide our Services and prepare de-identified reports, and we never sell it.

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Personal Information Automatically Collected

As is true of most digital platforms, we collect certain personal information automatically when you visit our Services, including:

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Log File Information, including your internet protocol (IP) address, operating system, browser type, browser id, date/time of visit, and pages visited.
Analytics and Usage Information, including the electronic path you take to our Services, through our Services and when exiting our Services, as well as your usage and activity on our Services, such as the links and object you view, click or otherwise interact with (also known as "Clickstream Data").
Location Information, including your general geographic location based on your IP address.
Cookies and Analytics. Our website uses cookies and similar technologies, including Google Analytics, to understand how visitors use the site. Google Analytics collects information such as the pages you visit, how long you stay and your general location, and Google handles it under its own privacy policy. You can block cookies in your browser settings or use Google's opt-out browser add-on at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Our website does not respond to Do Not Track signals from web browsers.

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Personal Information from Other Sources and Third Parties

We also obtain personal information from other sources, which we often combine with personal information we collect either automatically or directly from you.

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We receive the same categories of personal information as described above from the following sources and third parties:

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Other Users: Our users may provide information to us about other individuals on the platform, including contact information and information relating to the use of our Services or potential conflicts that need to be resolved.
Partners: The organization sponsoring a program may give us your name, contact details or role so we can invite you.
Other Services: When you interact with our Services through other social media networks or services, such as when someone follows us or shares our content on other social networks, we may receive some information about you that you permit the social network to share with third parties. The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network. You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and platforms before sharing information and/or linking or connecting them to our Services.
Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services solely on our behalf, such as analytics, collect personal information and often share some or all of this information with us. For example, we receive personal information you submit in response to requests for feedback to our feedback providers.
Publicly Available Sources: We may collect personal information about you that we do not otherwise have, such as contact information, from publicly available sources. We may combine this information with the information we collect from you directly. We use this information to contact you, or to personalize our Services and to better understand the demographics of the individuals with whom we interact.

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Our Use of Personal Information

We use personal information we collect to:

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Communicate with you, including via email, phone, or text message.
Conduct research and analytics.
Request that you provide us feedback about our Services.
Address inquiries or complaints made by or about an individual in connection with our Services.
Market our Services to you by email. We do not send marketing text messages.
Administer, improve, and personalize our Services, including by recognizing you and remembering your information when you return to our platforms.
Develop, operate, improve, maintain, protect, and provide the features and functionality of our Services, including machine learning models, which we train only on de-identified transcripts and aggregated data. We do not train models on recordings of your voice, or on other information that identifies you, without your separate consent.
Create and maintain user accounts.
Identify and analyze how you use our Services, including through analysis of session recordings and transcripts.
Test, enhance, update, and monitor the Services, or diagnose or fix technology problems.
Help maintain and enhance the safety, security and integrity of our property, platform, Services, technology assets and business.
Defend, protect, or enforce our rights or applicable contracts and agreements.
Prevent, investigate, or provide notice of fraud or unlawful or criminal activity.
Comply with legal obligations.

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If you choose to contact us, we may need additional information to fulfill your request or respond to your inquiry. We may provide additional privacy disclosures where the scope of the inquiry/request and/or personal information we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Policy. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.

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Reports and Deliverables

As part of our Services, we synthesize contributions from conversation sessions into reports and other deliverables for the organizations that engage us ("Partners"). These deliverables may include:

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Aggregated themes and insights derived from multiple participant contributions
Quantitative analysis of participant feedback and survey responses
Short audio clips ("Voxes"), included only with the speaker's explicit written consent, with the voice masked or unmasked as the speaker chooses
Recommendations based on analysis of session content

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Individual participants are not identified by name in deliverables, unless a participant opts in to be credited by name as a contributor to a published paper or report, or agrees to be named with a Vox.

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Our Disclosure of Personal Information

We disclose personal information in the following ways:

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To Other Users: We may share your information with other Slow Talk users. For example, the other participants in your session hear what you say. Slow Talk staff and contractors who facilitate, support or observe a session can hear it as it happens and may review its recording to prepare reports.
To Service Providers: We engage other third parties to perform certain functions on our behalf in connection with the uses of personal information described in the Our Use of Personal Information section above. Depending on the function the third party serves, the service provider may process personal information on our behalf or have access to personal information while performing functions on our behalf. They include providers of registration forms, cloud hosting and storage, live session audio, transcription, voice masking, AI language analysis, participant support, and email and text message delivery.

