Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 28, 2026

Cool Apps LLC ("we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights regarding your data when you use the Paywall Hero Chrome extension, Android app, iOS web app, or website (collectively, the "Service").

1. Information We Collect

Account information: Your email address and password (stored hashed, never in plain text) when you create an account via Firebase Authentication.
Usage counts: The number of times you use each feature (Hero Clear, Hero Window, Hero Search, Hero AI Summary). We store counts only — not a history of what you read.
Referral data: Your unique referral code, and a randomly generated visitor identifier for each person who clicks your referral link (see Section 6).
Payment information: Billing is handled entirely by Stripe. We never receive or store your card number or payment details.
Email address: Used to send transactional email (verification, welcome, subscription notices) and, unless you opt out, occasional product email.

2. Article Addresses and What Happens to Them

Because this section is the one most people care about, we have set it out in full.

When you use Hero AI Summary, the web address (URL) or headline of the article you are viewing is sent to our servers so that a summary can be generated. That address is processed and discarded. It is never written to your account, never stored in our database, and never associated with your identity.

We do not record the specific article URLs you access. Our server logs retain only the domain name of the site — for example, wsj.com — which we use to diagnose which publishers our features are failing on. Log entries do not contain article paths, article headlines, or any means of connecting a domain to an individual user.

Hero Clear and Hero Window operate entirely on your own device. No address is transmitted to us when you use them.

3. How We Use Your Information

To create and manage your account
To enforce free trial limits and subscription entitlements
To process payments and manage your subscription via Stripe
To send transactional email via Resend
To send product email, which you may opt out of at any time (see Section 9)
To operate the referral program and credit trial extensions
To generate AI article summaries (see Section 5)
To diagnose faults and improve the reliability of the Service

4. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services. Each receives only what is listed, and each operates under its own privacy policy:

Firebase (Google) — authentication and database. Receives your email address, account data, and usage counts. firebase.google.com/support/privacy
Stripe — payment processing. Receives your billing details directly; we never see them. stripe.com/privacy
Resend — transactional and product email. Receives your email address. resend.com/legal/privacy-policy
Anthropic — AI summarisation. Receives the article address or headline you asked to summarise. Receives no account information, no email address, and nothing identifying you. anthropic.com/privacy
Pexels — stock imagery. Receives a short search phrase describing the subject of the summary (for example, "courtroom gavel") in order to return an illustrative photograph. Receives no article address and nothing identifying you. pexels.com/privacy-policy
Google Search and Google News — used by our servers to look up an article's headline when the publisher blocks direct access. Receives the article address as a search query. policies.google.com/privacy
Google Fonts — several pages on our website, including the web app, load typefaces from Google's font service. Your browser therefore requests them directly from Google, which discloses your IP address to Google. No account information or article data is involved. If you would rather avoid this, most browsers and privacy extensions can block third-party font loading without affecting readability. policies.google.com/privacy

5. AI Processing and Limited Use

Hero AI Summary is powered by the Anthropic API. To produce a summary, Anthropic is given the article's address or headline and performs a small number of web searches about the topic, then writes an original summary from publicly available coverage.

Limited use. Data sent to Anthropic is used only to fulfil the request you made. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or use it to build a profile of you. Under Anthropic's commercial API terms, content submitted through the API is not used to train their models; refer to Anthropic's privacy policy for their current terms.

Accuracy. AI-generated summaries are provided for convenience and may be incomplete or incorrect. They should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original source.

6. Cookies, Local Storage, and Identifiers

Authentication state is kept in your browser's local storage so you stay signed in.
Referral visitor identifier. When someone opens a referral link, a random identifier (for example, v_a1b2c3d4e5f6_1738...) is generated in their browser and stored locally. It is sent to us and retained so that repeat visits from the same browser are not counted twice toward a referral reward. It contains no personal information, is not derived from any personal information, and is not used for advertising or tracking across other websites.
Hero Clear clears cookies on news sites at your direction. We do not read, store, or transmit the contents of those cookies.

7. Data Retention

We retain your account data for as long as your account is active. Server diagnostic logs, which contain domain names but no article paths or user identifiers, are retained for 30 days and then deleted automatically. Article addresses submitted for summarisation are not retained at all.

8. Account Deletion

You may request deletion of your account and associated personal data at any time by emailing support@coolapps.llc from the address associated with your account, with the subject line "Delete my account."

On receipt we will delete your authentication record, your account document, your usage counts, and your referral record. This is completed within 30 days. Billing records that we are required to keep by law are retained for the period the law requires; these are held by Stripe and consist of transaction records only.

Deleting your account is permanent and cannot be undone. Any remaining free trial or subscription entitlement is forfeited.

9. Product Email and Unsubscribing

Every product email we send contains an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect immediately. You may also email support@coolapps.llc to opt out. Transactional email — account verification, password resets, payment receipts, and subscription notices — is necessary to operate your account and is not affected by unsubscribing.

10. Children's Privacy

Paywall Hero is not directed at children under the age of 13, and our Terms of Use require users to be at least 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it promptly.

11. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export, or delete your personal data, and to object to or restrict certain processing. Residents of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom have these rights under the GDPR; residents of California have comparable rights under the CCPA, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

To exercise any of these rights, email support@coolapps.llc. We will respond within 30 days.

12. Security

We use industry-standard security practices including encrypted connections (HTTPS), Firebase Authentication, Google Secret Manager for all API credentials, and Stripe's PCI-compliant payment infrastructure. No method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Continued use of the Service after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

14. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:

Cool Apps LLC
30 N Gould St, Ste N
Sheridan, Wyoming 82801
support@coolapps.llc