Privacy Policy

Newsletter Subscription

When you subscribe to our weekly newsletter, we collect:

• Email address

Our newsletter is delivered every Tuesday through our newsletter email service provider, which tracks email opens and link clicks at the individual subscriber level, associated with your email address, so we can measure engagement and improve our content.

When you sign up, we send a confirmation email to the address you entered through our email delivery provider. Nothing is added to our newsletter list until you open the link in that email and press Confirm on the page it opens. If you do not confirm, you are not subscribed, and the link stops working after 48 hours.

To block automated and abusive sign-ups, a bot-detection check runs in your browser. Sign-up requests, including any we refuse or limit, are recorded in our hosting provider’s request logs, with your IP address, approximate location (country and city), browser, the domain of your email address, and the page you signed up from. These logs are kept for a limited period, whether or not you opt out of analytics. To limit how many confirmation emails one address can receive, a one-way hash of your email address, a send count, and the time of the first send are kept in our hosting provider’s cache and set to expire after 24 hours. When you confirm, we count the sign-up without storing your email address, IP address, or location with that count.

Sign-up security records we created before we began sending confirmation emails keep their existing schedule: for completed sign-ups the email address is removed after 7 days and the rest of the record is kept so we can study abuse patterns; for blocked attempts the email address, IP address, and city are removed after 90 days.

Contact Form Submissions

When you contact us through our website, we collect:

• Name
• Email address
• Subject line
• Message content

Account Registration

When you create an account on our platform, we collect:

• Email address (required)
• Name
• Company name
• Phone number (optional)
• Password (optional, stored only in hashed form, never in plain text)

We also store your account preferences, including email notification settings and marketing email opt-in status, as well as account status and last login timestamp.

Buyers Guide Listings

If you subscribe to our Buyers Guide, we collect business information for your listing, including:

• Company name and contact information (name, email, phone per location)
• Office locations and service areas
• Services offered and service categories
• Subscription plan and billing information (payments are handled by our payment processor)

Provider Registration

If you register as a hydrovac service provider through our provider directory, we collect:

• Company name
• Contact name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Text message opt-in preference
• Website URL
• Company description
• Office locations
• Truck count
• Services offered
• Service regions
• Billing preferences

Account Authentication

We support two authentication methods: password-based login and passwordless “magic link” authentication. Passwords are stored only in hashed form and never in plain text. Magic links are sent to your email address and expire after 15 minutes.

File Uploads

Our Services allow you to upload photos and documents (such as marketplace listing images). Uploaded files are stored with our file storage provider and may be publicly accessible via a URL. You should avoid including personal information in files you upload, as we cannot guarantee their privacy once uploaded.

Mobile App Notifications

If you turn on notifications in our mobile app, we store a device identifier issued by your device’s notification service so we can send you alerts, such as a new issue being published. You can turn notifications off at any time in your device settings.

Media Kit Requests and Buyers Guide Inquiries

When you request a media kit or submit a Buyers Guide inquiry, we collect your contact information (name, email, company name) to fulfill your request and follow up with relevant information.

Job Applications

If you apply to a job posted on our platform, we collect the information you submit to the job poster, typically name, email, phone number, a link to your resume, and any cover-letter text. Applications are forwarded to the company that posted the role; we retain a copy as described in Section 10.

Mentorship Program

If you apply to participate in our mentorship program as a mentor or a mentee, we collect:

• Name and email address
• Phone number (optional)
• Areas of expertise or areas of interest
• References and testimonials you choose to provide (mentors)
• The content of mentorship questions and answers you submit

When you submit a question through our mentorship Q&A, your question may be routed to mentors and, if you opt in, published to our public mentorship questions library. Questions are published anonymously, we do not display your name or email address alongside a publicly posted question. We retain your contact details internally so we can route answers back to you, but those details are not shown in the public library. Mentor and mentee profile details (such as name and expertise) may be shown to matched participants and, for mentors who agree to a public profile, displayed publicly.

Photo Contest / Photo Submissions

If you submit photos for a seasonal magazine feature (such as our America 250 photo call), we collect:

• Company name and your name
• Email address
• Phone number (optional)
• City and state (optional)
• Any caption or note you provide
• The photos you upload, which may depict identifiable individuals

Photos you submit and grant us permission to use may be featured in Hydrovac Magazine in print and online. By submitting, you represent that you own or have the rights to the images and have obtained consent from any identifiable individuals depicted, as described in the contest rules.

Outreach Correspondence (Our Own Mailboxes)

Our sales and editorial team uses an internal system that saves email correspondence from our team’s own business mailboxes (for example, info@hydrovacnews.com) so we can keep track of conversations with prospective customers, advertisers, contributors, and other industry contacts. When you exchange email with our team, your email address, your name as it appears in your signature, and the content of the messages may be stored in that system for follow-up, prioritization, and reference. Email exchanged only between members of our own team is not added to contact records.

We do not publish this correspondence. We share it only with the service providers that run this system for us, including our AI provider, Anthropic, which processes message content to summarize it and match it to the right contact (see Section 5), and where the law requires it. You may request deletion of your correspondence at any time by contacting us at info@hydrovacnews.com.

