Privacy

1. Who we are

Hideroom and hideroom.app are run by Stratus Research Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. In this policy “we” and “us” mean that company. We’re the controller of the personal data described here, which means we decide why and how it’s used. Our company number is 09447561 and our registered office is 1 Beauchamp Court, 10 Victors Way, Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 5TZ, United Kingdom; both are also at the foot of every page.

For anything about privacy, email privacy@hideroom.app. We reply within one month, and usually much sooner.

2. The launch list

If you join the launch list (“Get notified”), we keep only what we need to send you one email when Hideroom launches on the phone you chose:

• Your email address, sealed. It’s encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key that only our sign-up service holds, on top of the database’s own encryption. It’s unsealed only for the moment an email is sent to you.
• A keyed fingerprint of your address (an HMAC), so the same address isn’t added twice. It can’t be turned back into your address.
• Which phone you chose: iPhone or Android.
• The language of the page you signed up on.
• Where you signed up: the page and the position of the form, such as the top of a guide. Nothing else about your visit.
• Timestamps: when you signed up, and when each of our two emails was sent.
• The version of the form’s wording you saw, so we can show what you agreed to.

We don’t keep your name, your IP address or details of your device with your sign-up.

Why, and on what basis. You asked us to tell you when Hideroom launches, so we rely on your consent, and the sign-up itself is our record of it. Your sign-up counts straight away; there’s no link to click. That means we don’t check that the person signing up owns the address. If you get our email without having signed up, the link in it removes your address at once, and nothing else happens.

Where. In a Cloudflare D1 database (Cloudflare is described in section 5).

How long. Until we send the launch email for the phone you chose; then it’s deleted. It’s deleted sooner if you remove it, if an email to it bounces, or if it’s reported as spam. The Android list waits until Hideroom is out on Android.

What we send. One email to say you’re on the list, and one launch email. No newsletter and no other messages. If we ever start a newsletter, it will have its own box, unticked, and its own consent.

How to leave. Both emails have a link to remove your address, and mail apps can offer a one-click unsubscribe. You can also email privacy@hideroom.app. Removing your address deletes it straight away; we don’t keep a copy or a suppression list.

3. Sending the emails

Our emails are delivered by Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc., in San Francisco), acting as our processor under its data processing agreement. Resend sees your email address and the message, because it delivers them. Nothing else about you is sent to it. It keeps delivery logs for 30 days, and it tells us when an email bounces or is reported as spam, so we can delete that address.

Resend’s main processing takes place in the United States. That transfer is covered by Resend’s certification to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework with its UK Extension, and by the EU standard contractual clauses with the UK Addendum.

4. Counting visits

We count visits with Footfall, our own cookie-free analytics service, run by Stratus Research Limited, so we can see which pages and guides are useful and whether people find the launch list.

What it records about a visit: the page, the site you came from, your country, region and city, your browser, operating system, type of device, screen size and language, and how quickly the page loaded. When someone joins the launch list it records one event saying so, with the phone they chose and where the form was, never the address. If you arrive from a link we’ve shared in a community, we count the link’s tag (like reddit-sideproject), not who you are. It doesn’t store your IP address: it uses it for a moment, with your browser’s details, to make a visitor code that changes every month, so visits can’t be followed from one month to the next. It sets no cookies, we never connect a visit to a launch-list sign-up, and there are no advertising pixels, session recordings or heatmaps.

Where and for how long. Footfall runs on Vercel and keeps its records in a Supabase database in Ireland. Visit records are kept only as long as they’re useful for understanding traffic to this site.

UK law allows this kind of counting without asking first, as long as it’s only used to improve the site and you can object easily. So you can switch it off at any time with Don’t count my visits at the foot of every page. That stores a small flag in your browser, and from then on this site doesn’t load the counter at all. The counter also respects your browser’s “Do Not Track” setting.

5. Security and delivery logs

Cloudflare, Inc. hosts this site, runs the launch-list database and protects the site from attacks. To deliver and protect the site, Cloudflare processes the IP address and request details of everyone who visits. We rely on our legitimate interest in keeping the site working and safe. Cloudflare keeps these logs for as long as its own policies say, and we don’t combine them with anything else.

