Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and what this covers

Pylon Communications LLC (“Pylon,” “we,” “us”) is a California limited liability company based in Sonoma County, California. We provide hosted phone service, mainly to K-12 schools and nonprofits.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share and protect information when you:

• visit our website, pyloncomms.com;
• use the online tools on our website, such as the quote builder, the comparison tool and the SMS compliance kit;
• ask for a quote, contact us, or talk with us at a conference or other event;
• get a business email from us; or
• use our phone, fax and messaging services (our “services”), either as a customer or as a person using a customer’s account.

Our customer portals, the billing portal at https://accounts.pyloncomms.com and the Pylon Admin Portal at https://portal.pswitch.net, are part of our services. This policy and your customer agreement cover them.

You can reach us using the details in section 16.

2. Our role

• Website, outreach and account information. Pylon decides how this information is used, and we are responsible for it.
• Call and message content. When customers use our services, calls, voicemails, recordings, transcripts, faxes and text messages pass through or are stored in our systems. We process this content on our customer’s behalf, under our customer agreement, and only to provide the services. If you use a phone or number that your school or organization provides, your organization controls this content. Please contact your organization with questions about it.

3. Information we collect

We try to collect only what we need. Here is what we collect, by source.

3.1 When you visit our website

• Anonymous usage events. We record simple events in our own database, such as “page viewed,” “estimate started,” “estimate completed,” “comparison used” or “guide chapter viewed.” These events don’t include your name, email address, phone number or IP address, and we don’t use cookies to collect them. Events about a quote you ask us to email, such as when it was confirmed or viewed, are linked to that quote’s record (section 3.2).
• Technical information. Like any website, our cloud hosting provider receives your IP address and basic browser information when your browser requests a page. We use IP addresses to limit abuse, for example to cap how many forms can be sent from one address in an hour. For this, we store only a scrambled (hashed) form of the address, and we delete it within a few days.
• Bot protection. Our forms use a self-hosted check: your browser solves a small math puzzle (called “proof of work”) to show it isn’t an automated program. The check runs on our own website. It uses no cookies and no third-party captcha service.
• Quote builder and comparison tool. Your estimate is calculated in your browser. Your answers are kept in the page address (URL), so you can bookmark or share it without giving us any contact information. We don’t save your estimate unless you ask us to email it to you.
• SMS compliance kit. The kit generator runs in your browser, and we don’t save what you type into it. We record only an anonymous event that a kit was generated and for which type of organization (for example, “nonprofit”).
• Campaign tags. If you reach our website through a link with campaign tags (such as “utm_source”), we save those tags with any quote request or form you send. This helps us learn which of our materials are useful.

3.2 When you ask us to email a quote

When you use “Email me this quote,” we collect:

• your name, work email address, role (such as IT, leadership or finance), job title (optional) and organization name;
• the details of your estimate and any comparison numbers you entered;
• the names (optional), work email addresses and roles of any colleagues you ask us to include; and
• the IP address and browser information connected with your request and your confirmation, to help us prevent abuse.

Here is how it works:

• We first email you a link to confirm your request. Nothing goes to your colleagues until you confirm by pressing the button on our page.
• After you confirm, we send one email to you and the colleagues you added, with Pylon copied, so everyone can reply in one thread. Your colleagues will see your name and email address, and that you asked us to share the estimate with them.
• If a colleague’s email address belongs to a different organization than yours, we hold it. Pylon staff review it before anything is sent to that person, and may decide not to send it.
• We never email addresses on our suppression list (people who have unsubscribed), and we don’t email organizations on our no-contact list.
• Every quote email we send to you and your colleagues includes a way to unsubscribe. (The confirmation email is a one-time message you asked for.)
• When someone opens the estimate from our email and scrolls or clicks, we record that the quote was viewed and which sections were opened. Everyone on the thread shares one link, so we record this for the quote, not for a particular person.

Please add only colleagues who would expect to review this estimate as part of their work.

