Why we have this policy
We keep personal information only for as long as we need it, and then we delete it. This policy sets out how long that is for each kind of information Bona holds, why we keep it, and how it is deleted. Our privacy policy explains what we collect and your rights.
What it covers
- Information we decide about. For our own customers’ account holders and agents, people who send us enquiries or book calls, business contacts we email, visitors to this website, and billing, we are the responsible party under POPIA, and the controller under UK GDPR, the EU GDPR and similar laws.
- Information we process for businesses that use Bona. When a business uses Bona to help its customers, that business is the responsible party, and we are its operator (its processor). We keep its visitors’ session and chat information only as long as the second table below allows. Within those limits, the business decides some periods and can delete information sooner.
If you were helped by a business that uses Bona, that business is responsible for your information, so please contact them first. We’ll help them respond.
The laws we follow
- South Africa: the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) lets us keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it for, unless a law requires or allows longer (section 14). After that we must delete or destroy it, or de-identify it, so that it can’t be reconstructed.
- The UK and the EU: UK GDPR and the EU GDPR say information that identifies people must be kept no longer than needed (storage limitation, Article 5(1)(e)).
- Thailand: the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) asks us to have a way to delete or destroy personal data when its retention period ends or we no longer need it (section 37).
- Japan: the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) asks us to try to delete personal data without delay once we no longer need it (Article 22).
- Kenya: the Data Protection Act, 2019 lets us keep personal data only as long as is reasonably necessary for its purpose (section 39).
- Tax records: South Africa’s Tax Administration Act requires us to keep records for five years from the date of the tax return they relate to (section 29).
How long we keep it
Information we decide about.
| Information | What it includes | How long | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer accounts and agents | The business’s name, the names and work email addresses of its owners, admins and agents, a one-way hash of each password, invites and settings | While the account is open. Deleted 90 days after the account closes, after a trial ends without a paid plan, or after a paid plan ends without being renewed. Billing records are kept as described below. Removing someone from the team signs them out everywhere at once, and their login is deleted 90 days later unless they join a team again. | To provide Bona under our contract |
| Sign-in records | When someone signed in to the dashboard or the agent console, and from which IP address and browser, failed sign-ins, and invites and password reset links | Expired sign-ins, failed sign-in records, and used or expired invites and reset links: deleted 30 days after they expire or are used. Signing out of the dashboard deletes that sign-in at once. | To keep accounts secure |
| Activity log | Who did what in an account and when, including which agent joined which customer session, with the IP address | 90 days on a trial or Team. 13 months with the Compliance add-on or a contact centre band. Our own record of Bona support’s actions: 13 months. Then deleted automatically. | Security, and so customers can see who did what |
| Agent notifications | The push address of each browser where an agent turned notifications on | Until the agent turns notifications off, signs out or leaves the team, or the browser cancels it. Deleted after 90 days unused. | To tell agents a customer is waiting |
| Billing and tax records | Plan, seats, amounts, invoices, PayFast payment references and subscription status. Never your full card number. | Five years after the end of the tax year they relate to, or longer if the Tax Administration Act requires it, then deleted. Invoices for payments by EFT are kept with our accounting records for the same period. | The law requires it |
| Enquiries and booked calls | What you send through our contact form, any call time you book, how you found this website, and your IP address and browser, which we use to stop abuse | 12 months after our last contact with you, unless you become a customer. That includes your IP address and the emails about your enquiry in our mailboxes. | Legitimate interests: replying to you |
| Business contacts | The name, job title, work email address and company of people at businesses we contact about Bona | Up to 12 months after we last contacted you, unless you become a customer | Legitimate interests: telling businesses about Bona |
| Do-not-contact list | Your email address, if you ask us not to contact you | For as long as we do outreach | So that we never email you again |
| Clicks on links in our emails | Which link, which company and country we emailed, when, and the country and network the click came from. No IP address. | 12 months, then deleted automatically | Legitimate interests: seeing which companies are interested |
| Website analytics | What Google Analytics records about visits to this website: pages viewed, browser and device, approximate location and a random identifier | Google keeps records about individual visitors for 2 months. What stays in your browser is in our cookie policy. | Your consent where we ask first. Elsewhere, legitimate interests: making this website clearer. |
| Technical and security data | IP addresses and the basic connection details our servers see | Our servers’ logs: deleted by Cloudflare within 3 days. Counts per IP address that slow down abuse: kept in memory for up to an hour and never saved. | Legitimate interests: protecting Bona from abuse |
Information we process for businesses that use Bona. We process all of this on the business’s instructions, under our contract with it.
