Privacy Policy for Inform

Last updated: October 1, 2026

Inform ("Inform", "we", "us") is review-management software that helps businesses reply to their Google reviews and understand what customers say about them. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect when you use our website at informreviews.net, our web dashboard, our Chrome extension and our free tools, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

Some of our tools can be used without an account. Section 3 covers our free review audit, and applies whether or not you are an Inform customer.

  1. Information We Collect

    1. Account information: When you sign in with Google we receive your name, email address and profile picture from your Google account. We do not receive or store your Google password.

    2. Business information: The organizations and locations you connect, your settings (AI voice, custom brand-voice description, phrases to use or avoid, rules, templates, remediation contact), and any logo you upload for white-labelled reports.

    3. Review information: Reviews of the locations you connect, including the reviewer's public name and profile picture, the rating, the review text and photos, and any replies. For Google, we read these through the Google Business Profile API. For Yelp and Tripadvisor listings you choose to add, we collect the publicly visible reviews of those listings through a web data provider.

    4. Content we generate: AI-drafted replies, weekly and period summaries, Top Actions, sentiment scores and response-performance figures.

    5. Billing information: If you subscribe to a paid plan, payment is handled by Stripe. We receive billing identifiers, your plan, subscription and payment status, and related invoice and promotion information. Your card details are entered with and held by Stripe, and do not pass through our servers.

    6. Messages you send us: If you use our contact form or email us, we receive your name, email address, company and message.

    7. Usage information: Like most websites, we and our providers receive technical information such as IP address, browser type, device information, pages visited, referring pages and dates and times of access.

  2. Google User Data

    Inform's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

    1. What we access: With your permission, we use Google sign-in to identify you, and the Google Business Profile APIs to list the business locations you manage, read their reviews, and post, edit or delete replies that you (or your auto-reply settings) approve.

    2. How we use it: Only to provide and improve the features you use: showing your reviews, generating and posting replies, and producing your summaries and reports. We do not use Google user data for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train general-purpose AI models.

    3. Who sees it: People at Inform may view it only with your consent (for example, to help with a support request), for security purposes, or where required by law. We share it only with the service providers in section 5 that need it to deliver the features you use.

    4. Your control: You can disconnect Inform at any time from your Google account's security settings (myaccount.google.com/permissions). Disconnecting stops all further access to your Google data.

    Separately, and without any account access, our free review audit uses the Google Places API to read information Google already publishes about a business. See section 3.

  3. The Free Review Audit Tool

    Our review audit at informreviews.net/tools/review-audit can be used without creating an account. This section describes how we handle information there, and applies to everyone who uses it.

    1. What you give us: Nothing is required to see the first part of a report. You choose a business and we show you what we found. If you ask to unlock the rest, we collect the email address you enter and your answers to two questions: whether you are an owner or manager, an agency, or a multi-location operator; and who currently replies to your reviews.

    2. How we use your email: We use it once, to send you a link to your report. We do not add you to a mailing list or an automated sequence on the strength of an audit alone. We use your two answers to decide what the report shows you and to understand who the tool is reaching.

    3. Information about the business: We query the Google Places API for information Google already publishes: the business name, address, category, star rating, review count, opening hours, website, phone number, a count of photos, and up to five publicly visible reviews. We also request basic details of comparable businesses nearby so we can show you how the business compares. You may audit a business you do not own; everything we retrieve is already public on Google Maps.

    4. What we keep: Google's place identifier, which their Maps Platform terms expressly permit us to store, and the figures we work out ourselves: rankings, percentages, scores and check results. We do not keep the business name, its address, review text, or the names of reviewers. Those are fetched from Google each time a report is opened and are not retained by us.

    5. Automated replies: If you unlock the full report, we send one publicly visible review to OpenAI so it can draft a suggested reply. The reply is generated when you view the report; we do not save that draft in the audit record.

    6. Protecting the tool from abuse: The audit is open to anyone and each use costs us money, so it is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile. Turnstile processes your IP address and characteristics of your browser in order to distinguish people from automated traffic. Its handling of that information is governed by Cloudflare's privacy policy.

    7. Retention and deletion: Audit records, including an email address and answers you provided to unlock a report, are scheduled for deletion after 90 days. Deletion runs on a daily schedule, so a record may remain briefly past the 90-day mark. To request earlier deletion, email hello@informreviews.net with the report link or the address you used.

