Privacy notice

Who we are

This website is operated by Beta Gen Technologies LLC, doing business as Beta Gen Studios (“Beta Gen Studios,” “we,” “us” or “our”). We are a design and development studio based in Richmond, Virginia, in the United States.

Our mailing address is 8401 Mayland Dr, Richmond, VA 23294. You can reach us about privacy at info@betagenstudios.com or (804) 860-2048.

What this notice covers

This notice covers personal information we collect through this website, including its contact forms, its AI assistant and its booking link. It does not cover other websites, including our clients' websites, even when we built or host them.

When we build, host or maintain a website or system for a client, personal information in that work is handled under our contract with the client and the client's own privacy notice. If your question is about a client's website, please contact that business directly. We will help them respond.

Information we collect

We collect only what we need. Depending on how you use the site, that may include:

• Contact form details. Your name, email address, the services you are interested in, your timeline, how you heard about us and your message. We also record which form you used and the page you sent it from.
• AI assistant conversations. The messages you type into the assistant and its replies, the time of each message, the page where the chat started and the version of the notice you accepted before chatting. If you want our team to contact you, the assistant asks in the chat for your name, your email address and what you need, and you may add your company, the services you are interested in, your timeline and a budget. The assistant also notes for our team whether your inquiry looks like a fit for our services, and why.
• Booking details. If you book a call, you do it on a Google Calendar booking page. Google collects the details you enter there and adds the booking to our calendar so we can hold the call.
• Technical information. Like any website, our hosting and network providers receive your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you request and the time of each request. We use your IP address briefly to limit repeated requests to the forms and the assistant.
• Bot check signals. Before a form is sent or a chat starts, Cloudflare Turnstile checks signals from your browser and connection to tell people from automated programs. We receive only the result of the check.
• Analytics information. If you accept analytics, Google Analytics records how the site is used, such as pages viewed, approximate location based on your IP address, device type and how you arrived. See “Cookies and analytics.”

What we do not collect

We do not ask for, and ask you not to send, sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, financial account or card numbers, health information, precise location, or information about children. The site has no user accounts and takes no payments. We do not buy personal information from data brokers.

How we use it

We use personal information to:

• read and reply to your inquiry, and discuss a possible project with you;
• run the AI assistant, review what it told you, sort the inquiries it takes, and follow up when you ask us to;
• hold calls you book with us;
• keep the site, the forms and the assistant secure and protect them from spam, fraud and abuse;
• understand how the site is used so we can improve it;
• comply with the law, respond to lawful requests, and establish or defend legal claims.

Our AI assistant

When it is switched on, the site offers a chat assistant. It is an automated AI program, not a person. It answers questions from the content of this website and can make mistakes. Before your first message we show a notice explaining how the chat works, and the chat starts only when you choose to start it.

Your conversation is recorded. Our team can read it as it happens in a private Google Chat space, and we keep it there as a record of what the assistant told you. While the chat is open, our server also holds a working copy in memory so the assistant can follow the conversation. That copy is not written to disk, and it is discarded some time after the two-hour chat session expires, or when the app restarts.

Your messages, including any name, email address or other details you type, are sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, to write the replies. Under its commercial terms, Anthropic processes them on our behalf, does not use them to train its models, and keeps them only for a limited period under its own policies.

Chatting is not a request to be contacted. If you want our team to reach you, the assistant collects your details in the chat and shows you a summary. Nothing is sent until you check the summary and press “Send to the team,” next to a sentence confirming that you want your details sent. Then one email with your details and the conversation goes to our team's inbox.

To help our team prioritize, the assistant also notes whether your inquiry looks like a fit for our services, for example a likely project, an early idea, a job application or a sales pitch, with a one-sentence reason. The note appears in our team's record of the conversation and in the email, but not on your summary. A person on our team reads every inquiry that is sent, whatever the note says. The note is not used to make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.

Your browser keeps a copy of the chat in that tab until you close the tab or press “Clear chat.” Clearing it does not delete our record. To ask us to delete it, see “How to make a request.” Please do not share sensitive personal information in the chat. The assistant is instructed not to ask for phone numbers, addresses, payment details, passwords, ID numbers or health information.

Cookies and analytics

We do not use advertising cookies, and the site itself sets no tracking cookies. Your browser's session storage holds the assistant chat for that tab only, and its local storage keeps your analytics choice for 12 months.

When analytics are switched on, a notice at the bottom of the page asks whether you accept analytics. Only if you choose “Accept analytics” do we use Google Tag Manager to load Google Analytics, which then sets first-party cookies, such as _ga, that recognize a browser across visits and last up to two years unless you delete them. If you choose “Decline,” or make no choice, neither loads. We set Google's consent settings so that advertising storage, the use of data for advertising and ad personalization are always turned off. Cloudflare may set cookies that are strictly necessary for security and the bot check.

You can change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” in the footer of every page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and the site will still work, or opt out of Google Analytics with the browser add-on Google offers on its website.

