Privacy Policy.

Hook, Line, & Savannah (“HLS,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates this community-events and local-business platform for Savannah, Tennessee. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we collect it, how we use it, and what choices you have.

1. Information you give us

When you create an account or use the platform, you may give us:

• Account details — email, password (stored hashed by Firebase Authentication), display name, and (optional) photo.
• Profile preferences — first name, ZIP code, travel radius, interests, short bio. All optional; you can edit or remove them anytime from your dashboard.
• Business listings — if you sign up as a business owner, we store the business name, category, description, location, hours, contact details, social links, photos, and member roster.
• Event submissions — title, description, dates, location, organizer info, and your contact email/phone for moderation.
• Photos — when you upload event photos, the image and an optional caption are stored in Firebase Storage and displayed on the event page.
• Contact form messages — your name, email, subject, and message body are forwarded to our team via email; we don’t store these in a separate database.
• Newsletter signups — email and source page are stored so we can email you the newsletter.
• Reports of abuse — when you report content, we store the report reason and (if signed in) your account ID for follow-up.

2. Information we collect automatically

• Usage analytics — Firebase Analytics records anonymous page views, browser type, and device class. We use this to understand which features are useful.
• Rate-limit signals — for forms (event submissions, contact, abuse reports) we hash your IP address with SHA-256 and bucket the hash hourly to throttle abuse. Raw IPs are not stored.
• Authentication state — Firebase Authentication uses cookies and IndexedDB to keep you signed in.
• Local preferences — your browser’s `localStorage` stores small flags such as the most recent “What’s New” entry you’ve dismissed.

3. How we use your information

• Operate, maintain, and improve the platform.
• Authenticate you and keep your session active.
• Show you relevant events and businesses based on the location and interests you’ve shared.
• Send transactional emails (account confirmations, password resets, member invitations).
• Send the email newsletter you’ve subscribed to (you can unsubscribe at any time).
• Detect, prevent, and respond to abuse, fraud, or violations of our Terms.
• Comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not show third-party advertising on the platform.

4. Service providers we use

We rely on the following processors to operate the platform. Each handles a narrow slice of your data, and each is bound by their own privacy and security commitments.

• Google Firebase — Authentication, Firestore database, Cloud Storage, App Hosting, and Analytics.
• Resend — transactional and newsletter email delivery.
• Zoho Mail — receives email sent to our `team@hlsav.com` and related addresses.
• Cloudflare — DNS for our domain.

5. Public versus private content

Anything you publish to a public surface — published events, verified business profiles, place listings — is visible to everyone, including search engines.

Drafts, pending submissions, your favorites, and your account profile are private to you (and to admins for moderation purposes). Business members can see other members of the same business but not other businesses’ private data.

6. Your rights and choices

• Access and edit — visit your dashboard to view and update profile information.
• Delete your account — you can permanently delete your account from the dashboard. We’ll remove your user record, anonymize your past submissions and reports, and delete your authentication credentials. If you’re the sole owner of a business, you’ll need to transfer ownership before deletion.
• Unsubscribe — every newsletter email contains an unsubscribe link.
• Opt out of analytics — most browsers and privacy extensions block Firebase Analytics; we honor those signals.
• Request a copy of your data — email us at the address below.

If you’re a California resident, you have additional rights under the CCPA. If you’re in the EU, EEA, or UK, you have additional rights under the GDPR. We honor those requests for any user, regardless of residence.

7. Children’s privacy

The platform is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If we learn that we’ve collected such information, we’ll delete it promptly. Contact us if you believe a child has registered.

8. Data retention

We keep your account data for as long as your account is active. Soft-deleted records (archived events, archived businesses) are retained so the corresponding URLs stay stable. Newsletter subscribers who unsubscribe stay in our database with a `status: unsubscribed` flag so we don’t accidentally re-add them. Rate-limit buckets are auto-discarded after a few hours.

9. Security

We use Firebase Authentication for credential storage, Firestore Security Rules for per-record access control, and HTTPS for every page and API call. No system is perfectly secure — if you spot a vulnerability, please email us so we can fix it.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the platform evolves. Material changes will be announced via the in-app “What’s New” dialog and reflected in the date at the top of this page. Continued use of the platform after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact us

Questions, requests, or complaints — email team@hlsav.com. We respond within a few business days.