3.3 When you use our contact, partner, rescue or event forms

• Contact and partner forms: your name, email address, organization (optional) and message.
• Rescue form (for a phone system that is down): your name, organization, email address or phone number, and a description of the problem.
• Event form: at conferences and other events, our staff may use a tablet version of our contact form. It asks for your name, job title, organization, email address, phone number (optional), role, current phone system, what you are interested in, your timing and any notes, whether it’s OK to follow up by email, and which event it was. If you say it’s OK to follow up by email, we keep a record of that permission: the wording you agreed to, the date, the page, and the IP address and browser type of the device used.

Our forms don’t ask for text-message consent (section 6).

3.4 When you unsubscribe

We add your email address to our suppression list, with the date and the reason (for example, “unsubscribed” or “email bounced”).

3.5 Customer account and billing information

If your organization becomes a customer, we collect:

• your organization’s name and addresses;
• the names, work email addresses and phone numbers of your billing contacts and Account Admins (the people you authorize to make changes and get support);
• billing and payment records, and any tax exemption certificates you send us; and
• your signed agreements and order forms.

Payment information you enter in our billing portal is used only to process payments. Our billing and payment service providers handle it on our behalf.

3.6 Service records, including CPNI

When customers use our services, we create service records. These include call detail records (such as the numbers calling and called, and the date, time and length of each call), use of channels and minutes, phone numbers, device and configuration settings, and invoices. Many of these records are customer proprietary network information, which has special protection under federal law (section 7).

3.7 911 location data

We keep the street address and in-building details (such as building, floor and room) that customers set for each phone, so 911 calls can be routed and responders can find the caller (section 8).

3.8 Text message (SMS) data

Pylon doesn’t run a text-message program of its own, and our website doesn’t ask for text-message consent. If your organization uses our service’s texting features, we process the related information on its behalf, as described in section 6.

3.9 Support

When you contact our support team, we keep your messages, notes from our calls, support tickets and records of changes we make for you.

3.10 Business outreach and event organizers

• Published work contact details. We send business emails about our services to staff at schools, districts, nonprofits and other organizations. For this, we collect work contact details (name, job title, work email address and organization) that organizations publish themselves, or that appear in public government education and nonprofit directories. We also use public information about the organization, such as its website, board agendas and job postings, so our emails are relevant. We record where and when we found each contact, and we use these details only for business outreach about our services.
• Event organizers. At a conference, the organizer may give us your contact details when you agree to it, for example when you let us scan your badge at our booth. We use them only as the organizer’s rules allow.
• How outreach emails are sent. They come from a named Pylon team member or from Pylon Communications, and they are sent from separate email domains that we own, not from pyloncomms.com. Each one includes our name, our mailing address and a way to opt out. AI tools help us research organizations and draft emails, and a person at Pylon reviews and approves every email before it’s sent.
• What we never do. We never email students, and we don’t email people who have opted out (section 12).

4. How we use information

We use information to:

• prepare and send the estimates and emails you ask for, and reply to you, including our team’s follow-up about your estimate or message;
• provide, bill for and support our services, including setting up phones and moving (porting) numbers;
• route 911 calls, give emergency responders your location, and send the 911 notifications your organization sets up;
• send business outreach emails about our services, using published work contact details (section 3.10);
• protect our website, our services and our customers from spam, fraud, toll fraud and attacks;
• improve our website, using anonymous usage events;
• honor opt-outs everywhere: we share our suppression list with our separate outreach email program, so an unsubscribe in one is honored in the other;
• keep people who have asked us for a quote or contacted us out of our cold outreach: we mark them “do not cold email” in our outreach program; and
• meet our legal, tax and regulatory obligations, and enforce our agreements.

We don’t use your information for targeted advertising, and we don’t sell it.

