What we collect, what we don't, and how we handle the rest.

goldenhour is operated by Gabriel Oleas (the “Operator”). The service helps independent beauty professionals (artists) manage bookings, payments, and client communication across the web dashboard and the Golden Hour iPhone and iPad app and Android app. Contact: hello@goldenhourhq.com.

From artists who use goldenhour (web and iPhone/iPad app):

• Account information: name, email, phone, business name, timezone, vertical (e.g. spray tan, hair).
• Authentication and device tokens: sign-in is handled by Clerk (we receive only your user ID and email, not passwords). If you enable push notifications in the iPhone or iPad app, we store your device push token to deliver booking and payment alerts.
• Payment configuration: Stripe Connect account ID, charge / payout status, or, if you take payments through Square, your Square merchant and location IDs and the access Square grants us (we never see card numbers; Stripe or Square holds them).
• Operational data: services, prices, business hours, travel zones, client notes, reference photos, and automations.
• Bank and card statements you import: the file itself is read once and not stored. Each line you add is kept as an expense. So that a line is not offered twice, we also keep a record of every line you add or skip (its date, its amount, the text your bank printed for it and the label you gave the statement).
• Mobile app permissions (location, Bluetooth, and calendar): in the iPhone and iPad app, device location (approximate or precise as granted) is used to center your travel-zone map and is required by the Stripe Terminal SDK to verify where in-person Tap to Pay or card-reader transactions take place. Bluetooth permissions are used by the Stripe Terminal SDK to connect to compatible card readers. If you turn on optional calendar sync, the app writes your Golden Hour appointments to your phone's local calendar on-device; we do not upload or store your personal calendar events on our servers.
• Crash diagnostics and usage telemetry: crash logs, error diagnostics, and basic usage events via Sentry and PostHog. No screen recordings, no keystroke capture, and no advertising identifiers.

From your clients (when they book through your link):

• Name, email, phone, optional preferences, optional intake-form answers.
• Appointment metadata: what was booked, when, payment status.
• Card details: held by Stripe, or by Square when the business takes payments through Square, not by goldenhour.

• To run the service: show your dashboard and mobile apps, sync your schedule, send confirmations and reminders, and process online and in-person Tap to Pay card payments through Stripe or Square.
• To send transactional SMS and email (booking confirmations, reminders, after-care). We never market your clients to anyone.
• To diagnose crashes and improve the product: crash reports via Sentry and aggregated usage patterns. We do not sell, rent, or share personal data with advertisers.
• To meet legal and payment-network obligations: Stripe, Square, and Twilio require us to retain transaction, location-verification, and messaging logs for compliance and fraud prevention.

Artists can choose to connect a Google Calendar from Settings, then Calendar sync. Nothing is shared with Google or read from Google unless you connect it yourself, and you can disconnect at any time. When you connect, goldenhour asks Google for two permissions:

• Your Google account email address, so the settings page can show which account is connected.
• View and edit events on your calendars (calendar.events). We use it to add, change, and remove one event per goldenhour booking on the calendar you pick. If you also turn on “block my booking times,” we read the events on that calendar, and on any other calendars you add to that list, for the next 60 days and store each event's start time, end time, and title, so your booking page does not offer times you are already busy. Events goldenhour did not create are never edited or deleted.

We store the access Google grants us encrypted, and use the data only to provide these calendar features to you. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, share it with anyone except as needed to run the feature or comply with the law, or use it to train AI models. When you disconnect, we stop reading and writing your calendar. You can also remove goldenhour's access at any time from the “Third-party apps & services” page of your Google Account, and ask us to delete the calendar data we hold by writing to hello@goldenhourhq.com.

Google data and AI: goldenhour's optional AI features run on Anthropic's Claude API, under Anthropic's commercial terms, which do not let Anthropic train its models on that data. The titles and details of your own Google Calendar events are never sent to an AI provider; goldenhour uses only their times to block your booking page. If you use Licensed To Glow, the bookings it adds to your Google Calendar become goldenhour appointments, and like any other appointment they can be shown to goldenhour's assistant when you ask it about your schedule. We never use Google user data, raw or derived, to create, train, or improve AI or machine learning models, and we never transfer it to anyone who does.

goldenhour's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

When you (an artist) or your end-client provides a mobile phone number to goldenhour through a public booking page, the SMS-OTP sign-in flow, or by texting our business number, you are opting in to receive SMS messages from goldenhour and the artist whose booking page you used. Message categories include booking confirmations, day-before reminders, after-care notes, two-way customer-service replies, and, only if you explicitly check the marketing opt-in box on the booking form, occasional rebook reminders, birthday treats, and promotions.

