Privacy Policy

FenceChat™ is operated by ROHAJO Pty Ltd t/a FenceChat (ABN 94 699 691 640), based in Australia. This Privacy Policy applies to all users of the FenceChat service, including those located in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union / EEA, and elsewhere. Where your local laws give you additional rights, we honour them. See the region-specific sections below.

1. Who we are

FenceChat is a communication privacy service that filters incoming email and SMS messages before they reach you, protecting you from hostile, manipulative, or emotionally harmful communications. The service is operated by ROHAJO Pty Ltd, trading as FenceChat, based in Australia.

Who is responsible for your information. ROHAJO Pty Ltd t/a FenceChat collects and holds the personal information described in this policy. That includes the information in messages people send to FenceChat addresses and numbers. We decide how messages are filtered, how long they are kept and where they are stored, so we are the organisation responsible for that information under Australian privacy law. We also hold ourselves to a stricter standard in practice: we treat what senders write as information we hold only to filter, deliver and keep messages for the person they were sent to, and we restrict access to it accordingly (see section 5).

Contact: privacy@fencechat.com

2. What information we collect

Information you provide

• Account details: Your name, email address, and password (handled by our authentication provider; we never store your password directly).
• FenceChat address: The unique address you choose at signup (e.g. sarahm@fencechat.com).
• Forwarding email and mobile number: The real contact details where we forward your filtered messages. These are never disclosed to the senders of filtered messages.
• Country: The country you select at signup, used to apply the appropriate privacy protections for your region.
• Payment information: Processed entirely by our payment provider (named in section 7). FenceChat never stores your card number, bank account, or payment credentials. When you add a card at signup, the payment provider gives us an identifier for that card, which is not the card number. We use it to limit each card to three FenceChat accounts, and we keep it with your FenceChat address, including after an account is deleted, so that the limit keeps working.
• Contact and enquiry details: If you sign up for updates, or if you are a professional who requests our partner resources, we collect the details you provide (such as your name, your firm or practice, and your work email) so we can send what you asked for and occasional related updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• Launch list (outside Australia): FenceChat is available in Australia only for now. If you are elsewhere and ask to be told when it launches in your country, we collect your email address and the country you choose. We first email you a link to confirm your address. We use them only to email you when FenceChat launches there, and for nothing else. We store your email address encrypted, and our email marketing platform (see section 7) sends the launch email.

Information in the messages you receive

• Incoming messages: Emails and SMS messages sent to your FenceChat address are processed by our AI filtering system to remove hostile or manipulative content. We store the original and filtered versions of each message in your encrypted archive.
• Sender information: The name and email address or phone number of people who send you messages, as included in message headers. This comes from the message itself rather than from the person directly, and we use it only to deliver and archive your messages.
• Information about other people: Messages sent to your FenceChat address may contain personal information about the sender or about other people (for example, family members mentioned in a message). We process this information only as part of filtering, delivering, and archiving messages for you, and never for any other purpose.
• Sensitive information in messages: People sometimes include sensitive information in what they write, such as details about someone’s health, relationships, children, or alleged criminal conduct. We do not ask for this information. It arrives because the sender chose to include it. We keep it because the message is what you have asked us to receive and keep for you, and we protect it in the same way as the rest of your archive.
• Category labels: When the filter processes a message, it also records the kinds of language it finds, using plain labels such as hostile language, contempt, blame reversal, controlling language or financial abuse. A label describes the wording of that message only. It is not a finding about the sender, and it is not a finding that any law was broken. Labels are stored with the message, shown in your Archive, and included in exports on the Legal plan. They are deleted when the message is deleted.
• What senders are told: The first time someone contacts your FenceChat address or number, we send them a one-time notice that messages are processed by AI and stored, with a link to this policy. After that, the only thing they see from FenceChat is a short “Sent via FenceChat using AI” line at the end of messages you send through FenceChat. No individual message is ever flagged to them as filtered. You can turn this notice off in Settings if telling someone could put you at risk. We ask you to confirm that reason when you turn it off, and we record the change and the reason with the date. Separately, when you reply to someone through FenceChat, your reply carries the line “Sent via FenceChat using AI.” This happens even if you have turned the notice off.
• Filter corrections: If you mark text as “missed” by the filter, we store that feedback to improve future filtering accuracy for your account.

