Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 11, 2026
BENTOOL is a service of OBENTO-YASAN LLC. We provide after-hours text messaging on behalf of local service businesses: when someone calls one of our client businesses outside its opening hours and the call goes unanswered, our system sends that caller a text message and holds a short conversation about what they need.
This policy covers three different groups of people, because what we hold about each is very different. The second group is the most important one to read.
1. Visitors to this website
We collect nothing. This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, loads no fonts or scripts from other companies, and has no tracking pixels or advertising tags. There is no account to create and no form to fill in. If you email us, we have your email and whatever you wrote in it, and nothing else.
2. People who called a business that uses BENTOOL
If you are reading this because you got a text after calling a business, this is the section that applies to you. You can stop the messages at any time by replying STOP to the text.
What we hold
- Your phone number
- The number you called from.
- The messages
- What you sent us and what we sent you.
- Basic call and delivery details
- When you called, which business you called, whether each message was delivered, and whether you asked us to stop.
We do not ask for and do not want your payment details, your government identification, or any health information. Please don’t send them.
Why we hold it
To answer the inquiry you made, on behalf of the business you called. You phoned a business, nobody was there, and this is that business getting back to you. We do not use your number for marketing, we do not build a profile on you, and we do not contact you about anything other than the inquiry you started.
The replies are generated by AI
The messages you receive after the first one are written by an AI system, working from information the business gave us: their services, their price ranges, their hours, and their answers to common questions. It gives ranges rather than firm quotes, and the business confirms the details. Nobody is reading the conversation as it happens, which is why the first message tells you the line is not monitored live and to call 911 if the situation is genuinely dangerous.
Who else sees it
- The business you called
- They see your number and the conversation. They are the ones you were trying to reach, and they need it to follow up.
- Companies that operate parts of the service for us
- Twilio delivers the text messages. Anthropic provides the AI that writes the replies. Our cloud hosting provider runs the system and its database. Cloudflare serves this website. They handle the information only to provide those services to us.
- Nobody else
- We do not sell your information, rent it, share it for advertising, or hand it to data brokers. We would disclose information if legally required to, and would tell you unless prevented from doing so.
How long we keep it
- The messages themselves — 12 months
- Then deleted. We keep them this long so the business can look back at what was agreed and so we can check the quality of the replies.
- Records of consent and delivery — 5 years
- Your number, the fact and time of your call, and whether messages were delivered or you opted out. Not the content. We keep these because messaging rules require us to be able to show we had a reason to text you and that we honored any request to stop.
- Opt-out records — kept indefinitely
- If you tell us to stop, we keep a record of that permanently. Deleting it would risk texting you again later, which is the opposite of what you asked for. This is the one thing we keep even when a business leaves the service.
Your choices
- Stop the messages
- Reply STOP to any message. It takes effect immediately and automatically. Reply START if you later want to resume.
- Ask what we hold, or ask us to delete it
- Email hello@bentool.co from any address and tell us the phone number in question. We may ask you to confirm the number is yours before we act, so that somebody else can’t delete your records or read them. As above, we will keep the opt-out record itself.
3. Business owners we contact by email
If we emailed you about BENTOOL without you contacting us first, here is how that happened. We found your business in public business listings — the same information that appears when someone searches for a business like yours online. We hold your business name, business email address, business phone number, and publicly listed details about the business.
Reply and tell us to stop and we will remove you and not contact you again. We only email business addresses about a business service, never personal addresses, and we never send marketing text messages to anyone who has not contacted us first.
Security
Information is held on access-controlled systems, encrypted in transit, and reachable only by the people and services that need it. No system is perfectly secure, and we would rather say that than claim otherwise. Keeping message content for 12 months rather than indefinitely is a deliberate part of this: the less we hold, the less there is to lose.
Children
This service is for contacting businesses and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe we have, email us and we will delete it.
Changes to this policy
If we change it we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects people who have used the service, we will say so here rather than quietly editing the text.
Contact
OBENTO-YASAN LLC, trading as BENTOOL — hello@bentool.co