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Third-Party AI Processing Services.

We use third-party artificial intelligence and machine learning services to process User Content, including voice recordings, transcripts, and session data. These services include:

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Transcription providers that convert audio recordings to text
AI language model providers that assist with session analysis, theme identification, and report generation
Speech processing services that enable voice masking and audio manipulation

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When we share personal information with these providers, your data may be processed on servers located in the United States or other jurisdictions. We configure these services to prevent the use of your data for training their AI models. We require these providers to maintain appropriate security measures and to use your information only for the purposes of providing services to Slow Talk.

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To Other Businesses as Needed to Provide Services: We may share personal information with third parties that you engage with through our Services or as needed to fulfill a request or transaction including, for example, payment processing services that help us deliver participant incentives. Some programs offer a payment to thank participants for their time or for referring others to take part. The organization sponsoring the program funds it, and we make the payment on its behalf, so the sponsor does not receive your personal information from us to do so. It is not a payment for your personal information.
Business Transaction or Reorganization: We may take part in or be involved with a corporate business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets. We may disclose personal information to a third-party during negotiation of, in connection with or as an asset in such a corporate business transaction. Personal information may also be disclosed in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership.
Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal information to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:
in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
to protect the rights and property of us, our agents, customers, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use;
to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
to protect the health and safety of us, our customers, or any person; or
as otherwise required by applicable law.
Consent: We may disclose personal information about you to certain other third parties with your consent.
To Research Collaborators: We may share de-identified transcripts and aggregated data with research collaborators under a written agreement that bars them from trying to identify anyone and from sharing the data further. We never share recordings of your voice, or information that identifies you, with research collaborators.

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Text Messages

If you agree to receive text messages from Slow Talk, we use your mobile number only to send you one-time codes to join your sessions, reminders about sessions you have signed up for, answers to texts you send us, such as HELP, and one text asking you to check your email if we have asked your permission to use a short audio clip of something you said (a "Vox") and have not heard back. We do not send marketing text messages. Message frequency varies, usually a few texts per session. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP at any time to stop receiving texts. Reply HELP, or email hello@slowtalk.us, for help.

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No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. We share your mobile number only with the service providers that help us run our Services, such as those that host our registration forms, deliver our text messages and provide participant support. All other categories of disclosure in this Privacy Policy exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent, and this information will not be shared with any third parties. This section governs text messages wherever anything else in this Privacy Policy differs.

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Data Retention

We retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

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Voice Recordings. We keep voice recordings for no longer than three (3) years from your last interaction with our Services, and we may delete them sooner, such as when a program's report has been delivered. This retention period aligns with requirements under biometric data protection laws. For additional information, see our Biometric Data Disclosure section below. Short audio clips you agree to share ("Voxes") are an exception. We keep them for as long as your consent allows. See Audio Clips (Voxes) below.

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Other Session Data. We keep transcripts, survey responses, session feedback, and other non-audio session data for no longer than five (5) years from your last interaction with our Services.

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Account Information. We keep account information while your account is open, and for no longer than three (3) years after your account closes or your last interaction with our Services.

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Aggregated and De-Identified Data. We may retain aggregated or de-identified data that can no longer reasonably identify you indefinitely for research, analytics, and service improvement purposes.

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Following the applicable retention period, we will delete or de-identify your personal information within a reasonable timeframe, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

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You may request deletion of your personal information at any time by contacting us at hello@slowtalk.us. Please note that we may be required or permitted to retain certain information for legal, regulatory, or legitimate business purposes.

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Your Privacy Rights

Wherever you live in the United States, you can ask us to confirm whether we process your personal information, to give you a copy of it, to correct it, or to delete it, subject to the limits described in Data Retention. Some state laws, such as those of Connecticut, Maryland, Texas and Virginia, also give you the right to opt out of the sale of your personal information, its use for targeted advertising, and profiling that has legal or similarly significant effects. We do not sell personal information, use it for targeted advertising, or use it for that kind of profiling. The categories of personal information we collect, why we use them, and the categories of third parties we share them with are described above. We process sensitive data, such as voice recordings and any racial or ethnic origin you choose to give us at registration, only with your consent and only as needed to provide our Services. We do not use personal information that identifies you to train AI language models.