Cloudflare is based in the United States. Transfers to it are covered by the safeguards in Cloudflare’s data processing addendum.

6. Storage on your device

This site sets no cookies. It may store two small entries in your browser’s local storage, both allowed under the UK’s exceptions for preferences and statistics:

• whether you’ve dismissed the suggestion to read a page in another language (only once more than one language is available);
• whether you’ve switched on “Don’t count my visits”.

You can clear both from your browser’s settings at any time.

7. The Hideroom app

The short version: the app has no account, no ads, no analytics and no crash-report service. The only information that leaves your phone for anyone but you is an anonymous record of your purchases, which goes to RevenueCat so the app knows whether you have Hideroom Pro.

What stays with you. Everything you keep in a room (photos, videos, documents and notes), your patterns and your recovery phrases are encrypted on your phone with keys we never have. Backups are encrypted on your phone first and stored in your own private iCloud (Google Drive on Android, once it’s out). We never receive your backup, and we can’t open it, scan it or hand it over.

Buying Hideroom Pro: Apple. Apple sells Hideroom Pro, takes payment and handles refunds, as an independent controller under its own privacy policy. We never see your card or billing details.

Checking your plan: RevenueCat. To know whether you have Pro, and to bring it back on a new phone, the app uses RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., in the United States) as our processor. RevenueCat receives:

• a random purchase ID that the app makes on your phone. It isn’t your name, email address, Apple Account or a device identifier, and it’s never made from your pattern or recovery phrase;
• the App Store transactions for Hideroom products: which product, its price and currency, the purchase and expiry dates, and Apple’s transaction IDs;
• the app’s version, your phone’s platform, the version of RevenueCat’s software, your phone’s language and region settings, and which country’s App Store you use;
• the internet address each request comes from, which its servers need in order to reply.

RevenueCat never receives anything from inside a room.

We use this to unlock Pro, to restore purchases, and to see anonymous totals, such as how many people chose each plan. It isn’t linked to you, and it isn’t used for tracking or advertising. We rely on providing the service you bought, and for the totals, on our legitimate interest in understanding which plans people choose.

Where, and on what terms. RevenueCat processes this information in the United States, on Amazon Web Services and Snowflake, under its data processing agreement with us. That agreement includes the EU standard contractual clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, which cover the transfer from the UK. RevenueCat keeps the records while we use its service, and deletes them when the agreement ends.

No crash reports or analytics. The app contains no crash-report service, no analytics software and no advertising, so nothing about how you use Hideroom, or about a crash, is sent to us. Separately, if you’ve turned on Share With App Developers on your iPhone (Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements), Apple may share anonymised crash reports for Hideroom with us. Apple collects those under its own privacy policy, and you can turn that setting off at any time.

The App Store privacy label. Hideroom’s label lists two things: Purchase History and a User ID, both sent to RevenueCat, both not linked to you and not used for tracking. Nothing else is collected.

8. Who else handles data

• Cloudflare: hosting, the launch-list database and security logs (section 5).
• Resend: delivering the “You’re on the list” and launch emails (section 3).
• Footfall: our own visit counter, without cookies (section 4). It runs on Vercel (Vercel Inc., US) and stores its records with Supabase (Supabase Inc.) in Ireland, each under its standard data protection terms.
• RevenueCat: checking and restoring Hideroom Pro purchases in the app (section 7). It runs on Amazon Web Services and Snowflake in the United States, under its data processing agreement.
• Apple: sells the app and Hideroom Pro, as an independent controller under its own privacy policy.

Apple and Google act as independent controllers for anything you buy through their stores. We never sell personal data, and we never use it for advertising.

9. Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, to correct it, to delete it, or to stop using it, and you can withdraw your consent to the launch list at any time. Email privacy@hideroom.app and we’ll reply within one month.

If you’re not happy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. We’d appreciate the chance to put it right first.

10. Children

This website isn’t aimed at children under 13, and the launch list isn’t for them. If we learn that a child has signed up, we delete the address.

11. Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, we update the date at the top and add a line to the change log below. The launch email is the only email we send, so we won’t email you about changes.