Who we share it with

We share personal information only with service providers that help us run the site and our business, under contracts or terms that limit how they may use it. They are:

• Google Workspace for email, which is how form and assistant inquiries reach our team; for the Google Chat space where assistant conversations are recorded; and for Google Calendar bookings;
• Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics for website analytics, when switched on and only if you accept analytics;
• Anthropic to write the AI assistant's replies;
• Cloudflare for our domain's DNS, content delivery, security and the Turnstile bot check;
• Hostinger to host the website.

Other disclosures

We may also disclose personal information when the law requires it, to respond to valid legal process, to protect the rights, safety or property of our visitors, our clients, our team or the public, or as part of a merger, sale or reorganization of our business. If our business changes hands, this notice will continue to apply to information collected under it unless you are told otherwise and given any choices the law requires.

No sale and no targeted advertising

We do not sell personal information. We do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, use it for targeted advertising, or use it for profiling that leads to legal or similarly significant decisions, as US state privacy laws define those terms.

If that ever changes, we will update this notice first and give you a clear way to opt out.

Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as your request to opt out of any sale or sharing of your personal information and any targeted advertising, for that browser. We also treat it as your choice to decline analytics: Google Analytics does not load, and the site does not ask you to accept it. We will keep honoring the signal if our practices change.

Browsers can also send a “Do Not Track” signal. There is no common standard for it, so the site does not respond to it differently. We do not track you across other websites, and we do not allow other companies to collect personal information about your activity across websites through our site for advertising. Google, as our analytics provider, collects the analytics information described above only if you accept analytics.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes above:

• Inquiry emails from the forms or the assistant: up to 24 months after our last contact with you. If you become a client, we keep what we need with our client records for the engagement and for as long as tax and legal rules require.
• Assistant conversations in our Google Chat space, or in any database that replaces it: 12 months, then deleted.
• The server's working copy of a chat: in memory only, discarded some time after the two-hour chat session expires, or when the app restarts.
• The chat copy in your browser: until you close the tab or clear the chat.
• IP addresses used to limit repeated requests: only in the server's working memory, never written to disk or to our logs, and cleared whenever the app restarts.
• Analytics data: no longer than 14 months in Google Analytics.
• Your analytics choice: in your browser's local storage for 12 months, after which the site asks again.
• Information held by our providers, such as server and security logs at Hostinger and Cloudflare or the messages processed by Anthropic: for the limited periods set by their own policies.

How we protect it

We use reasonable safeguards for a business of our size. The site uses encrypted connections. Form and assistant inquiries are sent straight to our team and are not stored in a website database. Access is limited to the people who need it, and we use the security features our providers offer, such as two-step verification on our Google Workspace accounts. Passwords and keys are kept out of our code.

No method of sending or storing information is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee security. If a security breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

Your privacy rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to:

• confirm whether we hold personal information about you, and give you access to it;
• correct information that is inaccurate;
• delete information you gave us or that we hold about you;
• give you a copy of your information in a portable format;
• opt out of any sale, targeted advertising or significant profiling, although we do none of these.

How to make a request

Email info@betagenstudios.com with “Privacy request” in the subject, or call (804) 860-2048. Tell us what you would like us to do and how we can reach you. You do not need an account, and requests are free.

To protect you, we will confirm your identity before acting, usually by asking you to reply from the email address you used with us. We ask only for what we need to do that. You can use an authorized agent. We will ask the agent for your signed permission and may ask you to confirm your identity with us directly.

We will respond within 45 days. If we need more time, we may extend that once by up to 45 more days, and we will tell you why within the first 45 days. If we cannot do what you ask, for example because the law requires us to keep the information, we will explain why.

If we decline your request, you can appeal. Reply to our decision with “Appeal” in the subject. We will answer in writing within 60 days. If we deny your appeal, you can contact your state's attorney general. In Virginia, that is the Office of the Attorney General, Consumer Protection Section.

We will not treat you differently, charge you a different price or give you a lower level of service because you used any of these rights.

US state privacy laws

Several US states, including Virginia and California, have consumer privacy laws that give residents the rights described above when a business meets certain size thresholds. We offer the same rights and the same response times to everyone, whether or not a particular law applies to us. This notice also tells California residents the categories of personal information we collect, the categories of providers we share it with, and how we respond to Do Not Track signals.

Marketing

We use your contact details to reply to you, not to send you marketing. We do not add people who contact us to a mailing list. If we ever offer one, we will ask you to opt in, and every message will include a simple way to unsubscribe.

Children's privacy

This website is for businesses and adults. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Visitors outside the United States

We are based in the United States and offer our services there. The site is hosted in the United States, and our providers may process information in the United States and other countries. If you use the site from elsewhere, your information will be handled in the United States under this notice and US law.

Changes to this notice

We will update this notice when our practices change. The effective date at the top shows when the current version took effect. If we make a material change, such as using personal information in a new way, we will post the updated notice on this website with its new effective date before the change takes effect. Where the law requires your consent, we will ask for it first.

How to contact us

For questions about this notice or our privacy practices, email info@betagenstudios.com, call (804) 860-2048 (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time), or write to Beta Gen Studios, 8401 Mayland Dr, Richmond, VA 23294.