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To make a request, email hello@slowtalk.us from the email address you registered with, so we can confirm it is you. Someone you authorize in writing can make a request for you, and we may ask you to confirm it. We respond within 45 days. If we need more time, we tell you why and take up to 45 more days. We will not treat you differently for making a request. If we decline your request, we explain why. You may appeal by replying to our decision with the word "Appeal." We respond to an appeal within the time your state's law requires, and if you disagree with the result you may contact your state attorney general.

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Biometric Data Disclosure

This section provides disclosures required under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and similar state laws regarding our collection and use of biometric data.

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What Biometric Data We Collect

Slow Talk collects voice recordings during structured conversation sessions facilitated through our Services, and, if you choose, a recording of how to say your name. Voice recordings may constitute biometric identifiers or biometric information under applicable state laws, including voiceprints and other unique biological characteristics that can be used to identify an individual. We do not use your voice to identify you or to sign you in.

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Purpose of Collection

We collect and use voice recordings for the following purposes:

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Providing our structured conversation services
Transcribing session content for analysis and reporting
Developing AI-powered insights and deliverables for organizational partners
Creating short audio clips ("Voxes"), with your consent, for use in reports and presentations
Conducting research and analytics to improve our Services
Saying your name correctly in your sessions, including playing your recording of it to your group

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Retention and Destruction

We keep voice recordings for no longer than three (3) years from your last interaction with our Services. The purposes for which we collect them, listed above, continue for that period unless we finish with them sooner, such as when a program's report has been delivered. Following this retention period, we will permanently destroy all biometric data in our possession within a reasonable timeframe, unless a valid legal reason requires longer retention. Destruction will be accomplished through secure deletion methods appropriate to the storage medium. This does not apply to Voxes you agree to share, which we keep for as long as your consent allows.

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Third-Party Disclosure

We may disclose voice recordings to the following categories of third-party service providers who assist us in delivering our Services:

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Transcription services
AI analysis providers
Cloud hosting and storage providers
Live audio providers that carry each session
Voice-masking services

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We require these service providers to maintain the confidentiality of your biometric data and to use it only for the purposes of providing services to Slow Talk.

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We do not sell, lease, or trade biometric data for profit.

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Audio Clips (Voxes)

We may ask your permission to use short audio clips from your session recordings ("Voxes") in reports, presentations and other deliverables. We ask by email and, if you have agreed to receive texts, may follow up once by text. You choose whether a clip is shared with your voice masked, unmasked, or not at all. If you choose your own voice, you also choose whether to be named with it. We share a Vox only with your explicit written consent, and only as that consent describes. Once a report is delivered, the Partner keeps it under its own retention practices, and we cannot recall a Vox from it. Voice masking makes a speaker harder to identify, but it may not prevent identification by people who know the speaker.

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Your Rights

If you have questions about our biometric data practices or wish to request information about the biometric data we have collected about you, please contact us at hello@slowtalk.us.

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Consent

By participating in Slow Talk sessions, you acknowledge that you have received this written notice regarding our collection, use, and storage of biometric data. Your explicit consent to our collection and use of biometric data is obtained through a separate consent mechanism at the time of registration, as required by applicable law.

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Children's Personal Information

Our Services are not directed to, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal information from individuals under the age of 18. If you are under the age of 18, please do not use our Services or otherwise provide us with any personal information either directly or by other means. If an individual under the age of 18 has provided personal information to us, we encourage that individual's parent or guardian to contact us to request that we remove the personal information from our systems. If we learn that any personal information we collect has been provided by an individual under the age of 18, we will promptly delete that personal information.

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Third-Party Websites

Our Services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Policy, this Privacy Policy does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, any personal information practices of third-party websites and online services or the practices of other third parties. To learn about the personal information practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy policies.

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Updates to This Privacy Policy

We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will change the "Last Updated" date at the beginning of this Privacy Policy. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by email to your registered email address, by prominent posting on our Services, or through other appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided. If we want to use personal information we already hold for a materially different purpose than the one described when we collected it, we will ask for your consent first.

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Our Security Statement

Slow Talk's most important concern is the protection and reliability of participant data. Access to systems is restricted to specific individuals who are bound by confidentiality obligations. We use administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect your data.

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Data Breach Notification

In the event of a security breach that results in unauthorized access to, or acquisition of, personal information that compromises the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your data, Slow Talk will notify affected individuals in accordance with applicable law. Where legally required, we will provide notification within the timeframes mandated by state or federal law. Notification may be provided via email to the address associated with your account, through the Services, or by other means as required by law.

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Contact Us

If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Policy or other privacy-related matters, please send an email to hello@slowtalk.us.