5. How we share information

We share information only in these categories:

• Service providers who work for us. These include a cloud hosting provider (for our website and database), an email delivery service provider (for the emails our website sends), the email and office tools our team uses, billing and payment processors, our tax and regulatory compliance service, and providers that operate parts of our phone and messaging platform. For our outreach program, they also include email services that send our outreach emails and check that addresses are valid, and AI services that help us research organizations, draft emails and sort replies. We don’t include email addresses or phone numbers in what we send to AI services. Service providers may use information only to provide their services to us.
• Professional advisers. Such as accountants and lawyers, who must keep it confidential.
• Carriers and 911 providers. We share what’s needed to complete calls and texts, show caller ID, move (port) numbers, and route 911 calls with your location to emergency responders.
• People you ask us to email. When you send a quote to colleagues, they see your name, email address and estimate (section 3.2).
• Your organization. If you use our services through your school or organization, its Account Admins may be able to see information about your use, such as call history, voicemail and settings, in our portals. The people your organization chooses to notify when someone dials 911 receive information about that call.
• Legal requirements and safety. We share information when the law requires it, such as for a subpoena, court order or lawful government request. We also share it to answer industry traceback requests, which find the source of illegal robocalls, and to protect people, our services or our rights.
• Business transfers. If Pylon is part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, information may transfer to the new owner. The new owner must keep honoring this policy for information collected under it.

Text messaging opt-in data and consent are not shared under any of these categories. See section 6.

6. Text messaging (SMS)

Pylon doesn’t text you. We don’t run a text-message program of our own, and our website doesn’t ask for text-message consent.

Texting through our service. Our customers can send and receive business text messages through our service. When they do, the customer is the sender: it collects and keeps its recipients’ consent and honors opt-outs, as our Terms of Service describe. We process those messages, phone numbers, opt-out replies (such as STOP) and any consent information our customer gives us only on our customer’s behalf, to deliver messages, to keep the records carriers require and to prevent fraud.

Mobile information will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.

Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are excluded from every category of sharing described in this Policy and will not be shared with any third parties.

(The messaging platforms and wireless carriers that transmit these messages process this information only to deliver them, on our and our customers’ behalf.)

7. Customer proprietary network information (CPNI)

What it is. CPNI is information about the quantity, configuration, type, destination, location and amount of your use of our voice services, and related billing information. For example, the numbers you call and when you call them are CPNI. Federal law requires us to protect it.

How we use it. We use CPNI to provide, bill for and support your services; to offer services within your existing relationship with us; to provide features such as caller ID and call forwarding; and to protect against fraud or unlawful use.

What we don’t do. We don’t sell CPNI or share it with third parties for their marketing. We won’t use it to market services outside your existing relationship with us without first giving you the notice and choices the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires.

Protecting your account. Our support team works with your organization’s Account Admins, the people you authorize to make changes and get support. We disclose call detail information only after confirming who you are with your account password, or by sending it to your address of record or calling your telephone number of record. We notify you when your password, backup authentication method, online account or address of record is created or changed. A business customer with a dedicated account representative may agree to different authentication steps, but only in a service agreement that specifically covers how we protect CPNI.

Breaches. If a breach involves CPNI or other covered data, we will notify law enforcement, the FCC and affected customers as federal and state law require.

8. 911 location data

We keep the street address and in-building details (such as building, floor, room or suite) set for each phone, and any location information your devices or our systems provide for 911 calls. We use it to route 911 calls and give emergency responders your location. We share it with 911 service providers and emergency authorities for that purpose, and with the people your organization chooses to notify when someone dials 911.

Please keep your locations up to date. Our 911/E911 Disclosure explains why and how.

9. Customer content and education records

Calls, voicemails, recordings, transcripts, faxes and text messages processed through our services belong to our customer. We handle them under our customer agreements. We access them only to provide and secure the services, to support the customer at its request, or as the law requires. If you are a customer that sends text messages through our services, your messages and your recipients’ information are customer content too.

Schools. A school’s phone service can include student information, for example in voicemails, call recordings or call records. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the federal law that protects student education records, lets a school share records with a service provider that works under the school’s direction. When we handle student information for a school, we:

• act only on the school’s behalf and use student information only to provide the services to the school;
• don’t share it except as the school directs or the law requires;
• never sell it, use it for targeted advertising or use it to build profiles of students;
• never put student information in our marketing;
• protect it with the safeguards in section 11.2; and
• delete or return it when the school asks, or as our agreement with the school requires, except for records the law requires us to keep.

If your district uses its own student data privacy agreement or addendum, send it to us and we’ll review it.

10. Cookies, Do Not Track and analytics

Our website does not use advertising or tracking cookies. We record anonymous usage events to improve the site. Our website does not respond to Do Not Track signals because we do not track visitors across sites.

