Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how HotMic, Inc. (“HotMic,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, shares, stores, and protects information when you use the HotMic mobile application and the consumer HotMic service (together, the “Service”). This Policy covers the consumer HotMic app only and does not apply to any separate business, enterprise, or developer offering HotMic may operate under its own privacy policy.

Information you provide: account information (name, username, email address, phone number, password), profile information (profile photo, bio, interests), and your declared age or date of birth.

Information from your use of the Service: community participation (rooms you join, questions you ask or answer, votes, and reactions), user-generated content (video, audio, chat messages, comments, and questions you post), reports and blocks you submit or that are submitted about you, and the push notification token used to deliver notifications to your device.

Purchase and technical information: purchase records for in-app purchases (see Section 08), and technical information such as device identifiers, IP address, device type, operating system, app version, and diagnostic and crash data (see Section 07). We derive only an approximate location from your IP address — HotMic does not collect your precise, GPS-level location.

We use the information we collect to provide, maintain, and improve the Service; authenticate users and secure accounts; match participants and recommend communities, rooms, and content; enable live and recorded video and audio conversations; moderate content and enforce our Community Guidelines, including reviewing reports and blocks; detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, and security incidents; process purchases; provide customer support; send push, email, and in-app notifications; analyze and improve app performance through diagnostics and crash reporting; and comply with our legal obligations.

HotMic uses artificial intelligence to power certain features, such as suggesting conversation-starter questions, recommending content and communities, and helping our trust-and-safety team surface potentially violating content for human review. These features are built and run on HotMic's own systems.

HotMic does not share your user content or personal information with third-party AI service providers, and your content is not used to train AI models operated by outside companies.

HotMic lets people create and run their own communities within the Service. When you join a community, certain information about you may be shared with that community's owner or moderators so they can run and moderate their community, including your email address, profile information (username, profile photo, bio), and your participation and activity within that community — questions asked, content posted, votes, reactions, and attendance. We may also share aggregated or individual engagement analytics for a community with its owner.

Community owners and moderators are independently responsible for how they use the information they receive and must comply with HotMic's Community Guidelines and this Privacy Policy.

Other than as described in this Policy, we share information with: service providers who perform services on our behalf, including the analytics, diagnostics, and crash-reporting providers identified in Section 07; Apple, to process in-app purchases as described in Section 08; authentication providers; legal or regulatory authorities when required by law or valid legal process, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of HotMic, our users, or the public; and a successor entity in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets. HotMic does not sell your personal information.

We use the following third-party technologies to understand how the app is used, diagnose problems, and keep the Service stable and secure: Firebase (Google), for app analytics, push notification delivery, and crash reporting; Google Analytics, for usage and traffic analytics; and Sentry, for error monitoring and crash diagnostics. These providers process the technical and usage information described in Section 02 on HotMic's behalf and are not authorized to use it for their own independent purposes.

Purchases made within the HotMic app — including subscriptions, virtual goods, or other paid features — are processed through Apple's In-App Purchase system. Apple, not HotMic, collects and handles your payment details, such as card information. HotMic receives only limited transaction information, such as the product purchased, purchase date, and a transaction identifier, which we use to provide the purchased feature and related customer support.

Billing questions, subscription management, and refund requests are handled through your Apple ID account settings or Apple support, subject to Apple's own privacy and payment terms.

HotMic sends two kinds of email: transactional emails (such as account verification, security alerts, password resets, and notices about moderation or safety on your account) and marketing emails (such as product updates, tips, and promotions).

Transactional emails are necessary to operate your account and cannot be opted out of while your account is active. You can unsubscribe from marketing emails at any time using the unsubscribe link in the message or by adjusting your notification preferences in the app.

HotMic uses administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, use, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We retain personal information for as long as your account is active and as reasonably necessary to provide the Service, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements, and maintain the safety and integrity of the platform.

You can delete your account at any time directly within the HotMic app, under Settings → Account → Delete Account. When you delete your account, HotMic deletes your profile and the user-generated content associated with your account — including your videos, posts, comments, and conversations.

In limited circumstances, we retain certain information longer: (a) where required to comply with a legal obligation or valid legal process; (b) where necessary to detect, investigate, or prevent fraud, abuse, or a security incident; (c) content or records needed for an active content-moderation or trust-and-safety investigation; and (d) residual copies held in encrypted backups, which are purged on a rolling schedule and are not used for any purpose other than disaster recovery. Content you shared with other users before deletion — for example, in a live conversation someone else recorded or clipped — may continue to exist outside HotMic's systems and is not within our control.

HotMic is based in the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to and processed in the United States or other jurisdictions where we or our service providers operate.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights under applicable law to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and to object to or restrict certain processing.

This Policy explains what information we collect and why (Sections 02–03), when we share it with others — including community owners, service providers, and as required by law (Sections 05–07) — and how long we keep it and how it is deleted (Section 11).

You can exercise your privacy choices at any time: delete your account and its associated content directly within the app (Section 11); manage marketing email preferences (Section 09); revoke previously granted device permissions — such as camera, microphone, contacts, or notifications — at any time in your device's system settings; and request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information, or ask us any privacy question, by contacting contactus@hotmicapp.com. We will respond to verified requests consistent with applicable law.

HotMic is not intended for children under the age of 13. Additional protections may apply to teenage users where required by law.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated through the Service or other appropriate channels.