If you have sent a message to a FenceChat address or number

If you received a one-time notice from FenceChat, this section is for you.

• Who we are: ROHAJO Pty Ltd t/a FenceChat, an Australian company. The address or number you wrote to belongs to someone who uses FenceChat to receive their messages.
• What we collect: Your name and email address or mobile number as they appear on your message, and the content of your message, including anything personal you chose to include.
• Why: To filter your message with AI, deliver it to the person you wrote to, and keep both the original and the filtered version in their private archive. The filter may remove or change hostile wording before the message reaches them, and it may label the kinds of language it finds. We do not use your message for advertising or for any other purpose.
• Who else sees it: The person you wrote to can see and export what you sent. Our service providers process it as described in sections 5 and 7, including providers overseas. We disclose it to others only as described in section 7, for example in response to valid legal process.
• Access and correction: You can ask us for access to, or correction of, personal information we hold about you by emailing privacy@fencechat.com. To protect the people who use FenceChat, we do not confirm or deny whether any particular person has a FenceChat account. We may refuse access where giving it would unreasonably affect another person’s privacy or would pose a serious threat to someone’s life, health or safety, and we will tell you if we refuse and how to complain. A stored message is a record of what was sent, so we do not change it. If you think it is inaccurate or misleading, you can ask us to attach your own statement to it, and we will.
• Complaints: Contact us first at the address above. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Technical information collected automatically

• IP address (used for approximate country detection, not stored long term)
• Browser type and version (for service compatibility, not stored)
• Technical error reports from the Dashboard (the page, your browser and what went wrong, for fixing faults). They never include what is on your screen or in your messages.
• On our public websites, how visitors use our pages, through the analytics, page-insight and advertising tools described in section 9. None of these tools runs in the Dashboard.

3. How we use your information

• To provide the FenceChat filtering and forwarding service
• To improve AI filtering accuracy based on your corrections
• To send you filtered messages and account notifications
• To process your subscription and send invoices (through our payment provider)
• To apply region-appropriate privacy protections based on your country
• To comply with legal obligations, including responding to lawful requests from authorities

We do not use your message content for advertising, sell your data to third parties, or use your information for any purpose beyond providing the FenceChat service. We do not share mobile phone numbers, or consent to receive text messages, with third parties or affiliates for their marketing or promotional purposes.

4. AI filtering and message processing

FenceChat uses an AI model from our AI provider (named in section 7) to analyse and filter the content of messages sent to your FenceChat address. This processing happens automatically and is the core function of the service. Key points:

• Message text is processed in real time as it arrives. The original and filtered versions are both stored in your encrypted archive.
• Message content is sent to our AI provider for processing, under its privacy policy and our data processing agreement with it. The provider does not use this data to train its models.
• You can view both the original and filtered version of every message in your Dashboard.
• You can delete your entire archive at any time by deleting your account.

Automated decision-making

Some decisions about your messages and your account are made by computer programs without a person involved. From 10 December 2026 the Privacy Act requires us to explain those decisions and the personal information they use. We are publishing this before that date.

