Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

A. Information Provided by Founders (Listing Creators)

When you submit a project or place a bid on bidly.lol, we collect:

• Contact Email Address: Used solely to send your payment receipt, deliver your private HMAC listing management link, and notify you if your listing is outbid. Your email address is strictly private and is never exposed publicly on the leaderboard or shared with third parties.
• Listing Data: Your website URL, site title, description, category, logo / favicon URL, and OpenGraph metadata. This information is publicly displayed on the leaderboard and category pages.
• Bid Details: The USD bid amount and transaction timestamps, which are displayed transparently on the leaderboard.

B. Automatically Collected Traffic & Click Data

When visitors navigate the platform or click outbound links to listed websites:

• Click Tracking & Bot Filtering: When a user clicks "Visit ↗" on a listing, we route the request through our redirect gateway (/go/[id]) to increment the public click counter. To prevent spam and abuse, we compute a non-reversible cryptographic hash of the visitor's IP address combined with browser User-Agent. We do not store raw IP addresses or track individual browsing histories.
• Live Visitor Counter: Anonymized visit tokens are held temporarily to calculate real-time online users and total visitor counts shown on the platform.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information for the following purposes:

• To operate, calculate rankings, and maintain the live leaderboard and category directories.
• To send essential transactional notifications (payment confirmations, management links, outbid alerts).
• To detect, investigate, and prevent bot traffic, fraud, malicious URLs, or automated ranking manipulation.
• To display transparent, aggregated platform statistics (e.g., total verified platform revenue and traffic sent to founders).

3. Payment Security & Merchant of Record

All payments on bidly.lol are processed through Polar.sh, who acts as our Merchant of Record.

• When you make a payment, your credit card and billing details are collected directly by Polar.sh under their secure, PCI-DSS compliant infrastructure.
• bidly.lol does not have access to, receive, or store complete credit card numbers, CVVs, or bank account details.

4. Cookies & Local Storage

bidly.lol operates with minimal reliance on tracking mechanisms:

• We do not use invasive third-party cross-site advertising cookies or tracking pixels.
• We may use browser localStorage purely to remember essential client-side interface state (such as dismissed notifications or theme preferences).

5. Third-Party Links & External Sites

bidly.lol is a discovery directory linking directly to external products, tools, and startups created by independent founders. Once you click an outbound link and leave our platform, you are subject to the privacy policies and terms of that external website. We encourage you to review the privacy practices of any third-party website you visit.

6. Data Security & Storage

We implement industry-standard security practices to protect all stored data:

• All network communication is encrypted using modern HTTPS (TLS) protocols.
• Listing management authorization relies on secure HMAC SHA-256 tokens to prevent unauthorized edits.
• Database records are hosted on enterprise-grade infrastructure (Supabase) with restricted access policies.

7. Your Rights & Data Deletion

As a founder or visitor, you have full control over your information:

• Listing Updates: You can modify your listing details at any time using your private management link.
• Data Deletion & Takedowns: You may request the permanent removal of your listing or deletion of your associated email address at any time by contacting us from the verified owner email.

8. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect platform enhancements or legal requirements. Updates will be posted directly to this page with an updated "Last Updated" date.

9. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding your data and privacy, please contact founder Saqib: