HotPress

Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 25, 2026

Viral Development, LLC (doing business as HotPress) ("we", "us", "our") operates the hotpress.ai website and the HotPress platform. This policy describes how we collect, use, and protect your information when you use our services.

1. Information We Collect

Account information

When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and authentication credentials. If you sign in with Google OAuth, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture from Google.

Website data

When you connect a website, we store the site URL, niche description, target audience, brand voice settings, and blog path configuration you provide. We crawl your site's publicly accessible pages to discover existing content for internal linking purposes. This crawl extracts page URLs, titles, and meta descriptions only.

Generated content

We store articles, keywords, headlines, outlines, metadata, and images generated through our platform. This content is associated with your project and account.

Payment information

Payment processing is handled entirely by Stripe. We do not store credit card numbers, bank account details, or other sensitive financial data on our servers. We receive and store your Stripe customer ID, subscription status, plan tier, and billing cycle dates.

Usage data

We collect usage metrics including article generation counts, AI model usage (token counts and costs), CMS publishing events, and feature interactions. We also collect standard web analytics data such as page views, referral sources, and browser information.

2. How We Use Your Information

  • To provide and operate the HotPress platform
  • To generate SEO-optimized articles tailored to your site and audience
  • To research keywords and analyze search engine results on your behalf
  • To publish content to your connected CMS
  • To process payments and manage your subscription
  • To send transactional emails (account confirmations, article notifications, billing alerts)
  • To improve our service quality and fix issues
  • To enforce our terms of service and prevent abuse

3. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate HotPress:

AI Processing

  • Anthropic (Claude) — content generation, strategy, and quality analysis
  • OpenAI — featured image generation

Payments

  • Stripe — payment processing and subscription management. Stripe may collect behavioral data (such as typing patterns and mouse movements) on our payment pages for fraud detection purposes. See Stripe's privacy policy for details.

Search & Research

  • Serper — search engine results analysis
  • DataForSEO — keyword research data
  • Jina — web page content reading

Email

  • Resend — transactional email delivery

Storage & Hosting

  • Cloudflare R2 — image storage
  • Hetzner — server hosting (located in Germany)

Analytics

  • Langfuse — AI pipeline observability and cost tracking

Authentication

  • Google — OAuth sign-in

Each service processes data according to their own privacy policies. We only share the minimum data necessary for each service to function.

4. CMS Publishing

When you connect a CMS (WordPress, Ghost, Shopify, Webflow, or GitHub), we store the credentials you provide (API keys, tokens, or application passwords) encrypted at rest. These credentials are used solely to publish content on your behalf and are never shared with third parties.

5. International Data Transfers

Our servers are hosted by Hetzner in Germany (EU). Some data is transferred to US-based services (Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Serper, Resend, Langfuse) for processing. These transfers are governed by Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and/or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where applicable.

6. Cookies

We use the following categories of cookies:

  • Authentication session cookies — required for login and maintaining your authenticated session
  • Stripe cookies — used for payment processing and fraud detection
  • Langfuse cookies — used for analytics and AI pipeline observability

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. We do not sell your data to advertisers or data brokers.

7. Data Retention

  • Account data — retained until you request deletion
  • Generated content — retained until you request deletion or account closure
  • Billing records — 7 years (tax and legal requirements)
  • Usage analytics — 2 years
  • CMS credentials — retained until you disconnect the integration

If you cancel your subscription, your data remains accessible until the end of your billing period. You can request deletion of your account and all associated data at any time by contacting us.

8. Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures including encrypted data transmission (TLS), encrypted credentials storage, and access controls. Our infrastructure is hosted on dedicated servers with automated backups.

9. Your Rights

You have the right to:

  • Access the personal data we hold about you
  • Request correction of inaccurate data
  • Request deletion of your data
  • Export your generated content (data portability)
  • Restrict processing of your data
  • Object to processing of your data
  • Not be subject to automated decision-making
  • Withdraw consent for optional data processing

If you are in the European Economic Area, you may also lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at the address below.

10. California Residents (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) provides you with additional rights regarding your personal information.

Categories of personal information we collect

  • Identifiers (name, email address, account credentials)
  • Commercial information (subscription plan, billing history, purchase records)
  • Internet or electronic network activity (usage data, page views, feature interactions)

Your California privacy rights

  • Right to know — You may request disclosure of the personal information we collect, use, and share about you.
  • Right to delete — You may request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain exceptions.
  • Right to correct — You may request correction of inaccurate personal information.
  • Right to opt-out of sale — Not applicable. We do not sell personal information.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights.

11. Children's Privacy

HotPress is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13, we will delete that information promptly. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, please contact us at the address below.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting the updated policy on this page with a revised "last updated" date.

13. Contact

If you have questions about this privacy policy or your data, contact us at [email protected].