Decisions made by an AI model

These are made by our AI provider’s model:

• Filtering a message: whether to remove hostile, abusive or manipulative wording from an incoming email or text before it reaches you, and whether to flag the message as containing a threat. A message flagged as a threat arrives with a warning at the top, and if you have text forwarding on, your phone gets a short alert rather than the text itself. Your message is always delivered, or kept as a held message if your account is Paused. Only its wording may change, and the original is always kept in your Archive. If the model is unavailable or fails, we deliver the message unfiltered and tell you so.
• Labelling a message: which kinds of language a message contains, using the category labels described in section 2. Labels describe the wording only and do not change what is delivered to you.
• Scanning a plain text attachment: whether a plain text attachment contains hostile content. If it does, you receive a filtered copy with the hostile words removed instead of the original, and you are told. The original is not kept, so this cannot be undone. If you need the original, ask the sender to send it again.
• Starting your free trial: your free trial starts the first time the filter changes a message sent to you, and billing starts when the trial ends. To decide this, we check the message at the moderate filter sensitivity even if your own filter sensitivity is set lower. This check does not change what is delivered to you.

Decisions made by fixed rules

• Attachments that can carry malware: executable and archive files are stripped before delivery, and you are told what was removed.
• Which texts are relayed: a text from a number you have not added as an SMS contact, or to a plan that does not include SMS, is not relayed, filtered or stored, and the sender receives a standard reply. A text to the number of an account that has ended receives a standard reply that the number is not in service.
• Sender notification: whether a sender receives the one-time notice described in section 2, based on whether they have been notified before and whether you have turned the notice off.
• If a payment fails: email and incoming texts keep working as normal. After 72 hours, texts we send for you (your SMS replies, and texts forwarded to your phone) are paused until the payment goes through. If you have text forwarding on, short safety alerts about a message flagged as a threat keep being sent.
• If your account is Paused (a free trial ends without a paid plan, or a paid plan ends): email keeps being delivered for 14 days, then new email becomes held messages. Texts become held messages straight away. Held messages stay in your Archive and are not sent to you later.
• Your free trial ending without use: if no message has been changed by the filter within 45 days of signing up (90 days if a partner referred you), the trial ends without any charge.
• Signing up: a FenceChat address containing offensive words, violent or extremist terms, or brand names cannot be chosen, and a card that already backs three FenceChat accounts cannot be used for another.
• SMS contacts: each account can register up to 10 SMS contacts. Our support team can change that limit on request.
• Removed SMS contacts: when you remove a contact, we keep a coded record of their number so their texts are not passed on to you or anyone else.
• Deleting old messages: while your account is active, messages older than your plan’s archive period are deleted automatically, and Paused accounts follow the 12-month rule, as described in section 6. When a message that has been sealed into the archive’s integrity record is deleted, we keep only its fingerprint and the reason, so exports show openly that it was deleted and when.
• Your replies: we always take your signature and your real details (your real email address, your mobile number and anything on your keep-private list) out of a reply before it reaches the other person. Everything else is sent as you write it. If you reply from your Dashboard with reply filtering turned on, our AI provider removes hostile wording and you see the result before it’s sent.

The personal information these programs use

The content and subject line of the message, including anything personal the sender chose to put in it; the sender’s email address or mobile number, and the date and time the message arrived; your FenceChat address, your SMS contacts, your plan, and your account, trial and payment status; your filter sensitivity (mild, moderate or strict) and any filter corrections you have saved; the card identifier described in section 2, when you sign up; and, for replies, your own email address and phone number, used only to remove them from what is sent.

Where a program helps a person decide

Our systems alert us to some unusual activity, such as a large number of SMS contacts added to one account in a short time. A person reviews each alert and decides what, if anything, to do. No action is taken on your account automatically because of these alerts. If we start using a program to help a person make other decisions about you, we will update this policy before it starts.

Who these decisions affect

They affect you and the people who send you messages. A change to a message alters what reaches you and how the sender’s words arrive, and a label describes the sender’s wording.

People and your message content

Filtering is done by the model and applied automatically. No one at FenceChat reads your messages in order to filter them. We do not claim that no one could ever see message content, because we hold the keys needed to decrypt it. The limited circumstances in which an administrator may access an account are described in section 5. Every access is attributed to a named individual and written to a log that cannot be altered afterwards, and you can ask us whether anyone has accessed your account.

