Privacy policy

Hintcake (https://hintcake.com) is run by [Company legal name], [Postal address]. [Company legal name] is the controller of your personal data. Questions about this policy go to [Privacy email].

Information you give us:

• Your account: the email address you sign in with. If you sign in with another account, such as Google or Apple, we receive the basic details it shares with us.
• Your public profile: username, display name, pronouns, bio and profile photo, and whether your birthday (month and day) shows on your profile.
• Private account details: your birth date (required, to confirm you're at least 13), and optionally your gender, country, region, city, postal code, time zone, language and currency, how you heard about us, and the occasion that brought you here.
• Gift preferences: sizes (such as tops, bottoms, shoes, rings and underwear), fit notes, favourite colours, brands and stores, interests, things to avoid, allergies and dietary needs, and a free-text note. All optional.
• Lists and wishes: titles, descriptions, occasions and dates, the links and images you add, prices, and who can see each list.
• Family & friends: the circles you create or join, how you describe your relationship to members, and the people you follow.
• Reservations: the gifts you reserve or mark as bought.

Information we collect as you use Hintcake:

• Sign-up details: who referred you, the campaign tags in the link you arrived through, when you accepted our terms, and when you last used the service.
• Gift clicks: when anyone follows a "View gift" link, we record the wish and list, your account if you're signed in, a one-way hash of your IP address, the referring page, your country and device type.
• Usage and device data: pages viewed, clicks and features used, browser and device, approximate location from your IP address, errors and page speed, and (with your choice where consent is required) recordings of how pages are used. See Cookies and analytics below.

Information from others:

• Affiliate networks tell us when a gift click led to a sale: the store, an order reference and our commission. We never receive your payment details.
• Product pages: when you paste a link, we read the page's public product details (title, image, price, store, brand) and keep a copy so the next person who pastes it gets it instantly. That copy isn't linked to you.

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on these legal bases:

• To run the service you signed up for (contract): your account, profile, lists, circles and reservations, and showing your gift preferences on the lists where you turn them on.
• To keep children off the service (legal obligation and legitimate interests): your birth date confirms you're 13 or older.
• To personalise gift ideas (legitimate interests): using your sizes, taste and location. You can turn personalisation off at any time.
• Allergies and dietary needs may reveal health information, so we only keep them if you choose to add them (explicit consent). Delete them whenever you like.
• To understand and improve Hintcake: analytics and session recordings. Where consent is required we ask first (consent); elsewhere we rely on legitimate interests, and you can still turn them off.
• To earn from gift links (legitimate interests): recording gift clicks and matching them to affiliate commissions. This is how Hintcake stays free.
• To keep the service secure (legitimate interests): preventing abuse, fraud and spam, and fixing errors.
• Marketing emails (consent): only if you opt in. You can opt out at any time.

• Your public profile is visible to anyone, and appears in people search and search engines unless you make your profile private.
• Each list is visible to only you, anyone with its link (unlisted), your Family & friends circle, or everyone (public), as you choose. Only public lists can appear in search engines.
• Your gift preferences appear only on lists where you switch them on. Your birth year, email address and other private account details are never shown.
• When you reserve a gift, the list owner sees that it's reserved, never by whom.

We don't sell your personal information for money. We share it only with the companies that help us run Hintcake, under contracts that limit what they can do with it:

• Supabase: our database, sign-in and photo storage.
• Vercel: hosts the site and handles every request, including your IP address, and tells us which country a visit comes from.
• PostHog (United States): product analytics, session recordings, error tracking and feature flags.
• Microlink: reads product details from a link when we can't read the page ourselves. It receives the link, not who pasted it.
• Affiliate networks such as Sovrn Commerce: when you follow a gift link, your browser goes to the store through the network, which (with the store) may set its own cookies under its own privacy policy to credit the sale.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect people's safety or our rights, or as part of a merger or sale of [Company legal name], in which case this policy continues to apply.

We use a few cookies and similar browser storage:

• Sign-in (necessary): keeps you signed in.
• hc_consent (necessary, 180 days): remembers your cookie choice.
• hc_consent_region (necessary, 30 days): tells the site to ask for your consent because you're in a region that requires it.
• hc_share_ref (30 days): remembers the first shared list that brought you here, so the person who shared it gets credit if you sign up. It follows your analytics choice, so where consent is required it's only set once you accept.
• PostHog (analytics): an anonymous id that links your visits together.

In the EU and EEA, the UK and Switzerland we track nothing until you choose. No events, no session recordings and nothing stored for analytics until you select Accept, or turn categories on under Manage. Rejecting turns analytics and recordings off and deletes the ids PostHog stored in your browser.

Everywhere else, analytics and session recordings are on from your first visit, and you can turn them off at any time.

Session recordings mask every input, so what you type is never recorded.

Change your choice whenever you like with the Cookie settings link at the bottom of every page.We don't currently respond to browser Do Not Track signals.

Some of our providers, including PostHog, process data in the United States. Where we transfer personal data out of the EEA, UK or Switzerland, we rely on [transfer mechanism, e.g. Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework].

• Account, profile, lists and preferences: while your account is open, then deleted within [retention period] of closing it.
• Gift clicks and hashed IP addresses: [retention period].
• Affiliate commission records: [retention period], for accounting.
• Analytics events and session recordings: [retention period].
• Product details read from links: [retention period].

You can edit your profile, lists and preferences at any time. For anything else, email [Privacy email]. We'll confirm it's you, then answer within the time the law allows.

Under the GDPR and UK GDPR you can ask to access, correct, delete or export your data; object to or restrict how we use it; and withdraw consent at any time. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

If you live in California or another US state with a privacy law, you can ask to know what we collect, correct it or delete it, and to limit how we use sensitive information. We won't treat you differently for using these rights.

Do not sell or share my personal information. We don't sell personal information for money. Some analytics and affiliate tracking may count as "sharing" under California law. To opt out, turn analytics off under Cookie settings, or email [Privacy email] with "Do not sell or share".

Hintcake is not for children under 13. We ask for your birth date when you sign up and don't let anyone younger than 13 create an account. If we learn we've collected personal information from a child under 13, we delete it. If you think a child has given us information, email [Privacy email].

Data travels over encrypted connections. Database rules limit who can read each row, and your private account details are kept apart from your public profile so only you and our servers can read them. No system is perfectly secure, so if you think your account has been compromised, tell us straight away.

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll tell you on the site or by email before it takes effect.

[Company legal name], [Postal address]. Email: [Privacy email].