Privacy and terms

This agreement

This Agreement governs your access to and use of HourDrop, a product of HeyNews LLC, and related services, software, applications, and websites (collectively, the “Services”).

The Services are intended for users who are at least 18 years old. Persons under the age of 18 are not permitted to use or register for the Services.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: By creating an account, accessing, or using our Services in any manner, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by this Agreement. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not access or use our Services.

What we collect

If you join the list: your email address and the date you joined.

If you press, or move to, the go button or the deal’s image: so that each visitor counts once, your browser keeps a random ID in a cookie called hourdrop_visitor for up to a year, even if you do not go on to tap. It is not your name or your email. If you tap, we keep the tap and its time. Your IP address is used, without being kept with the tap, to limit how often one network can tap. Your browser also notes, in its own storage, which drops you tapped and the code you were given, so the page can show it again.

When you arrive: your browser keeps a cookie called hourdrop_source for up to 30 days. It holds only the kind of place that first brought you to HourDrop, the last kind of place that brought you back if it was not direct, the page of this site each of those brought you to, and when each was seen, which is what the 30 days are counted from. The kinds are broad: a search engine, an AI assistant, social media, email, a paid ad, another website, or direct. It does not hold the address of the page you came from, your name, your email address, an account or payment detail, a discount code or a discount link. If you ask for a sign-in link, the link carries those same kinds and pages, so they are not lost when the link opens in another browser.

If you book an hour: your email address, the content of your drop (title, line, image, link, codes or discount links), a record of what you paid, and the kind of place that first brought you to HourDrop and the last kind that brought you back before you booked. Card payments go through a payment processor; we never see or store your card number.

If your drop airs: HourDrop may keep a public historical page about it, as described in the terms for sellers below. That page may contain the public content from your approved drop and factual information about when it appeared on HourDrop and how long it remained on the homepage. It does not show your email address, discount codes, private discount links, payment or refund information, attribution data or private analytics.

If you sign in: your email address, when you first and last signed in, and a cookie that keeps you signed in until you sign out, sign out everywhere, or it expires. We also keep the network each sign-in came from (its IP address, or the first part of it on IPv6) and when, so nobody else can use up that inbox’s daily sign-in links.

Limits: to stop one network or one inbox asking for sign-in links, joining the list or uploading images too often, we count those requests by IP address and by email address. The counts are used only for those limits.

Server logs: standard technical logs, kept for security. They can include your IP address, your browser, the addresses of the pages you requested, sign-in links among them, and the error details our email provider sends back when an email does not go through.

Traffic: Cloudflare runs the site. Page analytics go to an instance we operate ourselves at analytics-collect.heynews.co, which is our own domain and not an advertising network or an analytics company we hand you to. Your browser sends the events to it directly, so it is a different address from the one in your address bar. The site sends the kind of page, with record IDs replaced and without its query or fragment, a random visit ID kept only in this tab’s session storage, visible time, and the explicit steps below. It does not send the page you came from, campaign query values, or the addresses of links you press. Like any web request, the events carry the IP address your connection uses. The instance derives broad geography from it, and broad browser and device classes, and neither the IP address nor the browser string is part of what the site sends. How long the instance keeps these records is set on the instance rather than by this page. We use no advertising cookies.

Steps towards booking an hour: we count arriving from somewhere else, and a few steps on the way to booking: pressing a booking button, choosing an hour, starting to sign in, starting a bid or a lock, and a booking becoming paid. Each count keeps the kind of place you came from, your country, whether you are on a phone, a tablet or a computer, which kind of page it happened on, and whether it was a bid or a lock. Moving around the site itself is not one of these counts. They are counts, not a record of a person: no name, no email address, no address of the page you came from, no discount code, no discount link and no payment detail.

Which service sent you: where the kind of place you came from is a search engine or an AI assistant, we also keep which one, chosen from a fixed list we maintain, such as Google or Bing, or ChatGPT or Claude. One we do not have on that list is kept only as another search engine or another assistant. This is the name of the service and nothing more: not the address of the page you came from, not what you searched for, not what you asked an assistant, and not any campaign value in the link you followed. It is kept with a booking so we can tell which services bring people who book.

Which page you arrived on: a booking also keeps the page of this site you arrived on, such as the Promote page, for your first visit and for the most recent one that came from somewhere else. We keep only that page’s path on this site: not its full address, not anything after it in the link, such as a campaign or a search, and not the address of the site you came from. A page that only works once you are signed in, or part way through booking, is never kept this way.