What you can do about an automated decision

You can read the original and the filtered version of every message in your Dashboard, so you can always see what changed. You can tell us a filtering decision was wrong, and we will record your filter correction and apply it to your account from then on. You can change your filter sensitivity at any time. You can ask us to explain or reconsider a decision, or complain to us at privacy@fencechat.com. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

How we handle attachments

FenceChat processes email attachments as follows:

• Plain text files (.txt, .csv, .log, and similar): the content is sent to our AI provider to scan for hostile or abusive language. If hostile content is detected, you receive a filtered copy of the file instead, with the hostile words removed and the facts kept, and the forwarded message says so. If no hostile content is detected the file is forwarded to you exactly as received. FenceChat does not retain plain text attachment content.
• Documents, images, and other files (PDF, Word, Excel, images, etc.): forwarded to you exactly as received. These file types are not scanned or modified.
• Executable and archive files (.exe, .bat, .zip, .rar, and similar): stripped before forwarding. These file types can carry malware and are never delivered to you. You receive a notice in the forwarded message listing any files that were removed. If a removed file contained documents you need, ask the sender to send them as separate files (for example PDFs).

Attachment file content is not stored by FenceChat. If a text attachment contained hostile content, you receive a filtered copy and the original file is not kept, so it cannot be retrieved from your Dashboard. If you need the original, ask the sender to resend it.

You can turn off Deliver photos and files in Settings, or for one contact’s texts on their contact card. Photos and files are then removed and not delivered, and we keep only how many were removed. Photos and files sent to you by text are delivered by email and deleted from our text message provider once each text has been dealt with.

5. Data storage and security

Where your information is stored. Your account details and message archive are stored in a database run by our hosting provider, whose primary location is in Australia (Sydney). The hosting provider’s network, which receives and carries messages as they arrive, operates worldwide. Encrypted backups of our database are kept with a provider in the United States. They are encrypted with a key only we hold, so that provider cannot read them.

Where your information is processed overseas. To run the service, some of our providers process your information outside Australia. The AI that filters your messages and the providers that deliver forwarded email and text messages are based in the United States, as are our authentication, payment, email marketing and search providers. Our error-monitoring provider stores its reports in the European Union. Section 7 lists these providers.

Foreign legal process. Information held or processed overseas may be reached by the laws, courts and authorities of those countries. In particular, providers based in the United States may be compelled to disclose information under United States law. Given the kind of information FenceChat holds, please take this into account, particularly if you plan to keep a long record on the Legal plan.

FenceChat uses industry-standard encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest. We apply access controls so that only authorised systems can access your data.

Authentication is handled by a dedicated authentication provider. Passwords are never stored by FenceChat directly.

Two-step verification. You can strengthen your sign-in from your account settings, and it is optional. A passkey lets you sign in with your fingerprint, face or device PIN instead of a password. An authenticator app such as Google Authenticator, 1Password or Authy gives you a six-digit code to enter after your password, along with backup codes so that losing your phone does not lock you out of your archive. Turning either on does not change anything about how your messages are filtered or delivered. Passkeys usually sync through your Apple or Google account and can therefore appear on your other devices, so if you share one of those accounts with the person you are using FenceChat to manage, an authenticator app is the safer choice. We do not offer codes sent by text message: a texted code is displayed on your lock screen and is tied to your phone number rather than your device, which makes it a weaker protection for exactly the people who need it most.

Administrative access. An administrator looks at an account only where you ask us to, where the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety, or to fix a fault we cannot investigate any other way, and only as far as that needs. Access to our internal systems is restricted to named administrators who authenticate individually, and every administrative action is recorded in an append-only log that cannot be edited, including which account was involved and when. If you want to know whether anyone at FenceChat has accessed your account, ask us and we will check that log and tell you.

Checking it’s you. Before a high-risk change to your account (deleting it, cancelling or changing your plan, opening your billing settings, changing the email you sign in with, changing where your messages are delivered, or changing your name), we email a security code to your sign-in email, as telecommunications rules require. We keep a record that the check happened, without the code or your address, for 2 years.

We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, loss, and unauthorised access. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we treat the protection of your data as a core responsibility.

If a breach occurs: If a data breach happens that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will notify you and the relevant regulator as required by law: the OAIC in Australia, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in New Zealand, the applicable state authorities in the United States, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the ICO in the UK, and the relevant EU data protection authority. Our notification will explain what happened, what information was involved, and what steps you should take.

6. Data retention

• Message archive (active account): While your account is active, we keep each message for your plan’s archive period, counted from when it arrived: 30 days on Essential, 90 days on Protected and 24 months on Legal. After that it is permanently deleted. We keep as little as we can, for as short a time as we can, because messages can hold sensitive information about you and other people. If you move to a plan with a shorter archive period, older messages are kept for 30 days in case you change back, then deleted. Export anything you want to keep before then, on a plan that includes export.
• If your plan lapses (Paused): A held message (one we received but had not yet delivered) is kept for 90 days from the day it arrives, then permanently deleted. Your existing delivered archive is kept for 12 months from the day your plan pauses, then permanently deleted. We send a reminder before either happens so you can export what you want to keep, and reactivating before the cut-off keeps everything.
• Account deletion: Deleting your account through your Dashboard settings permanently and immediately erases your account data, including your FenceChat email address, FenceChat number, message archive and contact data. This cannot be undone. The deletion process offers you an export of your archive first. A few records are kept after deletion: payment records (below), the card identifier used to limit each card to three accounts (see section 2), a one-way coded record of which senders were sent the first-contact notice and of any changes to that setting, and anything under a legal hold. We also keep a coded record of your contacts’ mobile numbers, with no account attached, so a text meant for you never reaches another customer. We also keep the email addresses and mobile number on the account, encrypted and apart from everything else, for 2 years after deletion, then delete them. Online safety rules require us to be able to identify a former customer for that long. We use them only if the eSafety Commissioner or a complaint needs it, never for marketing. Your FenceChat email address is never given to anyone else: we keep a one-way coded record of it, with nothing else attached, so it cannot be reused. If you come back within 2 years and sign up with the same email, you can have the same address again; after that it is retired for good.
• Legal hold: If your account becomes subject to a legal preservation obligation, both the scheduled deletion above and account deletion are blocked until the hold is released. See our Information requests page.
• Payment records: Retained as required by applicable tax and accounting laws (typically 7 years in Australia).
• Complaints and payment help requests: Kept for 7 years after the matter is closed, then permanently deleted. Telecommunications rules require us to keep these records for at least 2 years, and the longer period covers the time in which a legal claim could be made. They are kept even if you delete your account, with your account details removed.
• Other support requests: Deleted 2 years after the last activity on them.
• Filter corrections: Retained to improve your account’s filter accuracy. Deleted when your account is deleted.
• Launch list: Deleted 30 days after we send the launch email for your country, or after 24 months if FenceChat has not launched there by then. If you do not confirm your email address within 30 days of signing up, we delete it then. You can ask us to remove you at any time, and the launch email has an unsubscribe link.
• Website searches that found nothing useful: Only the words are kept (with email addresses, web addresses and phone numbers removed), and they are deleted 12 months after they were last searched.
• Attachment file content: Not retained by FenceChat. Attachments are processed in memory and either forwarded to you (for a hostile text file, as a filtered copy) or removed. No attachment file content is written to our database or storage systems.

