Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information HotiLINK collects, how it's used, and the choices you have.

Information We Collect

• Account details: name, email address, and password (stored hashed).
• Profile content: username, bio, profile photo, background image, links, accent color, and any other content you add to your profile.
• Usage data: analytics about traffic to your profile pages, links, and short links, such as page views, link clicks, referral sources, visitor device type, and approximate visitor location. Location is estimated from the visitor's IP address by our network provider, Cloudflare, and may include country, region, city, postal code, metro area, time zone, and approximate coordinates (rounded to roughly 1 km). Account holders can see aggregated location statistics for their own profile's visitors, such as country and city breakdowns and a country-level map. We do not show visitors' IP addresses, postal codes, metro areas, or coordinates to account holders, and we do not sell this data.
• IP addresses: we do not store visitors' IP addresses in readable form in our analytics database. For profile page visits, we store a pseudonymized version of the IP address (a keyed cryptographic hash), used only to count unique visitors. Individual visit and click records are deleted after 13 months and replaced with aggregate statistics that contain no IP information. For account security and to detect affiliate program abuse, we keep a pseudonymized version of the IP address used to sign in to your account for 180 days, and a partially masked, network-level IP address recorded at affiliate signup for 13 months. Our web servers keep standard access logs, which include IP addresses, for up to 13 months, and records of failed sign-in attempts, including IP addresses, for up to 90 days, for security and troubleshooting. Cloudflare's own handling of this data is described in Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• If you connect an AI provider under AI Settings to generate reports, we send your own compiled analytics data to that provider using your own API key, purely to generate the report you requested.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to operate your public profile, send account-related emails (like email verification), process payments for paid plans, and improve HotiLINK's features. We do not sell your personal data.

Public Information

Your profile page (name, username, bio, photo, and links) is public by design and visible to anyone with your profile URL or QR code.

Third Parties We Work With

We share the minimum data necessary with the following service providers so HotiLINK can function:

• Cloudflare — provides our network and security services, processes visitor IP addresses, and supplies approximate location information derived from them.
• SMTP.com — delivers our transactional emails (verification, password reset, notifications).
• PayPal — processes payments if you subscribe to a paid plan. We don't store your full payment details ourselves.
• Google reCAPTCHA — protects our registration form against automated abuse; it receives your IP address and browser information when you register.
• Google Analytics (GA4) — only loaded on hotilink.com or a profile page if you accept analytics cookies. See our Cookie Policy.
• Your chosen AI provider (Anthropic, Google, or OpenAI) — only if you personally connect one under AI Settings, using your own API key, to generate AI analytics reports.

International Data Transfers

HotiLINK is hosted on servers located in the EU. Some of the third parties listed above (including PayPal, Google, and the AI providers) are based outside the European Economic Area. Where that's the case, we rely on the safeguards those providers make available for international transfers, such as Standard Contractual Clauses.

Content Moderation

To enforce our Content Standards — including our prohibition on explicit content and on linking to illegal content — we may review content you upload to HotiLINK, such as profile photos, bios, and links. Content that violates our Content Standards may be removed, and the associated account may be suspended or terminated.

Repeated or serious violations of our Content Standards may result in your profile being banned from HotiLINK, in addition to removal of the offending content.

Data Retention

We retain your account data while your account is active. If you register but never verify your email address, that account (and any data attached to it) is automatically deleted after 90 days. Deleting your account removes your profile and associated uploads immediately and permanently — we don't keep a copy after that, aside from routine backups, which age out on our normal backup retention schedule.

Your Rights

Under GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate data — most of this you can already do yourself from your profile settings.
• Export your data in a portable format — use the "Download My Data" option in your profile settings.
• Erase your data — delete your account at any time from your profile settings; this is permanent and immediate.
• Restrict or object to certain processing of your data.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on it (such as analytics cookies — see our Cookie Policy).
• Lodge a complaint with your local data protection supervisory authority if you believe we haven't handled your data properly.

Contact us if you'd like help exercising any of these rights, or if you can't find what you're looking for in your account settings.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Reach out at [email protected].