| Information | What it includes | How long |
|---|---|---|
| The page on screen | What the customer sees and does on the page during a screen share | Never stored. It travels browser to browser, end-to-end encrypted, and private fields are masked before it leaves the customer’s device. Our servers only connect the two sides. |
| Live sessions | The page address and title, any visitor name or email the business’s website passes to Bona, where the visitor came from, their approximate location and device type, and the pages they view | Until the session ends, then deleted automatically |
| Live chats | What the customer, agents and Bona’s AI write in a chat | Held in memory only, while the chat runs, unless the business saves transcripts |
| Saved chat transcripts | Saved only if the business turns this on, which is off by default, and the customer is told in the chat. Card numbers are removed first. | 30, 90 or 365 days, as the business chooses (30 unless it picks longer), then deleted automatically. The business can delete one sooner. |
| “Leave your details” messages | The name, email address and message a customer leaves when no agent is online, and the page they were on | 90 days, then deleted automatically, or sooner if the business deletes them |
| Chat ratings and tags | The customer’s thumbs up or down and any comment, with card numbers removed, and the tags agents add | 1 year, then deleted automatically |
| Ratings of AI replies | Which reply from Bona’s AI was rated, how and why, with no chat text. A better answer suggested from a rating waits for the business to approve it. | Ratings: 1 year. Better answers nobody approves: 30 days. Both are then deleted automatically. |
| Questions the AI couldn’t answer | How often the AI couldn’t answer, each day. The questions themselves only come from saved transcripts. | Daily counts: 90 days. Questions: no longer than the transcripts they came from. |
| Visitor insights | For each chat or screen share in which the visitor asked for help: how they found the website, the page they landed on, their approximate location, device, browser and operating system, and how long they waited. No IP address, names or chat text. | 90 days, then deleted automatically |
| Chatbot handovers | What the business’s own chatbot passes on when it hands a customer to a person, and how the handover went | The chatbot’s conversation: until the session ends, and one day at most. The handover’s status and counts, and records of the webhooks and Intercom notes it sent: 30 days. All deleted automatically. |
| Site knowledge | The text of the business’s own public web pages, and the answers it writes for Bona’s AI | Until the business removes it or deletes the site |
Why we may keep it
- Our contract: to provide Bona to our customers and their agents, and, as an operator, to process information for a business on its instructions.
- Legitimate interests: to reply to enquiries, to contact businesses and respect their wish not to hear from us, to see which emails interest people, and to keep Bona secure.
- Consent: for Google Analytics where we ask first. You can withdraw it at any time.
- Legal obligation: for tax and billing records, and anything else a law or a court requires us to keep.
How we delete it
- Automatically: once a day, a scheduled job deletes what is past its time in the tables above: saved transcripts, “leave your details” messages, chat ratings and tags, ratings of AI replies and unapproved answers, visitor insights, handover records, clicks on links in our emails, enquiries and booked calls, old sign-in records, unused agent notifications, old activity log entries, billing records past their five years, the logins of people removed from a team, and the information of closed accounts and ended trials and plans. Another job, every five minutes, expires chatbot handovers nobody used and clears what the chatbot passed on.
- When a session ends: its details are deleted from our servers, and a live chat that wasn’t saved only ever existed in memory.
- When you delete something: a transcript or a message deleted in the dashboard is deleted at once. Deleting a site deletes its saved transcripts, “leave your details” messages, ratings of AI replies and site knowledge at once, and the rest of its records 90 days later.
- Closed accounts, trials and plans: 90 days after an account closes, a trial ends without a paid plan, or a paid plan ends without being renewed, we delete its team, sites, agents, settings, site knowledge and activity log. The account owner can ask our information officer to delete it sooner. We keep billing and tax records for the period in the table above.
- Keeping less in the first place: card numbers are removed from chats before they are saved, chatbot conversations are cleared from handover records so that only counts remain, and visitor insights and email link clicks never include an IP address.
- Outside Bona itself: information we keep elsewhere, such as business contact lists, enquiry emails in our mailboxes and accounting records, we delete by hand when its time is up.
- Backups: Cloudflare, which hosts our databases, keeps recovery copies so that we can restore data after a fault: 7 days for our main database, and up to 30 days for session and site knowledge storage. Deleted information leaves these copies as they age out, and we use them only to recover from a fault.
- In your browser: what this website stores expires as our cookie policy says.
When we keep it longer
We keep information for longer than this policy says only when we must: to meet a legal obligation, for a dispute or legal claim, for a lawful request from a court or an authority, or to investigate fraud or abuse of Bona. We then keep only what is needed, only for as long as it’s needed, and our information officer records and approves each case.
Your rights
You can ask what we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it or make it anonymous. If the law requires us to keep something, we’ll tell you what and for how long. Our privacy policy explains your rights in each country.
To make a request, use our data request form or email our information officer at [email protected]. Start your message with “Information officer” so it reaches the right person. If you were helped by a business that uses Bona, please contact that business first. We’ll help them respond.
Reviewing this policy
Our information officer reviews this policy at least once a year, and whenever we add a feature that stores new information. We’ll post any changes on this page and update the date at the top.