7. Sharing your information

We do not sell your personal information. We share information only in the following limited circumstances:

• Service providers (sub-processors): We rely on a small number of trusted providers to run the service. Each one is bound by a data processing agreement that requires it to process your data only to provide its service to us, keep it secure, not disclose it without authority, tell us about any security incident, and delete it when the service ends. Those terms are how we take the reasonable steps Australian Privacy Principle 8 requires, and we remain accountable for how these providers handle your information. Where data moves outside your region, we also rely on the transfer safeguards that apply in your region:
  • Anthropic: the AI that filters your message content (privacy policy)
  • Cloudflare: hosting, message storage, network, and bot protection on our public forms via Cloudflare Turnstile (privacy policy, Turnstile Privacy Addendum)
  • Stripe: subscription payments (privacy policy)
  • An authentication provider: sign-in and account security
  • An SMS gateway: delivery of your filtered text messages
  • An email delivery provider, with a backup provider, for forwarded and transactional email
  • An email marketing platform: account, lifecycle and digest messages, including the engagement data (such as opens, clicks and how often the service is used) needed to send those messages appropriately
  • A sales outreach platform, used only for our work with professionals such as lawyers, mediators and counsellors: it holds the business contact details of professionals we contact about partnering with FenceChat, and recognises which organisations visit our partner website. It never receives anything about FenceChat users or their messages.
  • An error-monitoring provider, to detect and fix technical faults. Message content and personal details are removed from error reports, and bug reports sent from the website do not include screenshots. On our public website its session recordings hide all text and images. It never records sessions in the Dashboard or on the sign-in page.
  • A search provider, which powers search on our website and in the Dashboard help centre. It receives our own published pages and help articles, and the words typed into a search box. We send it those words only, never your name, contact details or anything else we hold about you, and it deletes them once the search is done. On our website, a search that finds nothing useful is saved so we can see which guides are missing. We keep only the words (with any email address, web address or phone number removed first), how many times they were searched and on which days. We never keep your internet address, account or anything else that links the search to you, and we delete the words 12 months after they were last searched. Other website searches are not saved. In the Dashboard help centre, a search that finds no articles is saved, without your name or account, so we can see which help articles are missing.
  • Web analytics providers, to understand how visitors use our websites (section 9).
  • A page-insight provider, to see how visitors move through the pages of our public websites so we can make them easier to use (section 9).
  • Advertising platforms we advertise on, to measure and improve our own advertising (section 9). They never receive your messages or anything about why you use FenceChat.
  We name the providers that handle your message content, hosting and payments; the others are described by function. Each provider processes your data only on our instructions, is bound by a data processing agreement and its own privacy policy, and we can identify the specific provider behind any category on request.
• Legal requirements: We disclose stored message content only: with your consent; in response to valid legal process (a warrant, court order, or subpoena, depending on what the law requires for the type of data. How we handle these, what we hand over, and what we do not, is set out on our Information requests page); where mandatory reporting laws require it (for example, laws requiring reports of child sexual exploitation material to authorities such as the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation or the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children); or in an emergency where we reasonably believe there is a danger of death or serious physical injury to a person. We do not respond to informal requests for message content, and where the law allows it we will tell you when your data has been requested.
• Business transfers: If FenceChat is acquired or merges with another business, your data may be transferred as part of that transaction. You will be notified in advance.

8. Your rights

Regardless of where you are located, you have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

To exercise any of these rights, email us at privacy@fencechat.com. We will respond within 30 days. You may also escalate: Australian users to the OAIC; New Zealand users to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; US/California users to their state Attorney General; Canadian users to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (Quebec: the CAI); UK users to the ICO; and EU/EEA users to their national data protection authority.

9. Cookies and tracking

FenceChat uses a small number of essential cookies required for authentication and session management (provided by our authentication provider). These are strictly necessary for the service to function and do not require your consent.

Our public websites. On our public pages (everything except the Dashboard and the sign-in page), we use:

• an analytics tool, to understand how visitors use our websites (pages visited, time on site, device type and approximate location). It sets its own cookies to tell visits apart;
• a page-insight tool, which shows how visitors move through our pages, such as where they scroll and click, so we can make the website easier to use;
• a cookie-free visit counter, which counts visits to the public pages of our websites and records the page, the website or AI chat tool that sent the visitor, and the visitor’s approximate location, language, device and browser type. It sets no cookies and does not store your internet (IP) address with the counts; and
• advertising tools from the platforms we advertise on. They tell us which of our ads lead to visits and sign-ups, and help those platforms show our ads to people likely to find FenceChat useful, including people who have visited our website before. These platforms may set their own cookies and may link this information with what they already hold about you, under their own privacy policies.