Analytics Data (Website Analytics Provider)

• Pages viewed
• Referrer information (how you arrived at our site)
• Browser, operating system, and device type
• Approximate country
• Timestamps

Internal Page View and Interaction Tracking

In addition to our website analytics provider, we operate our own first-party analytics system that records page views and interactions (such as magazine pages read, links clicked, videos played, and Buyers Guide searches), including:

• Page path visited
• Timestamp of visit
• Session identifier, which contains your IP address and browser type (for Buyers Guide activity, a random identifier kept in your browser for the current tab instead)
• Search terms you enter in the Buyers Guide
• User agent (browser and device type)
• Referrer information
• Approximate location (country, state or province, and city) derived from your IP address
• Campaign (UTM) parameters from the link you arrived on

This is first-party analytics used in aggregate to understand content popularity, audience geography, and to improve our Services. It is not used to build a cross-site profile of you. Both this system and our website analytics provider stop when you opt out (see Section 4).

Location Data

If you use our interactive provider directory map and grant location permissions, we may collect your approximate device location to show nearby service providers. This is optional and controlled by your browser settings.

Service Delivery

• Sending our weekly industry newsletter
• Responding to your inquiries and contact form submissions
• Processing account registrations and managing user accounts
• Processing provider registrations and managing provider accounts
• Displaying providers on our directory and interactive map
• Managing Buyers Guide listings and subscriptions

Communication

• Sending transactional emails (account confirmations, magic links)
• Sending marketing communications (with your consent)
• Responding to customer support requests

Business Operations

• Analyzing website usage to improve our Services
• Monitoring and improving website performance
• Maintaining the security of our platform
• Processing payments for subscriptions
• AI-assisted research of publicly available information about businesses in our industry
• AI-assisted analysis and matching of our team’s business correspondence. This involves email content that may contain personal data (such as names, email addresses, and message bodies), which is sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, for analysis (see Section 5)

Legal and Safety

• Complying with applicable laws and regulations
• Protecting our rights and the rights of others
• Detecting and preventing fraud or abuse

With Service Providers

We share information with service providers who help us operate our business, such as our hosting, email, payment, and AI providers. This includes Anthropic, which processes information for the AI features described in Section 5. These providers are contractually obligated to use your information only for the purposes we specify.

Provider Directory

If you register as a service provider, your company information (company name, services, locations, website) will be publicly displayed on our provider directory.

Admin Notifications

Form submissions and inquiries (such as contact, media kit, Buyers Guide, and mentorship forms), along with new listings, job postings, uploads, and payments, may be forwarded to our team through a third-party team messaging service so we can respond promptly. These alerts can include your name, email address, phone number, and message. When a visitor reaches a page that does not exist, our team is also alerted with the page address, the referring page, and the browser type, so broken links can be fixed. This transfer is used only for our internal business operations.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or government request, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.

Business Transfers

If Hydrovac News LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change.

Essential Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function properly, including session management and authentication for user accounts.

Analytics

We use a website analytics service and our own first-party analytics to measure page views and interactions so we can improve the website. Both run by default and both stop when you send a GPC signal or click “Decline.”

Advertising and Retargeting Cookies

We use the LinkedIn Insight Tag for conversion tracking and advertising retargeting. It allows us to measure the effectiveness of our advertising and show relevant ads to visitors on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn Insight Tag fires by default and is subject to our opt-out model: it does not load when you send a Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal or click “Decline.” You can also manage LinkedIn ad settings in your LinkedIn account.

Third-Party Cookies

• LinkedIn: The LinkedIn Insight Tag sets cookies for conversion tracking and advertising retargeting. It fires by default and is subject to GPC and the “Decline” opt-out described above.

Right to Access

You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.

Right to Correction

You may request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information.

Right to Deletion

You may request that we delete your personal information, subject to certain exceptions (such as legal requirements or legitimate business needs).

Right to Opt-Out

You may opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time (see Section 9), and you may opt out of the sharing of your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising at any time (see Sections 4 and 8).

Right to Data Portability

Where applicable, you may request your data in a portable format.

Right to Know

You have the right to request that we disclose:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you
• The categories of sources from which we collected your information
• Our business purpose for collecting your information
• The categories of third parties with whom we share your information
• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you

Right to Delete

You have the right to request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain exceptions.

Right to Correct

You have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.106).

Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing

We do not sell your personal information for money. However, our use of advertising and analytics technologies, in particular the LinkedIn Insight Tag, which supports cross-context behavioral (targeted) advertising, may constitute “sharing” (and, under some interpretations, a “sale”) of personal information under the CPRA and similar U.S. state privacy laws.

You have the right to opt out of this sharing. We honor this right through the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” mechanism described below.

Right to Limit Use of Sensitive Personal Information

Under Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.121, you have the right to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information. We collect account credentials (passwords) solely for the purpose of authenticating your account, which is an exempt use under the CPRA. We do not use sensitive personal information for purposes beyond what is necessary to provide our Services.

Right to Non-Discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising your CCPA/CPRA rights.

Global Privacy Control (GPC)

We will honor Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals as a valid opt-out request in accordance with the California Consumer Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).

Newsletter

Our weekly newsletter is sent every Tuesday to subscribers. You can unsubscribe at any time by:

• Clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of any newsletter email
• Contacting us at info@hydrovacnews.com

Text Messages

Text message communications apply to provider accounts registered through our provider directory. If you opted in to receive text messages during provider registration (for service updates), you can opt out at any time by:

• Replying STOP to any text message
• Contacting us at info@hydrovacnews.com
• Updating your preferences in your provider account

Text messaging for service notifications is handled by our provider directory platform.

Other Marketing Communications

To opt out of other marketing emails, you can:

• Click the unsubscribe link in any marketing email
• Contact us at info@hydrovacnews.com

Please note that even if you opt out of marketing communications, we may still send you transactional messages related to your account or services (such as account confirmations or security alerts).