Privacy Policy

1. Customer accounts are optional

Customers use Hypher anonymously by default. No sign-up is required to browse or check in. To attribute referrals by scan sequence and apply basic rate limits, we store a random device identifier in your browser’s local storage (not a name or contact detail) and associate it with the businesses scanned on that device.

You may optionally create a free account by entering your email. Signing in is passwordless by default (we email you a one-time code), and you may set a password instead if you prefer, in which case it is stored only in hashed form by our authentication provider and is never visible to us. An account lets you claim offers, follow businesses, leave ratings, and hear from the places you follow; see “Customer email and marketing” below. When you first sign in, recent activity from the same device may be linked to your account. You can unfollow, unsubscribe, or delete your account at any time.

You may add a display name and a photo to your account. Both are optional, both can be changed or cleared at any time, and both are PUBLIC: they appear next to any rating you leave, on that business’s page and in that business’s dashboard. A rating left without either shows as an initial and “A local”. Nothing else about your account is shown publicly.

2. Information we collect from customers

• A random device identifier generated in your browser (for rate limiting and abuse prevention).
• Referral activity: which businesses were scanned on a device, in what order, and the resulting referral from one business to another.
• Standard technical logs (e.g. IP address, timestamps, user agent) kept transiently for security and reliability.
• Optional, only if you grant it: approximate device location to help center the public map. Denying location does not break the map.
• Only if you create an account: your email address (used for magic-link sign-in, for Hypher updates about your city, and to let the businesses you visit or save send you their own offers).
• Only if you create an account: which businesses you have checked into and which you follow, so we can show you your own list and connect you to those businesses.
• Only if you set them: a display name and a profile photo, shown publicly beside any rating you leave.
• Only if you claim an offer: which offer, when you claimed it, and whether you marked it used. The wording of the offer is stored with the claim so your record of it cannot be changed later.
• Only if you leave a rating: the score, the date, and the business it relates to. We do not collect written review text.
• Your notification choices: which kinds of message you want, and any businesses you have muted.

3. Customer email and marketing

We email customers only if they have opted in by creating an account, and only about their own local spots, what is new in their city, and offers from participating businesses. Every such email includes a one-tap unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing stops marketing email without deleting your account.

The local businesses you check into or save may reach you with their own offers and updates. This is limited to those businesses (the ones you actually visited or saved), and they receive no personal information about you beyond your email address and the fact that you visited or saved them. These messages are sent through Hypher rather than by handing your address over for a business to keep, so a single unsubscribe stops them, and member businesses are barred from exporting or reusing your address elsewhere.

We never sell customer email addresses, and we never provide them to businesses you have no connection to.

4. The pre-launch list

Before Hypher opens in a city, you can ask to be told when it does. This is a mailing list, not an account: we store the email address you give us, a phone number only if you ask for text messages, the city, where you signed up from, and the wording of the consent you were shown. You do not need an account, and joining the list does not create one.

While a city is in pre-launch we use it for one thing: a weekly note about which local businesses have joined, and a message when the city opens. We do not sell or rent the list, and we do not hand it to member businesses. They never see who is on it.

Text messages are separate and never assumed. You have to ask for them explicitly and give a mobile number; ticking nothing means email only. Message and data rates may apply, message frequency varies, and you can reply STOP to any message to stop them. Replying HELP returns contact details.

Every message carries a one-tap unsubscribe link, which stops everything, email and text alike, rather than only the channel you happened to be reading. You can also ask us to delete your entry outright by writing to the contact address below.

5. Automatic deletion of device identifiers

Device identifiers attached to referral records are automatically removed 90 days after the referral is issued. The referral record itself may be retained in de-identified form for network analytics, but it is no longer linked to a device after 90 days.

6. Information we collect from businesses

• Account details: business name, owner email, and authentication credentials.
• Profile and offer content you provide: description, category, address, hours, phone, website, logo/images, review link, and the offers you publish.
• Business location coordinates, used for distance and map features.
• A "typical spend" amount you optionally provide, used only to estimate program value.
• Billing information, processed by our payment processor when billing is active (Hypher does not store full card numbers).

7. Category waitlist

A category on Hypher holds a limited number of businesses in each city. If you try to join one that is full, we offer to add you to a waitlist instead of continuing your sign-up.