When you sign up, start your free trial or start a paid plan. To measure our advertising, we may tell an advertising platform that one of these steps has happened, with your email address in a scrambled (hashed) form that the platform can match to its own records and, if you arrived from one of its ads, the ad-click reference it added to the link. We never send an advertising platform your messages, your FenceChat email address or number, your contacts, or anything about why you use FenceChat.

In the Dashboard. No analytics, page-insight or advertising tool, and no visit counter, runs in the Dashboard, where you read your messages, and nothing there records your screen. The sign-in page uses the analytics tool only, and the visit counter does not run there. We count sign-ups, payments and account closures from our own systems.

We never sell your personal information, and nothing from your messages is ever used for advertising. Our email marketing platform (listed as a sub-processor above) records engagement with our own messages, such as opens, clicks and how often you use the service, solely so we can send you relevant account, lifecycle and digest emails.

How you found FenceChat. When you arrive, we keep in your browser, for up to 90 days, the campaign details from our own link or ad (for example “search-ads:launch”), any ad-click reference the advertising platform added to the link, the name of the website you came from (not the page), and the first page you visited on our site. If you sign up, we save these with your account, together with your analytics visitor reference, and delete them when your account is deleted. If you decline analytics, we keep only the campaign details. If there are none, we may ask how you heard about us when you sign up; answering is optional. We use this only to see which of our own marketing works.

Your consent choices: If you are visiting from the United Kingdom or Canada, we ask for your consent before loading any of the analytics, page-insight or advertising tools above. A small banner appears at the bottom of the page and you can accept or decline. If you decline, none of them is loaded and they set no cookies. The cookie-free visit counter still runs, because it sets no cookies and does not keep your internet address. Your choice is saved in your browser’s local storage (not a cookie) so we do not ask again on future visits.

For all other markets (Australia, New Zealand, United States, and others), these tools load on our public pages without a consent prompt, consistent with local privacy law requirements.

Our partner website: On fencechatpartners.com, our website for professionals, we also use our sales outreach platform’s visitor tool. It recognises which organisation a visit comes from (for example, a law firm’s office network), so we can see which professional organisations are interested in FenceChat. It identifies organisations, not individual people, and it is never used on the FenceChat service itself. The same consent rule applies: visitors from the United Kingdom and Canada are asked first, and if you decline, none of these tools is loaded. The cookie-free visit counter runs there too, for every visitor, with its counts kept separate from FenceChat.com.

Withdrawing consent: You can withdraw or change your consent at any time by clearing your browser’s local storage for FenceChat.com, or by using a browser extension that blocks analytics and advertising tools. Most advertising platforms also let you turn off ad personalisation in your account settings with them.

You can disable cookies in your browser settings, but doing so for essential cookies will prevent you from logging in to FenceChat.

10. Children’s privacy

FenceChat is not directed at children under the age of 13 (or 16 in the UK/EU). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

11. International data transfers

FenceChat is based in Australia, and our primary database is in Australia. Some of our providers process information in other countries, mainly the United States and the European Union, as set out in section 5. We take reasonable steps to ensure those transfers comply with applicable law. For Australian users that standard is Australian Privacy Principle 8. For UK and EU users we rely on the transfer safeguards those regimes require.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or via a notice in your Dashboard at least 14 days before the changes take effect. The “last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent version. Continued use of FenceChat after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Direct marketing

We may send you a weekly digest summarising your filtered messages and occasional product updates. You can opt out at any time from your Settings page or by clicking “unsubscribe” in any email. We do not share your email address with third parties for marketing purposes.