PayToStay

Privacy Policy

Last updated — September 23, 2026

Also a draft. It describes what the Site actually does today, filled in for a sole proprietorship based in Israel — confirm both of those are actually correct (especially if you form a formal entity, or if you expect visitors from the EU/UK (GDPR) or California (CCPA), which have specific requirements this draft does not fully implement: a formal data processing agreement with each vendor, a consent management setup beyond the basic banner here, etc.) before relying on this.

1. What we collect

Information you give us

Email address — required to hold the Space, used to notify you if you are outbid.
The image you upload — displayed publicly on the Space, and permanently in the Hall of Fame if you hold the Space at a monthly reset.
The Instagram handle you provide — optional, displayed publicly alongside your image.
Payment information — collected and processed directly by our payment processor. We receive confirmation that payment succeeded and the amount, but not your full card number.

Information collected automatically

Standard technical data such as IP address, browser type, and request timestamps, generated by normal web server operation and used for security and abuse prevention.
Cookies or local storage, as described in Section 5.

2. How we use it

To operate the Space: process your payment, display your content, and enforce the pricing rule.
To email you if you are outbid, or for other operational messages about your specific submission.
To review reported content and enforce the Terms of Service.
To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and violations of the Terms of Service.
To comply with legal obligations.

We do not use your email address for marketing unless you separately opt in, and we do not sell your personal information to third parties.

3. Who we share it with

Payment processor — to process your payment.
Hosting and infrastructure providers — to run the Site and store uploaded images.
Content moderation service, if and when one is connected — to screen uploaded images.
Law enforcement or regulators — when required by law, or in the good-faith belief that disclosure is necessary to prevent harm, illegal activity, or as described in Section 7 of the Terms of Service.
A successor entity — if the Site is sold or transferred, in which case your information may transfer as part of that transaction.

4. The permanence of the Hall of Fame is a real privacy consideration

If you are holding the Space when it resets each month, your image and caption move into the public Hall of Fame archive permanently. This is disclosed here and in the Terms of Service because it is unusual: most services let you delete content later. This one does not, for content that has won a monthly cycle, because the permanent archive is a core, advertised feature of the product. Do not submit an image you would not want displayed publicly and indefinitely.

5. Cookies and local storage

As of this writing, the Site does not use advertising or analytics cookies. It uses a single, strictly-necessary piece of local browser storage to remember whether you have already responded to the cookie banner, so it does not show it to you again. If we later add analytics or advertising tools (for example, to measure which social media posts bring visitors to the Site), this policy and the cookie banner will be updated first, and any non-essential cookie will only be set if you accept it.

6. Data retention

We retain your email address and submission history for as long as reasonably necessary to operate the Site, resolve disputes, and comply with legal obligations. Images that reach the Hall of Fame are retained permanently, as described in Section 4. Images that never win a monthly cycle are retained as part of the Space’s history for the same operational purposes.

7. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information. Contact us at help.paytostay@gmail.com to make a request. Note the limit in Section 4: we cannot delete an image that has already entered the permanent Hall of Fame archive, since its permanence is a disclosed condition you accepted when your content won that cycle; we can still delete the email address and other personal data associated with it where legally required.

8. Children

The Site is not directed to, and does not knowingly collect personal information from, anyone under 18. If we learn we have collected information from someone under 18, we will delete it.

9. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the information we hold, but no method of storage or transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

10. International transfers

Your information may be processed in a country other than the one you live in, which may have different data protection laws.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by a new “Last updated” date above.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy, or a data request: help.paytostay@gmail.com