Privacy

Circles keeps your groups' full history by default: everything WhatsApp delivers when you link a number, and everything after, for as long as the number is linked. WhatsApp gives a linked device only part of the history on your phone, and files older than two or three weeks can no longer be downloaded. You can shorten it to 90, 60 or 30 days in your account settings: what falls outside a shorter window is deleted, and widening it later applies forward only and brings nothing back.

Direct chats are kept for your history window like groups. On a new number, direct chats open for reading and writing by default, like groups, and a number linked again keeps what you chose. Turning off "Include direct chats" in the number's settings hides them all from every agent.

The contact names WhatsApp sends (the name you saved on your phone, or the one the person chose) are kept to name your direct chats and the people in your chats. An agent sees such a name only through a chat you opened: as the name of an open direct chat, or as the name of someone who writes in or belongs to an open group, even if they never wrote there. The names are deleted with the number.

A number you link opens its groups and personal chats for reading and writing by default: an agent can read them and send in them, and every send is logged. A number you link again keeps the default it had. A group opens only once its name has arrived, and you can set any chat to read only or hide it, or change the default, at any time.

Agents see only the chats that are open. A hidden chat does not exist for them: it is not listed, not searchable, and its name never appears even in a refusal.

Data is encrypted at rest and access is logged. That does not mean we cannot read it: search needs plaintext, so the promise stops here rather than pretending.

Unlinking a number in the settings removes the linked device from WhatsApp, and once WhatsApp confirms it, everything stored from the number (chats, messages, files, contacts, and the number's WhatsApp name and picture) is deleted. Your settings for the number (the name you gave it, its default, the history window, personal chats and the send warning) and the permission you chose for each chat stay, and they are there when you link the number again. You can delete the account itself on the account page, under Privacy.

Voice notes and audio files from your linked number are transcribed by Soniox, so an agent can read what was said: every recording Circles stores, in any chat, hidden ones included. Circles asks Soniox to delete its copy right after, once: a deletion that fails is not tried again. Circles keeps the recording and the text for your history window, and deletes both with the number.

Conversations with the Circles WhatsApp number (the assistant that answers there) are kept so it can pick up where you left off, and so can the team when something is passed to them. Customers' are kept for as long as they are customers and a year after their subscription ends; everyone else's, 90 days. A free account counts as a customer. What the assistant passes to the team is kept on the same rule, and also reaches the team's own WhatsApp group. Voice notes sent there are transcribed by Soniox, and the copy there is deleted right after, and a deletion that fails is tried again: Circles keeps the text, not the recording. The number itself runs on Periskope, which holds the chat, recordings included, under its own terms, as WhatsApp does on your phone.

Circles is not a WhatsApp or Meta product and is not endorsed by them. It connects as a linked device, the same mechanism as WhatsApp Web. Using an unofficial client carries a risk that WhatsApp bans your number, and that risk is yours.