Privacy Policy

Last updated 22 September 2026 · Applies to the Dial98 app (com.dial98.app) and dial98.com

Dial98 is a phone service. To connect a call we have to know who is calling, who they are calling, and for how long — that is unavoidable. What follows is the honest list of everything we hold, why we hold it, and how to make us delete it. We do not sell your data, we do not run advertising trackers, and we do not share your call history with anyone who is not needed to place the call.

1. Who we are

Dial98 is operated by Semicolon Marketing Ltd, a company registered in British Columbia, Canada (business number 747336022). We are the data controller for everything described here.

Contact for any privacy question, access request or complaint: info@semicolon.live.

2. What we collect and why

Data	Why we have it
Email address and the display name you choose	It is your login. We also use it to reach you about your balance, a failed payment, or a service problem. We do not send marketing email unless you ask us to.
Password	Stored only as a salted hash. Nobody at Dial98 can read it or recover it for you.
Phone numbers you dial	We cannot route a call without the destination number. It is also what your call history in the app is made of.
Your phone number, if you sign up with one or add one	Signing up by SMS proves you hold the number, and it is then how you sign in. If you instead add one in Settings, it is contact information only. Either way it is never shown to the people you call. The SMS code itself is sent by Google (Firebase Authentication) — see section 5.
Call metadata — start time, answer time, duration in seconds, the rate applied and the amount charged	This is the bill. Per-second billing means we have to record the seconds. It is also how we investigate "the call dropped" or "I was charged twice".
Call recordings — only if you agree to recording	Only if you say yes. The first time you open the app we show you a screen explaining call recording and ask you to choose. Most people turn it on, and if you do, calls are recorded on our own telephone switch and played back to you in the app's call history. Nothing is recorded until you have made that choice, and you can change it whenever you like in Settings. Recordings are stored on our servers, only you can play them, you can delete any of them — or all of them — permanently at any time, and they are deleted automatically after 90 days. See section 4.
Voice messages you schedule — the message you record, and the recording of the call that plays it	Only if you use "Send a voice". If you record a message for us to call through at a chosen time, we store that audio until the call is made, and we record that call whether or not "Record my calls" is on — hearing how it was received is the point of the feature. This is stated on the scheduling screen. Both recordings are deletable by you at any time. See section 4.
Wallet and payment records — top-ups, deductions, running balance	You are buying prepaid credit; this is the ledger. Canadian tax law requires us to keep financial records.
Contacts you save inside Dial98	The people you add to Dial98's own address book — by typing them in, or by choosing them from your phone's contacts. See "Importing contacts" below.
Messages you send us in "Chat with us" — what you write, and our replies	Only if you use it. The in-app support chat stores your messages so we can answer them and so the conversation is still there next time you open it. Whatever you type is stored as you wrote it, so please do not put card numbers or passwords in it — we will never ask for either, and no genuine message from us ever will. The thread is deleted with your account.
Early-access signups — the email address you give us, your name and phone number if you add them, and which kind of device you signed up from	Only if you fill in the signup form on dial98.com, or email us asking to be told when we launch. We keep it so we can tell you the day the service opens. The device line is a single word — iPhone, Android or desktop — worked out from your browser's ordinary request and used for one thing: deciding whether to build the iPhone app next. We do not store the full browser fingerprint that word came from, and none of this is used to advertise to you or shared with anyone. Ask us at any time and we will delete your entry.
Device and network information — IP address, app version, coarse device type, error logs	Security and fraud prevention (calling services are a constant target for stolen-card fraud), plus diagnosing call-quality problems. IP addresses are handled as approximate location only; we do not collect GPS.

Importing contacts

The app can import people from your phone's address book so you do not have to retype numbers you already have. If you use it:

Your contacts are read on your phone and shown to you in a list with checkboxes. The address book is never uploaded — not a copy of it, not a hashed version, not "just the numbers".
Only the people you tick are saved to your Dial98 account, and only their name and phone number. That is exactly what you would have typed in by hand.
We read names and numbers only. Not photos, email addresses, postal addresses, notes, or which groups anyone is in.
It happens only when you tap "Import from your phone". Nothing is read in the background.
You can refuse the permission and type contacts in instead; everything else in the app carries on working. You can withdraw it later in Android's Settings → Apps → Dial98 → Permissions.
The app asks only for read access. It cannot change or delete anything in your phone's contacts.

What we do not collect

Your phone's photos, files, SMS or call log. The app does not request those permissions.
Your address book as a whole. See "Importing contacts" above: only the people you pick are ever sent to us.
GPS or precise location.
Advertising identifiers. Dial98 contains no ad SDK and no third-party analytics SDK.
Anything about the person you call, beyond the number you dialled.

