Privacy Policy
How Candor + Halo handles information you share with us and what this website does with it. Effective July 30, 2026. Last revised September 12, 2026.
Last updated: September 12, 2026
Who we are
Candor + Halo is an independent design studio based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This policy explains what information this website handles and what happens to it.
Information you provide
The contact form is the one place covered by this policy that asks you for information: your name, business name, email address, and project details, plus an optional phone number, current website, and investment range. Nothing else covered by this policy asks you to type anything in.
How we use what you send
To read your inquiry, reply to it, and work out whether we're the right fit. If we end up working together, the same information helps us scope and deliver the project.
Information processed automatically
Like nearly every website, our hosting infrastructure processes standard technical request information, which may include an IP address, requested pages, browser or device information, and timestamps. This information is used to deliver the site, maintain security, and prevent abuse. We do not use it to build advertising profiles.
Measurement on the public pages
We use Microsoft Clarity to understand how the public pages of this site are actually used: which pages people open, where they click and scroll, and where a layout is getting in someone's way. Clarity began running here on August 25, 2026, and this page was revised that same day to describe it. Clarity collects technical and interaction information. That includes an IP-based estimate of your general location, your browser and device type, the pages you open, and the clicks, scrolls, and other interactions you make on them. We use it to understand usability and nothing else. We do not use Clarity to identify you, to contact you, or to sell you anything, and we have not connected it to Microsoft Advertising.
What a session playback actually is
Clarity can rebuild a visit as a playback. That playback is not a video of your screen and it is not a camera pointed at you. It is reconstructed from the structure of the page, called the DOM, together with the interaction events Clarity recorded, and then replayed against that structure. In the cookieless configuration this site uses, a visit can arrive as separate fragments rather than one continuous session, and some recording functionality is limited. So a playback of any given visit may be partial, or may not exist at all. Please do not read this as a promise that every page view produces a complete, watchable recording.
What is masked before anything leaves your browser
Clarity is configured on this site at its strict masking setting, which is the most restrictive option it offers, with nothing added to an unmasked list. Text, form input, images, and link content are masked in your browser before anything is transmitted. What you type into the contact form is not sent to Clarity. What the tool receives is the shape of the page and what was interacted with, not the words on it.
Cookies and consent signals on the public pages
Before Clarity loads, this site declines analytics storage and advertising storage for every visitor through Microsoft's consent signal. That declined state is set for everyone, not only for visitors in particular regions, and it is not something you have to ask for. In this mode, Clarity operates here without first-party or third-party cookies, and your visits are not connected across pages through a persistent Clarity identifier. Microsoft assigns an identifier per page view instead. Microsoft's own documentation notes that functionality is limited in this mode, and we accept that limitation as the cost of running it this way. There is no cookie banner on this site. That sentence describes how the site is currently built. It is not a legal conclusion about what any law requires, and we are not offering it as one. If the configuration changes, this page changes first.
Microsoft's role, and what Microsoft is permitted to do
Microsoft is a third party that collects personal data from visitors to this site through Clarity. Microsoft is not our processor and not our service provider, and we are not going to describe it as either. Under the Clarity Terms of Use, we and Microsoft are independent controllers of the personal data processed in connection with the service, and those terms state that neither party is a processor, service provider, or equivalent status under data protection law. What that means for you is simple. Our promises can only bind us. Microsoft decides its own uses under its own privacy statement. Under those same terms, Clarity assigns a unique user ID to each user, and any information associated with that ID is personal data. In the cookieless mode described above, that identifier is assigned per page view. Microsoft may use the personal data it collects through Clarity for any purpose in accordance with the Microsoft Privacy Statement, including to provide the service, to improve Microsoft's products and services such as reporting and performance analysis, and to create user profiles for purposes that include advertising. Microsoft may also use non-personal data it collects to provide and improve its products and services and to support research and development activities, including artificial intelligence work such as training, fine-tuning, and evaluating machine learning models. Those are Microsoft's permissions, not our practices. We use Clarity solely for analytics. We do not use it to create user profiles, we do not use it to identify you, contact you, or sell you anything, and we have not connected it to Microsoft Advertising. What Microsoft does with the data it collects, and the choices Microsoft offers you about it, are described in the Microsoft Privacy Statement: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
Accounts and logged-in areas
The public website does not require an account, and in the configuration described above it sets no cookies for visitors. Private client and administrative areas use authenticated access and the login cookies that come with it. Those areas are separate from the public site, and the measurement described above runs on the public pages.
What we don't do
We do not sell your information, to anyone, ever. We do not share it for behavioral advertising, and we do not use what you send us to build advertising profiles or to market to you. Measurement on this site exists to make the pages work better for the person reading them. Where another company's permissions are broader than our own practices, we have said so plainly above rather than describing them as narrower than they are.
Who processes it
Service providers handle information on our behalf, each only to do its job. Vercel hosts the website and processes standard technical request data. Contact-form submissions are filed in the studio's customer-records system so we can reply and keep track of the conversation, and a privacy or data request sent through the form is delivered to us as email, where our email provider stores the delivered message. If you become a client, the records a project needs, including contract, invoice, payment status, and portal access, may be stored in the studio's business systems and the service providers that support them. Payments themselves are handled by the payment provider you choose, and the details you enter there are governed by that provider's own privacy policy. Microsoft is deliberately not on this list, for the reason set out above.
Payments
If you become a client and pay an invoice, payment happens on Stripe's own pages. Raw card numbers and payment credentials never pass through this website and are never stored by it. Stripe does provide us with ordinary business records, including invoice status, transaction confirmations, and the customer details attached to them, which we keep as part of project and accounting records. The information you enter on Stripe's pages is governed by Stripe's privacy policy.
How long we keep things
Inquiries stay in our business email for as long as we need them to respond and to keep ordinary business records. Records connected to contracts, invoices, and taxes are kept as long as the law expects. We do not control how long Microsoft keeps what Clarity collects, and we are not going to publish a retention period for it as though we did. That is described in Microsoft's own terms and privacy statement. We also cannot promise instant removal from every backup a service provider holds. Deletion means we remove it from our systems and it is not restored into use.
Your choices
You can ask what information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Use the form on the Contact page and choose "Privacy or data request". You won't need to fill in the project questions. We will honor deletion requests when reasonably possible, subject to records we need to retain for legal, tax, contractual, security, or legitimate business purposes. Requests about what Microsoft holds have to go to Microsoft, because Microsoft holds that data as an independent controller rather than on our behalf. The Microsoft Privacy Statement linked above explains the choices Microsoft offers.
Security
We take reasonable measures to protect the information described here. No website or transmission method can be guaranteed completely protected, so we won't promise that. We limit access to the studio and the service providers that need the information to operate the website, respond to inquiries, deliver agreed services, maintain records, or comply with legal obligations.
Children
This site is for businesses and adults, and it is not directed to children. We don't knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has sent us information through this site, contact us and we'll delete it. We do not market to children.
Changes
When our practices change, this page is updated. The measurement described above is the example: it started on August 25, 2026, and this page was revised the same day rather than quietly afterwards. The effective date at the top is when this policy first took effect. The revision date is the most recent change.