  4. How We Use Information

    1. To provide the service: reading and displaying your reviews, drafting and posting replies, applying your rules and voice settings, and producing summaries, reports and insights.

    2. To communicate with you: account and security notices, requested reports, onboarding and weekly summary emails where available, replies to your messages, and occasional plan information. You can ask us to stop optional emails at hello@informreviews.net.

    3. To bill you: managing subscriptions, plan limits and invoices through Stripe.

    4. To keep Inform secure and working: preventing abuse, fixing problems, and measuring how the website and product are used so we can improve them.

    5. To meet legal obligations: keeping records we are required to keep and responding to lawful requests.

  5. Service Providers We Share Information With

    We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with providers that help us run Inform, and only what each needs:

    • Google: sign-in, the Google Business Profile APIs, and the Places API for the free audit.
    • OpenAI: review text, your voice and phrase settings, and business names are sent to generate replies, summaries and insights. We use OpenAI's API, and under OpenAI's API terms data sent this way is not used to train their models by default.
    • Stripe: payments and subscriptions.
    • Cloudflare: hosting and content delivery for our website, and Turnstile bot protection on our forms.
    • A web data provider (Zyte): collecting publicly visible Yelp and Tripadvisor reviews for listings you choose to add.
    • Email providers: sending account, summary and report emails through our email delivery service, and delivering messages from our contact form through Resend.
    • Hygraph: hosting our blog content. It receives no customer data.
    • Apollo.io: a website analytics tool that may use cookies and your IP address to identify the company a visit comes from. It runs on our marketing website only, not in the product dashboard.

    We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect our rights or the safety of others, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, in which case this policy continues to apply to it.

  6. Cookies and Similar Technologies

    Our product uses cookies that are necessary to keep you signed in. Our marketing website uses Cloudflare Turnstile on forms and Apollo.io for website analytics as described above. Videos on our website only load from YouTube (in its privacy-enhanced mode) after you press play. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings; blocking necessary cookies will prevent sign-in.

  7. Data Retention

    We keep your account, connected business information and cached reviews while needed to provide the service, subject to the deletion process below. When you unlink a Google location, we attempt to remove its cached reviews if no other organization still uses that location. Weekly summaries are normally removed by a scheduled job after roughly 53 to 54 weeks. Audit retention is described in section 3. You can delete your account from the bottom of Settings. This removes your profile, stored Google tokens and claimed audit records; it also deletes organizations where you are the only member, including their settings, connected locations and summaries. We attempt to clear review caches no remaining organization uses and revoke Google's access; if either step fails, the completion page tells you how to follow up. A cache shared with another organization remains until no organization needs it. An organization with other members remains in place, and an owner must transfer ownership or reconnect its Google integration before deleting their account. Paid subscriptions for organizations deleted with an account are cancelled immediately, but billing and transaction records may remain with Stripe or us for legal, tax, accounting, security or dispute purposes. Backups may take longer to expire. Revoking Google's access stops future API access but does not itself delete information already held in Inform. For help with deletion or location disconnection, email hello@informreviews.net.

  8. Your Rights and Choices

    Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct or delete your personal information, and to withdraw consent, subject to legal limits. To make a request or complain about our handling of your information, email hello@informreviews.net with "Privacy request" in the subject. We may need to verify your identity or authority before acting. We will respond within the time required by applicable law and explain any refusal. You can also revoke Inform's access to your Google account as described in section 2. If you are a reviewer whose public review appears in Inform, identify the review or business when you contact us so we can assess your request.

  9. Data Security

    We protect your information with measures such as encryption in transit, access controls and least-privilege access for our staff and providers. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we will notify you of a breach affecting your information where the law requires it.

  10. International Transfers

Inform and our providers may process information in Canada, the United States and other countries where they operate. Where we transfer information across borders, we rely on our providers' contractual and security commitments to protect it.

  1. Children's Privacy

Inform accounts are for people aged 18 or older. Our website and free tools are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children through those tools. Reviews shown through connected business accounts may contain information about other people; if you believe we hold a child's information, contact us so we can assess and address it.

  1. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here and change the "Last updated" date, and we will notify you by email or in the product of changes that materially affect how we use your information.

  1. Contact Us

For questions or requests about this policy or your information, email hello@informreviews.net. We will also provide a mailing address on request.