2a. The number shown in Iran

Every Dial98 call reaches Iran showing +1 604 210 0214, a Canadian number Dial98 owns. It is the same for every account and cannot be changed — our carrier only accepts a caller ID belonging to us. Dial98 is outbound only, so that number does not take calls back.

This is stated because earlier versions of the app let you type a number into a "caller ID" field and implied it was what your family would see. It never was. That field is gone, and any number saved in it is no longer displayed anywhere.

3. Microphone

Dial98 asks for microphone access for one reason: it is a telephone. The microphone is used while a call is connected and at no other time. Audio is streamed over an encrypted connection to our switch, which passes it to the phone network.

4. Call recording — please read

We ask you first, and nothing happens until you answer

Call recording is a feature most Dial98 users want — it is how you keep a call with a parent or a clinic that you may need to hear again. So we put it in front of you rather than burying it: the first time you open the app, before you make a call, you get a screen that explains what recording does, where the audio goes, who can play it and how to delete it, and asks you to choose. Most people say yes. Saying yes is what switches recording on — nothing else does.

Until you answer that screen, recording is off. If you say no, it stays off and we remember that you said no. Either way you can change your mind at any time in Settings → Record my calls, and the same explanation is available there.

We keep a record of your answer: which way you answered, the moment you answered, and the version of the app whose wording you saw. That is so we can always show what you actually agreed to, rather than asking you to take our word for it. If you delete your account, that record is deleted with it.

"Off" means no audio file is ever created. The setting is not a filter applied after the fact: our telephone switch asks your account whether it records before the call is dialled, and when the answer is no, the recorder is never started. There is nothing to leak, expire or hand over, because nothing was written. Accounts that existed before the consent screen was introduced are asked the same question the next time they open the app — we did not turn recording on for anyone retroactively, because an answer nobody gave is not consent.

When recording is on

Recordings are stored on Dial98's own servers, in Sweden — not on your device, and not with any third party.
Only you can play them. Recordings are served only to the authenticated account that made the call. Nobody else can retrieve a recording of your call, and we do not listen to them.
You can delete any recording — or all of them — permanently, at any time, from inside the app, without asking us and without waiting. Deletion is immediate and irreversible; see below.
Recordings are deleted automatically after 90 days, whether or not you delete them yourself. The 90-day limit is unchanged and applies to every recording we hold.
It applies to calls made from that point on. Turning recording off later stops new recordings but does not delete ones you already have — deleting them is a separate, deliberate action, described below.
Recording law is your responsibility. The rules differ from country to country, and what matters is the law where you are as well as the law where the person you are calling is — including parts of Canada and Iran, where recording a conversation without telling the other party may be unlawful. If you turn recording on, you are responsible for complying with both, including telling the person you call and obtaining their consent where that is required. Dial98 cannot do this for you and does not do it for you.

The one exception: scheduled voice messages

There is a single feature where a call is recorded whether or not "Record my calls" is switched on, and we want you to know about it before you use it rather than after. Send a voice lets you record a message in the app and have Dial98 call an Iranian number at a time you choose and play it. That call is always recorded, because hearing how your message was received is the entire point of the feature — without the recording it would be a message you send into silence.

We tell you this on the scheduling screen itself, in plain words, immediately above the button that schedules it. Scheduling a message is how you agree to it, and if you would rather not have the call recorded, do not schedule one — this feature does not change the "Record my calls" setting, and it does not affect any of your ordinary calls, which remain governed by that setting alone.

Two recordings exist for each delivered message: the message you recorded, and the recording of the call itself. Both are stored on our servers in Sweden, both are served only to your authenticated account, and both are deletable by you at any time through exactly the same controls as any other recording (below). The same 90-day automatic deletion applies to both. The responsibility described in the previous section applies here too: you are calling someone who did not pick up the phone expecting to be recorded, and telling them, along with any consent your local law requires, is your responsibility.

Deleting recordings — immediate and permanent

You do not need to ask us, and you do not need to wait. In the app:

One recording — open the call in your history, tap the ⋮ menu on that call, and choose Delete recording.
All of them — Settings → Delete all my recordings.
A voice message you recorded — Settings → Scheduled messages, then the ⋮ menu on that message.
Deleting your account deletes every recording with it, and cancels any voice message still waiting to be sent.

In every case the audio file is erased from our servers straight away, not flagged, hidden or queued. We cannot recover a deleted recording. Not for you, not for anyone: there is no undo, no archive and no backup we can restore an individual recording from. Please be sure before you confirm.

The call itself stays in your history when you delete its recording — the date, duration and cost remain, because that is your bill. Only the audio goes.

If you would rather we disabled recording on your account at our end as well, email info@semicolon.live.

