Privacy policy

The short version

• We collect what we need to run your account and your pages, and nothing for advertising.
• Pages published with HYDLNK set no cookies. Visitor analytics are counted without cookies and without storing IP addresses.
• The only cookies we use are the essential ones that keep you signed in to the editor at app.hydlnk.com.
• We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t share it for advertising.
• Payments go through Stripe. We never see your full card number.
• You can see, correct, export or delete your information. Deleting your account deletes your pages and their analytics.

Who we are

HYDLNK (“HYDLNK”, “we”, “us”) provides a service for building link-in-bio pages. We operate hydlnk.com, app.hydlnk.com, the pages at handle.hydlnk.com addresses and the custom domains our customers connect. For the information described here, HYDLNK is the controller. You can reach us about privacy at privacy@hydlnk.com, or by post at HYDLNK, 11156 Hanlon Terrace Alley, Winter Garden, Florida 34787, United States.

What we collect

When you create an account

• Your email address, to sign you in with an emailed link and to send you messages about your account.
• Your Google account details, if you choose to sign in with Google: your email address and the basic profile information Google shares with us, such as your name.
• Your handle, which becomes part of your page’s public address.

We don’t use passwords, so we never store one.

When you build and publish pages

• Page content: your display name, bio, profile photo, links, text, images, embeds and design choices, both the draft you edit and the version you publish.
• Uploaded images, stored in our file storage. Published pages and the images on them are public.
• Saved themes and custom domains you add. A custom domain is shared with our hosting provider so it can serve your page and issue its certificate.

When you pay

Payments are handled by Stripe. Stripe collects your card details directly; we receive a customer reference, your plan and its status, and billing details such as the invoice amounts and dates. We never receive or store your full card number.

When you use the editor

Like any website, our hosting provider processes technical information when your browser talks to our servers, including your IP address, browser type and the pages requested. We use it to deliver the service, keep it secure and fix problems.

When you contact us or report a page

If you email us, we keep the conversation so we can help you. If you report a page, we keep the report, including any contact details you give, so we can review it and follow up.

Visitors to HYDLNK pages

When someone visits a page published with HYDLNK, we record anonymous statistics so the page’s owner can see how it performs. We designed this to work without identifying anyone:

• No cookies or local storage. Pages don’t store anything in visitors’ browsers, so they don’t need a cookie banner for HYDLNK.
• No stored IP addresses. To estimate unique visitors, we combine the visitor’s IP address and user agent with a secret value that changes every day and keep only a one-way hash of the result. The hash can’t be turned back into an IP address, and because the secret changes daily, visits can’t be linked from one day to the next.
• What we record for each view or click: the page and the link that was tapped, the time, the referring site, the type of device (mobile, desktop or tablet) and the country, which our hosting provider derives from the connection.
• Retention. These individual events are kept for 90 days, then combined into daily totals that contain no visitor-level information.
• Bots. Known bots and crawlers are filtered out before anything is recorded.

Page owners see only these statistics in aggregate. They never see visitor hashes or any visitor-level data.

Pages can include content from other services. A YouTube video loads from youtube-nocookie.com only after a visitor presses play. A Spotify player loads from Spotify when it comes into view. Those services handle what they receive under their own privacy policies. Where a page’s fonts are served by Google Fonts, the visitor’s browser fetches them from Google.

How we use information

• To provide the service: sign you in, save your drafts, publish your pages, serve them on your addresses and show you your analytics.
• To bill paid plans and manage subscriptions.
• To keep HYDLNK safe: preventing fraud, phishing and abuse, checking links against blocklists, limiting excessive requests and enforcing our terms.
• To support you when you contact us.
• To send service messages, such as sign-in links, receipts and notices about important changes. We don’t send marketing email without your permission.
• To meet legal obligations, such as tax records.

We don’t sell personal information, use it for advertising or let advertisers track people on HYDLNK pages.

Legal bases

If you’re in the European Economic Area or the UK, we rely on these legal bases:

• Contract: to provide the account and pages you signed up for, and to bill paid plans.
• Legitimate interests: to keep the service secure, prevent abuse and give page owners anonymous statistics about their pages. We’ve designed the analytics so they don’t identify visitors.
• Legal obligation: to keep financial records and respond to lawful requests.
• Consent: for anything optional we ask you about. You can withdraw consent at any time.

Cookies

hydlnk.com and the pages published with HYDLNK set no cookies. The editor at app.hydlnk.com uses only cookies that are essential for it to work:

These cookies are set only on app.hydlnk.com, so they’re never sent to published pages.

Service providers

We use these companies to run HYDLNK. They process information on our behalf and only as we instruct.

When we share information

• With the public, when you publish: published pages, including your profile, links and images, are visible to anyone.
• With service providers, as listed above.
• When the law requires it, for example in response to a valid legal order, or to protect people from harm or fraud.
• In a business transfer, if HYDLNK is acquired or merged, in which case this policy continues to apply to your information.
• With your permission, in any other case.

Where data is stored

Your account, page content and images are stored in the United States. Our hosting provider serves pages from locations around the world. If you’re outside the United States, your information is transferred there; for transfers from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland we rely on the safeguards our providers offer, such as the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

How long we keep data

• Account information and page content: until you delete them or your account.
• Individual visitor events: 90 days, then only daily totals remain, for as long as the page exists.
• Billing records: as long as tax and accounting law requires.
• Server logs: kept by our hosting provider for a short period for security and debugging.
• Support emails and reports: as long as needed to deal with them and any follow-up.

When you delete your account, we delete your pages, themes, domains and analytics, and free your handles. Copies in backups are overwritten in the normal backup cycle, within 30 days.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it,
• correct information that’s wrong,
• delete your information,
• receive your information in a portable format,
• object to or restrict some processing, and withdraw consent you gave,
• complain to your data protection authority.

California residents have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, to delete it, to correct it and not to be discriminated against for using these rights. We don’t sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

You can change or delete most information yourself in the editor, and delete your account in your account settings. For anything else, email privacy@hydlnk.com or write to us at the postal address under Contact. We may need to confirm your identity first, and we reply within one month.

Children

HYDLNK isn’t for children. You must be at least 13 to create an account, or 16 if you live in the European Economic Area or the UK. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact privacy@hydlnk.com and we’ll delete it.

Security

Everything is served over https. Access to account data is controlled per user in the database itself, sign-in links expire, and only the people who run HYDLNK can reach production systems. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach that affects your information, we’ll tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

If you run a page

HYDLNK’s analytics don’t use cookies or identify visitors, so your page doesn’t need a cookie banner because of HYDLNK. If you add content from other services, such as embedded players, or link to sites that track visitors, it’s up to you to explain that to your visitors where the law requires it.

Changes to this policy

We’ll update this policy when the service or the law changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters, we’ll tell you by email or in the editor before it takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@hydlnk.com, or by post to HYDLNK, 11156 Hanlon Terrace Alley, Winter Garden, Florida 34787, United States. Everything else: support@hydlnk.com.