Privacy Policy

1. What we collect

What you give us

• Your account: your name, email address and password. We keep the password only as a one-way hash, never the password itself.
• Your business and launches: your business name, website, address, city and country; the links you paste; your answers to our questions; the quote in your release with the name and title of the person quoted; images; and the media contact for your release (a name, email and phone number).
• Your approval: when you approve a release, the name you type, the date and time, your IP address and your browser type, together with a fingerprint of the exact text you approved. It records what was agreed.
• Support requests: your name, your email address and your messages, whether they come from the support page, Help in your account or a reply to one of our emails.

What we record when you use VerifiedHive

• Payments: the amount, date and status of each payment and refund, and Stripe's reference numbers. You type your card details on Stripe's checkout page; we never see or store your card number.
• Sign-in and security: when you last signed in, and counts that slow down repeated attempts to sign in or send forms. The counts are kept as one-way hashes of an email address or IP address, for up to 2 days.
• Emails: which service emails we sent you and whether they were delivered.
• Errors: if something goes wrong while you use the app, a record of what failed, linked to your account so we can fix it.
• Request logs: our hosting provider records each request to the app, with the IP address, browser type, page and time.
• Where you came from: if you reach us from an ad or a link with campaign tags (such as utm_source), we keep those tags with your sign-up or launch.

From public web pages

When you paste a link to your product or business, we read that public page to fill in your details for you. You check every detail before it's used.

2. How we use it

• To run your account and sign you in.
• To write your release, publish your launch page and your business page, and send your release to news sites when you order that.
• To take payments, give refunds and keep our accounts.
• To send service emails: sign-in codes, receipts, updates on your launch and answers to your requests. We don't send marketing emails. If we ever do, each one will have a way to unsubscribe, and service emails will stay separate.
• To answer your questions and fix problems with your account or a launch.
• To keep VerifiedHive safe, for example by stopping spam, fraud and repeated sign-in attempts.
• To meet our legal duties.

3. What becomes public

Your launch pages, your business page and every release we send to news sites are public, and search engines can find them. They show what's in the release: the product, the quote, the links and the media contact you gave us (name, email and phone). Put only details there that you're happy for anyone to see.

A launch page stays on verifiedhive.com until you ask us to take it down. Each news site that publishes your release decides how long it stays there, and a release can't be taken back once a site has published it.

4. Who we share it with

We share personal information only with the service providers that help us run VerifiedHive, and only what each one needs to do its job:

• Hosting: Google Cloud runs our website, app and database in the United States.
• Payments: Stripe processes payments. What you give Stripe on its checkout page is covered by Stripe's own privacy policy.
• News distribution: for a paid release, our distribution partner receives the release with its media contact and sends it to news sites.
• Email: an email delivery service sends our emails and tells us whether they arrived. When you reply to one of our emails, your reply reaches us through it.
• Drafting: drafting software from a service provider turns the details and answers you give us into the first draft of your release. You can edit every line, and nothing is published until you approve it.

We may also share information when the law requires it, to protect people or VerifiedHive from harm or fraud, or as part of a merger or sale of VerifiedHive, in which case this policy keeps applying to it.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for targeted advertising.

5. Cookies

The VerifiedHive app uses one cookie, named __session. It keeps you signed in for up to 30 days and remembers a sign-up or a launch you've just started. The app can't work without it. Scripts on the page can't read it, and it's sent only over secure connections. The website's information pages don't set cookies.

We don't use advertising or analytics cookies. If that changes, we'll update this page first, ask before turning them on, and treat a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as a request to opt out.

6. How long we keep it

• Your account, businesses, launches and approvals: until you delete your account or ask us to.
• Payment and refund records: 7 years, for tax and accounting, including after an account is deleted. The web address of a deleted business page is kept with them, so nobody else can take it over.
• Support requests: 2 years after the request is closed.
• Email records: 1 year.
• Error records and request logs: 30 days.
• Sign-in codes and password reset links: they stop working after 15 and 60 minutes, and are removed a day later.
• A launch started on the website before you had an account: removed 30 days after its emailed link expires.

7. Your choices and rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• See and correct your details in your account, or ask us to correct them.
• Ask for a copy of the information we hold about you. We send it as a file.
• Ask us to take down a launch page or your business page.
• Ask us to delete your account. We delete your account, its businesses, launches, launch pages, support requests and email records, and keep only the payment records described above. Releases that news sites have already published stay on those sites, and our service providers keep their own records as the law requires.

To ask, open Help in your account or use our support page. We answer within 30 days. We may first need to confirm the request comes from you, for example by writing to the email address on your account.

8. How we protect it

Every connection to VerifiedHive is encrypted. Passwords are kept only as one-way hashes. Only the people at VerifiedHive who need customer information to help you can see it, and each action they take on an account is recorded. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we'll tell you as the law requires.

9. Children

VerifiedHive is a service for businesses. It isn't meant for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly collect information about children.

10. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date at the top of this page. If a change affects how we use information you've already given us, we'll email you before it takes effect.

11. Who we are and how to reach us

VerifiedHive is an Ohio business and is responsible for the information described here.

To reach us, use our support page or Help in your account.