5. Who else sees your data

We use as few third parties as we can, and none of them receives your data for their own purposes.

Google (Firebase Authentication) — used only if you sign up or sign in with your phone number. Google sends the six-digit code and tells us, cryptographically, that you entered it correctly. They receive the phone number being verified and your device's app-integrity check; they do not receive your email address, your balance, your contacts or the numbers you call. If you sign up with an email address instead, Firebase is not involved at all.
DIDWW — our wholesale telecom carrier. To connect a call we must pass them the number being dialled and the caller ID being presented. This is how every phone call on earth works; the destination network needs to know what to ring. They do not receive your email address or your account balance.
Our own servers, rented from a hosting provider and located in Sweden. Your account, ledger, call history and recordings live there. Nobody but Semicolon Marketing Ltd has access.
Stripe — card payments made on this website are processed by Stripe. Card numbers go to Stripe directly and are never stored on Dial98 servers; we keep only the amount, the date and a payment reference.
Google Play — top-ups bought inside the Android app are sold and charged by Google, which is the seller of record for them. We never see your card, your Google account or your billing address: the app hands us a purchase receipt, and we ask Google whether that receipt is a completed purchase. We send Google nothing that identifies you — only an unreadable code derived from your account number, so that a purchase reaches the right balance.
Law enforcement — only where we are legally compelled by a valid Canadian order, and only the specific records demanded.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers, data brokers or analytics companies. There are none in this product.

6. How long we keep things

Data	Retention
Account profile (email and/or phone number, name)	Until you delete your account.
Call history and call metadata	24 months, then anonymised.
Call recordings	None exist unless you agreed to recording on the consent screen, or you used "Send a voice" (see section 4). Those that do are kept 90 days, then deleted automatically — or the moment you delete them yourself, which you can do at any time from the app, permanently.
Your answer to the recording consent screen	Which way you answered, when, and the app version whose wording you saw. Kept for as long as the account exists, so we can always show what you agreed to; deleted with the account.
Scheduled voice messages	The audio you recorded is kept until the message is sent, cancelled or abandoned — abandoned meaning we could not reach the number after three tries, or your balance no longer covered the call — and for 90 days after that, then deleted automatically. Or the moment you delete it yourself. A message still waiting keeps its audio, because that audio is the message; if you delete your account, anything still waiting is cancelled and erased with it.
Wallet and payment records	7 years, because Canadian tax law requires it. After account deletion these rows are kept in anonymised form — the amounts and dates remain, everything that identifies you is stripped.
Server and security logs (including IP)	90 days.
Support email	24 months.
In-app support chat	Kept for as long as the account exists, so the conversation is still there when you come back. Deleted outright with the account — not anonymised and kept, actually deleted.
Early-access signups	Until we launch and tell you, and for 12 months after that in case you sign up later and we need to honour what we promised early joiners. Deleted sooner the moment you ask.

7. Security

Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted with TLS. Call audio is carried over encrypted transport (DTLS-SRTP) between your phone and our switch; from our switch onward it travels the ordinary phone network, which we do not control and which is not encrypted end to end — that is true of every service that connects to a real telephone. Passwords are salted and hashed. Access to the production servers is restricted to key-based administrator logins.

No system is perfect. If we ever discover a breach affecting your data, we will tell you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as required by PIPEDA.

8. Your rights

Whatever country you are in, we will honour these:

Access — ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you.
Correction — fix anything that is wrong; your name, contact number and saved contacts are editable in the app. The caller ID shown in Iran is not: it is a number we own, and it is the same for everybody (see below).
Deletion — delete your account and its data. See below.
Objection / restriction — tell us to stop a specific use. Call recording you can stop yourself, instantly, from Settings.
Portability — get your call history and ledger as a machine-readable file.
Complaint — if we get it wrong, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to your own data-protection authority if you are in the EU or UK.

Write to info@semicolon.live from your account's email address. We answer within 30 days.

9. Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself, in two ways:

In the app — Settings → Delete my account.
On the web — dial98.com/delete-account.

Deletion removes your profile, password, phone number, saved contacts, call history and recordings. Anonymised financial rows are retained for the tax period described in section 6; they no longer identify you. Any unused credit is forfeited on deletion.

10. Children

Dial98 is not for children. You must be 18 or older to hold an account. We do not knowingly collect data from children; if we learn we have, we delete it.

11. International transfers

Dial98 is a Canadian company with servers in Sweden and calls terminating in Iran. Using the service necessarily transfers the data described above across those borders. By using Dial98 you agree to that transfer. Where required, we rely on standard contractual clauses with our providers.

12. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that materially affects you, we will email the address on your account and update the date at the top before the change takes effect.

13. Contact

Semicolon Marketing Ltd
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
info@semicolon.live