What this service records, and why

Who we are

this service is a process-serving company. It uses a software platform to take orders from law firms and their clients, to send process servers to addresses, and to produce the proof of service the courts require. That platform, and the field app process servers carry, are built and operated for this service by Byte Clarity, which handles the records described here on this service's behalf and for no purpose of its own.

This policy is written for three readers: the people who sign in to the platform (law-firm staff, this service's own staff, and its process servers), the people who are served with legal documents and never sign in at all, and anyone deciding whether to install the field app.

What is collected from people who sign in

An account is a name, a sign-in email address and a password. The password is stored in a form that cannot be turned back into the password. For a process server, this service also records the server's legal name and the facts of their California registration — the county, the registration number, and the dates it runs — because the proof of service form asks for the number and county, and the platform checks that the registration was in force when a serve happened. What a signed-in person does on the platform — placing an order, assigning a job, sealing an attempt — is recorded against their account as part of the order's history.

What is recorded when a process server attempts a serve

A serve attempt is captured on the server's own device and sealed there before it is sent. Each attempt carries:

• The location where the attempt was made, as satellite coordinates recorded by the device.
• The time of the attempt, taken from a satellite time reference rather than the phone's own clock where one is available.
• Photographs of the premises taken at the address by the server.
• A cryptographic signature from the server's device, and the public half of that device's key, so the record can later be shown to be unaltered.
• For a completed serve: how service was made, a physical description of the person served, and — where documents were left with someone else — who they were left with and the follow-up mailing details.
• Notes the server writes about what happened at the address.

What is recorded about a person being served, and why

The name and service address of the person or business to be served, supplied by the law firm or client that placed the order, together with the case it belongs to and the court documents that are to be served. A person who is served does not sign in and has no account. What is recorded about them — the address, the time, the manner of service, the physical description, and the photographs of the premises — exists because California requires a proof of service that shows when, where, how and on whom service was made, and because a proof that can be checked later protects the person served as much as the party serving them. A server may also report that a service address is one our policy asks them not to serve at; that report records the address and a category, and records nothing about the person there.

Locating a person

When a person cannot be found at the address on file, this service may search public and commercial records to locate them, using its own account with a records provider. The platform does not run that search itself and does not store its results: it records that the search happened, the purpose stated for it, and the minimum needed to send a server to an address.

Who can see it, and who it is shared with

Every record belongs to the process-serving company that handled the order, and to the law firm or client that placed it. The database enforces that boundary on every read: one company's records are not visible to another. A process server sees only the jobs assigned to them.

Records are shared only with the companies that provide the platform's infrastructure, and only so that it runs: the hosting and file-storage provider, whose systems hold the records and keep ordinary request logs, and the email delivery provider that sends order-status messages to the address on an account. Neither uses the records for any purpose of its own. Nothing is shared with an analytics, advertising or data-broker company, and nothing is sold. The law firm that placed an order receives the proof of service and may file it with the court; this service does not file it on its own account. this service may disclose records when required to by a subpoena, court order, or other legal process.

Cookies, tracking, and Do Not Track

The platform sets one cookie: the session that keeps a signed-in person signed in. It is sent only over encrypted connections and cannot be read by scripts on the page. There are no advertising cookies and no analytics. Neither this service nor anyone acting through this platform collects a visitor's activity over time and across other websites. A browser's Do Not Track signal does not change how the platform behaves, because the platform does no such tracking to begin with.

How long it is kept

A completed proof of service is written to storage that cannot be altered or deleted once written — that is what makes it usable as evidence — and is held for the period required by the operator's retention policy. Because that storage is write-once, a proof already written cannot be removed before its retention period ends. Search results used to locate a person are not kept. Order and account records are kept for as long as this service needs them to complete and account for the work, under the same policy.

Reviewing or changing information about you

If you sign in to the platform, ask the company that holds your account to review or correct the information it keeps about you; the platform has no self-service editor for it yet. If you were served, the verification page described below lets you read what was served on you and the proof of service. Requests about a serve go to the company named on your documents, which holds the record. A proof of service that has already been written cannot be deleted before its retention period ends, whatever the request. If a privacy law gives you rights over information about you, send your request to the company that holds it (for a serve, the company named on your documents) or to support@acmeservice.com, and it will be passed on. The platform provider helps that company respond.

If you were served

The cover page of the documents you were served carries a verification ID and a QR code. It leads to a page where, after confirming your name and ZIP code, you can read exactly what was served on you and the proof of service that records when and how. Before you confirm, the page shows nothing about the case. Opening the documents or the proof is recorded as part of that service record, together with a one-way fingerprint of the connection it was opened from — not the address itself.

Questions about a specific serve go to the company named on your documents — they hold the record, and they decide what happens to it.

If you are a process server using the field app

The field app is used by process servers signed in to their own company's account. This section describes the iPhone app; where the Android app differs, it says so. The app records the following about the server, and sends it only to that company's platform — its service and the file storage that service issues upload links for:

• The server's name and sign-in email. Their company also enters the server's registration facts on the platform — the county of registration and the registration number, which the proof of service form asks for, and the registration's dates, which the platform uses to check the registration was in force when the serve happened. The app displays these; it does not collect them.
• A signing key created inside the phone's secure hardware. The private half never leaves the phone; the public half is registered against the server's account, so a sealed attempt can be shown to have come from that server's own device. On an Android phone without hardware key storage the key may be software-backed, and the sealed record says which.
• Location, read only while the app is open and an attempt is being captured. The app asks for precise location and will not seal an attempt with an approximate one.
• The camera, for scanning a job's code and for photographing the scene during an attempt. Photographs are processed on the phone and sealed into the attempt record. On an iPhone they are never saved to the Photos library. On an Android phone each capture photograph is also saved to the phone's shared gallery, where the server and any app they have given gallery access can see it.
• Attempts sealed while the phone is offline wait on the phone until they upload. That queue, the sign-in session and the app's record that this device's key was enrolled are erased when the server signs out, and when the app is freshly installed. The signing key itself stays in the phone's secure hardware, and its public half stays registered until the server's company revokes it — that is what keeps already-sealed attempts verifiable.
• If the server turns on biometric unlock, their own sign-in credential is kept on the phone, released only by the phone's biometric check, and used only to sign them back in. The session token is kept in the phone's secure store and is not copied into cloud backups.
• The app contains no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting software. It talks only to the server's own company's platform: the company's service, and the file storage that service issues short-lived upload links for. It keeps no copy of the documents being served; it opens them through a link that expires within minutes, handed to the phone's own document viewer, whose cache the app does not control.

How records are protected

Every attempt is signed on the device that captured it and linked to the one before it, so a changed or missing record shows. Completed proofs are written to storage that cannot be altered after the fact. Each company's records are separated from every other company's by the database itself, and connections to the platform are encrypted. These are properties of how the software is built; they describe what it does, not a promise that nothing can ever go wrong.

Children

The platform is a business tool for law firms and process-serving companies. Accounts are created by those companies for their staff; it is not offered to children and has no sign-up for the public.

Changes to this policy

Changes are published on this page, with a new effective date at the top.

How to reach us

Questions about this policy, about a record, or about the field app go to support@acmeservice.com. That mailbox is read by this service and by the platform's provider, Byte Clarity.