Other site actions: we count whether a list signup joined, was already present, was invalid, failed, or was limited; which named part of the drop form first blocked submission; and whether a deal tap was taken, changed, stale, or unreachable, together with its general tier, delivery type, and whether its tab opened or was blocked. These are short categories, not what you typed or the address, code, link, product, booking, or seller involved.

Why

To email you about drops, which you asked for. To count taps, so the flames and sellers’ results are real, and to stop fake taps. To run a seller’s hour: review the drop, show it, report its numbers, and pay refunds. To understand which kinds of places bring the people who go on to book hours, and where people stop on the way. To keep the site working and safe.

If you’re in the EU or UK: the list runs on your consent, a seller’s hour runs on our agreement with them, and counting and security run on our legitimate interest in keeping the site honest.

Who else sees it

Our email provider, which sends email and sign-in links. Our payment processor, which takes payments and issues refunds. Cloudflare, which hosts the site, stores and resizes the images sellers upload, counts traffic and the steps above, and checks taps for bots. Nobody else. We don’t sell the list, share it, or rent it.

How long we keep it

Your email: until you ask us to take it off the list. After that we keep it marked as unsubscribed, so the signup form cannot put it back.

The visitor cookie: up to a year in your browser. Clearing your cookies removes it.

The hourdrop_source cookie: up to 30 days in your browser. Clearing your cookies removes it.

The analytics visit: its random ID stays in this tab’s session storage and rolls over after 30 minutes without activity. A paid confirmation also leaves an opaque paid-transition token in local storage so revisiting it in this browser does not count the same browser conversion again. Neither value leaves the browser as an account, booking, payment, or seller ID. Clearing site data removes both.

Request counts: used only for those limits.

How to unsubscribe

Write to support@heynews.co and we’ll take you off the list. Sellers can ask at the same address to close their account.

Your rights

You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, at support@heynews.co.

Refunds

You are charged when you bid on an hour or buy one outright, not before, and a losing bid costs nothing more until you pick. You can call an hour off for a full refund until 24 hours before it begins, as long as we have not approved it yet. After that, write to support@heynews.co if anything needs to change. If we reject a drop before it goes up, you can fix it once, and the fix goes up only once we approve it; if we reject the fix too, or it is not made in time, it is refunded in full. A drop not approved before its hour ends is refunded in full. Refunds go to the payment method you used, within 10 business days. If we cancel your hour for a reason on our side, you get a full refund. Read the rules.

Terms for sellers

You own your drop and you’re responsible for it. By submitting it you confirm you have the right to use the images, that the discount is real, and that you’ll honor it for the time shown. HourDrop shows your drop; it doesn’t sell your product. Purchases happen on your site, under your terms, and any dispute about a purchase is between you and the buyer. A discount link has to be on your own site, or on a checkout or membership platform, and no link may be shortened or redirected. A link that phishes, deceives or breaks the law gets its seller banned for good and reported to the authorities.

If your drop goes up on HourDrop and we approved it, you give HourDrop a non-exclusive permission to host, reproduce and display a public historical page about that drop after it leaves the homepage.

The page may show your brand name, title, one line, image and product-page link as they appeared in the approved drop, together with factual information about its time on HourDrop, including when it appeared, when it left the homepage, how long it remained there, the public discount percentages it offered and the flames it reached.

The page never shows your discount codes, private discount links, email address, what you paid or were refunded, private analytics, attribution data or other account information.

You keep ownership of the content you provided. This permission only allows HourDrop to use that content for the public record of the drop and related HourDrop archive pages.

You can ask us to remove the historical page by contacting support@heynews.co. We may also remove the page, or remove its external link, if the drop breaks our rules, the destination changes hands, becomes unsafe or misleading, or we otherwise need to protect HourDrop or its users.

A drop that HourDrop removes from the homepage for breaking the rules does not receive a historical page.

We may reject a drop before it goes up, or take one down while it is on the screen, if it breaks the rules. Rejected before it goes up: you can fix it once, the fix goes up only once we approve it, and if we reject the fix too, or it is not made in time, full refund. Not approved before its hour ends: it does not go up, full refund. Taken down while on the screen for breaking the rules: no refund.

We don’t promise a number of visitors or taps. The numbers you get are the real ones, and they’re all you get.

Bidding, locks, losing bids and the launch floor work as described on the rules page, which is part of these terms.

The site is provided as it is. Our liability to you for anything to do with an hour is limited to the amount you paid for that hour. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, United States.

Contact

support@heynews.co

Changes

If this page changes, the date at the top changes.