Mobile information (phone numbers collected for SMS) will not be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Information sharing with subprocessors that directly support the SMS program (Twilio, for carrier delivery) is permitted; all other use, sharing, or sale of mobile information for marketing purposes is excluded. This restriction applies even where the underlying privacy policy permits a broader category of sharing.

Opt out at any time. Reply STOP (or STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, OPTOUT, REVOKE) to any message to stop receiving texts; you will receive a single confirmation reply and no further messages. Reply HELP (or INFO) for help. Message and data rates may apply. Message frequency varies by your booking activity.

We record, for each SMS opt-in: the phone number, the opt-in method (booking form, OTP sign-in, or inbound text), the timestamp, the originating IP address, the user-agent string, and a cryptographic hash of the exact disclosure text the customer was shown. These records are retained for the lifetime of the account plus 4 years to satisfy TCPA evidentiary requirements.

The minimum set of vendors required to run the service. Each is contractually bound to handle data per the same standards we use:

• Stripe : payment processing, Connect onboarding, and Tap to Pay / Stripe Terminal in-person card acceptance (including device location signals required by Stripe to verify where in-person transactions occur). Subject to Stripe's Privacy Policy.
• Square : payment processing for a business that chooses Square instead of Stripe, and the Square import and receipt lookup a business connects. Subject to Square's own Privacy Notice.
• Twilio : SMS delivery. Subject to Twilio's Privacy Notice.
• Resend : transactional email delivery.
• Clerk : authentication and session management.
• Neon : managed Postgres hosting (your account's data lives here).
• Vercel : application hosting + CDN.
• Cloudflare R2 : file storage (photos, exports).
• Sentry, PostHog, Anthropic : crash and error diagnostics (Sentry), product analytics (PostHog), and optional AI features (Anthropic, used only when you enable them).
• Mapbox and Apple Maps : address autocomplete and travel-zone maps on the web booking page (Mapbox) and in the iPhone and iPad app (Apple MapKit).

We do not sell personal information. We do not share data for cross-context behavioral advertising.

• All traffic is served over HTTPS (TLS 1.2+).
• Database connections are encrypted; backups are encrypted at rest.
• Card numbers never touch our servers: Stripe, or Square for a business on Square, handles tokenization and PCI compliance.
• Access to production data is restricted to the Operator and limited tooling required to operate the service.

You can request to access, correct, export, or delete the personal data we hold about you. Account-level export is available in your dashboard at any time (Clients → Export CSV; Settings → Data). You can delete your login directly inside the iPhone, iPad, or Android app (More → Privacy and data → Delete my account), on the web (Settings → Delete account), or by following the instructions on our account deletion page. Deleting your login does not erase your business records: see Data retention and account deletion below. For other requests, email hello@goldenhourhq.com; we respond within 30 days.

California residents have the right to know what personal information is collected and to request deletion under the CCPA. We do not sell personal information.

Residents of the EEA, UK, and Switzerland can request data portability and lodge complaints with their local supervisory authority.

We use cookies to keep you signed in, remember your preferences (theme, sidebar state), and measure aggregate usage via PostHog. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. You can clear or block cookies in your browser; doing so may sign you out.

Active accounts: we retain your data while your account is active. When you delete your account (in the mobile app or on the web, as described at /delete-account), your sign-in, your active sessions and your devices' push registrations are removed at once, and you cannot sign in again, so export anything you want to keep first. If you ask us by email instead, we delete your login within 7 business days. If no one else can sign in to the business, its booking page stops taking new online bookings. Your business records (your own profile, clients, appointments, photos, files, messages, intake answers and payment history) are not erased automatically: they stay until you ask us to delete them. Email hello@goldenhourhq.com from the account's email address and we delete them within 30 days, keeping what tax, payment and telecom rules require and the security audit log described below. A few working records are deleted on a schedule whatever happens, among them unfinished online form drafts after 30 days (submitted ones after 7), the card-to-client matching index after 30 days for an unclaimed match and after 24 months unused for any match, the log of sign-in code requests within 8 days, and payment and messaging webhook records after 90 days. De-identified financial and tax transaction records are retained as required by law, and the security audit log, a record of actions taken in the account, is kept for fraud and dispute defense. Payment and SMS sender records held by Stripe, Square, and Twilio follow their own retention schedules per financial and telecom regulation.

Right-to-be-forgotten requests for specific clients: email hello@goldenhourhq.com and we purge within 30 days, retaining only what data-protection law requires us to keep.

goldenhour is for adults (18 and over). We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18 as an artist.

We'll post any material changes here and notify account holders by email at least 14 days before they take effect. The last-updated date at the top reflects the most recent revision.