If you choose to join it, we collect only what you enter on that form: your business name, your name, an email address, a phone number, and any note you add. At least one of email or phone is required, because the entire purpose of the record is to be able to reach you.

We use it for one thing: to contact you if a place in that category opens, and to tell you about the Hypher network in your city. We do not sell it, we do not share it with the business currently holding that category, and we do not add you to unrelated marketing.

We keep a waitlist entry until the earlier of: you ask us to remove it, you join Hypher, or twenty-four months from the day you joined the list. You can ask us to delete it at any time by emailing the address in the Contact section, and joining the waitlist creates no account and carries no charge.

8. How we use information

• To operate the referral network: attribute referrals by scan sequence, rank partners, and power public pages, directory, map, and hubs.
• To prevent abuse and enforce rate limits.
• To show businesses their own performance, including estimated revenue (an estimate, not measured sales; Hypher does not connect to any point-of-sale).
• To send business-facing emails you have not opted out of (e.g. weekly reports, offer reminders).
• To maintain quality and safety of the network.

9. What is public

A business’s profile, offers, category, address, and location are shown on public, search-engine-indexable pages (business page, directory, map, city and category hubs). Do not put anything in these fields that you do not want publicly visible.

For customers, the only things shown publicly are the display name and photo you choose to set, and then only beside a rating you leave. Your email address, the places you follow, the offers you claim and the places you check into are never shown publicly.

10. What businesses can and cannot see

Businesses see aggregate counts and estimated figures about referrals they sent and received. For customers who scanned or checked in, a business receives no identity, no device identifier, and no contact detail: only counts and estimates.

Two things are deliberately not anonymous, and only these two. If you leave a rating, the business sees the display name and photo you chose to set, with the score and date, the same thing any visitor to their page sees. If you follow a business, it can send you messages through Hypher, and it sees how many followers it has; it does not see your email address, and it cannot export or reuse it.

A business never sees who muted it, who unfollowed it, or who read its page.

11. Service providers we share with

We share information with vendors that operate the service under contract, limited to what they need:

• Supabase: database, authentication, and storage.
• Vercel: application hosting.
• Resend: transactional and business-facing email delivery.
• Stripe: payment processing and invoicing, when billing is active.
• Twilio: text message delivery, only for people who asked for texts.
• Google (Gemini API): AI drafting of business-supplied profile/offer copy (business content only; no customer data).
• Map tiles are self-hosted; map usage is not shared with a third-party maps provider. OpenStreetMap attribution applies.

12. We do not sell personal information

We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not use customer data for third-party advertising.

13. Cookies and local storage

We use browser local storage for the anonymous device identifier and essential cookies to keep business accounts signed in. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

14. Business data rights

Members can export the data Hypher holds about their business (profile, offers, and referral history) from account settings at any time. That export excludes customer identifiers. To correct or delete your business data, use the profile editor or contact hello@hypher.ai; some records may be retained as required for legal, security, or accounting purposes.

Closing a member account cancels billing and removes the business from public Hypher surfaces immediately. The underlying records are retained rather than erased, so that a closed account can be reopened and so that referral history recorded by the businesses you traded with remains intact for them. If you would prefer your data erased outright, email hello@hypher.ai and we will delete it, subject to records we are required to keep for legal, security, or accounting purposes.

15. Data retention

We keep account and business content for as long as your account is active and as needed thereafter for legitimate business or legal purposes. Device identifiers on referrals are deleted at 90 days as described above. Category waitlist entries are kept as described in “Category waitlist” above and deleted on request.

16. Security

We use industry-standard measures, including row-level access controls, to protect information. No system is perfectly secure; we cannot guarantee absolute security.

If a security incident involving personal information occurs, we will notify affected individuals and the applicable regulators without undue delay and as required by applicable law.

17. Children

Hypher is intended for businesses and adult customers. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information.

18. Your regional rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or port personal information, or to object to certain processing, for example under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To exercise any right, contact hello@hypher.ai, and we will respond as required by applicable law. We do not sell personal information or discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

19. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. Material changes will be communicated by email or in-product notice, and the "last updated" date above will change.

We retain prior versions of this policy. To request the version that was in effect on a particular date, contact hello@hypher.ai.

20. Contact

Hypher Inc., hello@hypher.ai.