We don’t use cookies for people who are simply browsing. Our own website code sets only these two cookies:

Both are “HttpOnly” cookies, which means scripts on a web page can’t read them, and both are sent only over secure (encrypted) connections.

Other details:

• No third-party trackers. We don’t allow third parties to collect information about your online activities over time and across different websites when you use our website.
• No outside requests for fonts or bot checks. Our fonts are stored on our own website, and our bot protection runs on our own website.
• No analytics scripts. We don’t use an outside analytics tool. If we ever add one, we’ll list it here first.
• No email tracking. Our emails don’t contain tracking pixels or tracked links.
• Our hosting provider’s security cookie. If our hosting and security provider suspects automated traffic, it may set a short-lived cookie (for example __cf_bm or cf_clearance) that helps tell people from bots. It’s needed to keep the site safe, isn’t used for advertising and doesn’t track you across sites.
• Customer portals. This section covers pyloncomms.com. Our customer portals are separate web applications and may use their own cookies, for example to keep you signed in.

11. How long we keep information, and how we protect it

11.1 Retention

Deletion requests. If you ask us to delete your information, we delete your contact details, the quotes you requested and the form messages you sent, in our website records and our outreach records. We keep your email address on our suppression list so we never email you again by mistake, and we keep any consent records without your email address. We may also keep records the law requires, or that we need for security, such as records of emails we’ve sent.

Customer content, such as voicemails and recordings, is kept according to the customer’s settings and our customer agreement.

11.2 Security

We protect information with reasonable safeguards, including:

• encrypted (HTTPS) connections to our website;
• private links that are random, expire, and are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form;
• staff sign-in for our admin pages, with staff actions logged;
• keeping personal information out of our system logs; and
• requiring our service providers to protect the information they handle for us.

No system is perfectly secure. If a security breach affects your information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

12. Your choices

• Unsubscribe from email. Use our unsubscribe page, use the link in our email, or reply “unsubscribe” to any of our emails. We act on requests within 48 hours, and an unsubscribe applies to our website emails and our outreach emails.
• Stop text messages. Reply STOP to a text sent through our service to opt out of that sender’s messages.
• See, correct or delete your information. Email sales@pyloncomms.com with “Privacy request” in the subject line, call 888-958-3242, or write to us (section 16). We’ll confirm the request comes from you, for example by replying to the email address in our records. We may need to keep some information the law requires us to keep, such as billing records, consent records and your suppression list entry.
• Where we found your details. If we emailed you using published work contact details, you can ask us where and when we found them.
• Customers. Your Account Admins can ask us to update your organization’s account information at any time.
• People who use a customer’s service. If you use phones or numbers your school or organization provides, please contact your organization first. We’ll help them respond.

We won’t treat you differently for making a request.

13. California privacy notices

• We do not sell or share personal information. That means we don’t sell it, and we don’t share it for cross-context behavioral advertising (ads based on your activity across other companies’ websites and apps).
• Shine the Light (California Civil Code section 1798.83). We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
• California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA). This policy describes the categories of personal information we collect (section 3) and the categories of third parties we share it with (section 5); how you can review and request changes to your information (section 12); how we respond to Do Not Track signals, and that we don’t allow third parties to track you across sites through our website (section 10); how we tell you about changes (section 15); and its effective date (at the top of this page).

California residents can contact us at any time about the information we hold about them (section 16).

14. Children

Our website and services are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them through our website. If you believe a child under 13 has sent us personal information through our website, contact us and we’ll delete it. Information about students that schools process through our services is handled as section 9 describes.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we do, we’ll post the new version on this page with a new “Last updated” date and effective date. If we make a material change to how we use or share personal information, we’ll also post a notice on our website and email our customers’ Account Admins before the change takes effect. We keep past versions; ask us if you’d like a copy.

16. Contact us

• Mail: Pylon Communications LLC, 548 Market St PMB 37344, San Francisco, CA 94104-5401
• Email: sales@pyloncomms.com (please put “Privacy” in the subject line)
• Phone: 888-958-3242
• Online: our contact form