Privacy Policy

Effective date: May 1, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how The Howard Fried Consulting Group, Inc. (“we,” “us,” or “our”) handles personal information collected through ideaplace.com (the “Site”), where we operate a waitlist for the IdeaPlace™ Mac application.

We wrote this policy to be short and readable. If anything is unclear, email us at privacy@hfcg.ai and we’ll explain.

Quick summary

We collect only what you choose to give us through the waitlist form.
We never sell your personal information.
We don’t use cookies, analytics, or third-party trackers on this Site.
Optional browser and hardware information is collected only with your explicit, separate consent.
Your data is stored on our own servers — not with third-party email or marketing services.
You can ask us to delete your data at any time.

What we collect

Information you provide directly

When you sign up for the waitlist, we collect what you submit. Only your email address is required. Everything else is optional.

Field	Required?	Purpose
Email address	Required	To send you the launch announcement and product updates
First name, last name	Optional	To personalize emails (if you provide them)
Country	Optional	To understand where our audience is, and to comply with regional laws
How you heard about us	Optional	To understand which channels are working
Mac chip, memory, storage	Optional	To prioritize hardware support at launch

Information collected with your separate consent

The signup form includes a clearly-labeled consent checkbox for browser-detected information: your browser user-agent string, platform, screen resolution, CPU core count, device memory tier, timezone, and language preference.

This information is collected only if you check the consent box. If you leave it unchecked, none of this information is transmitted, even though it appears on the page for your review.

Information we do not collect

No cookies. We do not use cookies on this Site.
No analytics. We do not run analytics services (no Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, or similar).
No third-party trackers. We do not embed third-party scripts, fonts, advertising pixels, or social media trackers.
No cross-site tracking. We do not collect IP addresses for tracking purposes. Standard web server logs may briefly record IP addresses for security and abuse prevention, but these are automatically overwritten or deleted within 14 days.
No sensitive data. We do not collect precise geolocation, biometric data, or any of the categories California law defines as “sensitive personal information.”
Do Not Track / Global Privacy Control. Because we do not use cookies or track users across third-party websites, our Site does not alter its behavior in response to browser DNT or GPC signals — there is nothing to suppress.

How we use your information

We use your information for these purposes only:

To send you the IdeaPlace launch announcement when the application is ready to download.
To send you occasional product updates from IdeaPlace — new features, milestones, and related news. We do not send third-party marketing.
To prioritize hardware support based on what waitlist members have indicated they own.
To respond to you if you contact us.

We will not use your information for any purpose not listed above without asking you first.

How long we keep your information

We retain your waitlist information until the IdeaPlace launch. After launch, your email is converted to a launch-announcement list, and from there to a product-update list (if you remain subscribed). If you do not interact with our emails for 24 months after the initial launch, we will automatically and permanently remove your information from our active lists.

You can be removed at any time by:

Clicking the unsubscribe link in any email we send you, or
Emailing us at privacy@hfcg.ai

After removal, we delete your personal information from our active systems. Backup copies are overwritten in our normal backup-rotation cycle.

Where your information is stored

Your information is stored on our own servers, operated by The Howard Fried Consulting Group, Inc. We do not use third-party email-marketing platforms (such as Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or Sendgrid), customer-data platforms, or analytics services to manage waitlist data.

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your information from unauthorized access, alteration, and disclosure. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat your data with the same care we’d want for our own.

We do not sell your personal information

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or marketing partners. We do not “share” personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising as defined by California law.

Your rights

Regardless of where you live, you have the right to:

Access the information we have about you.
Correct information that is inaccurate.
Delete your information from our systems.
Stop receiving emails from us at any time, via the unsubscribe link or by emailing us.

To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@hfcg.ai. We will respond within 30 days.

Identity verification. To protect your privacy and security, we take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access to or deleting your information. This typically involves asking you to confirm the request from the specific email address associated with your waitlist submission.

California residents

California residents have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the rights listed above plus the right to know what categories of personal information we have collected, the sources of that information, and the purposes for collection. We do not sell or share personal information, so the right to opt-out of sale or sharing does not require any action — there is nothing to opt out of.

Whether or not we meet the legal threshold to be a “business” under CCPA at any given time, we honor these rights as a matter of practice.

European Union and United Kingdom residents

If you are in the EU or UK, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR provide you with rights including access, correction, deletion, restriction of processing, data portability, and the right to object to processing.

Our legal bases for processing your information are:

Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — for collecting and using your waitlist data and any optional hardware or browser details you provide. You may withdraw your consent at any time by unsubscribing or contacting us.
Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — for briefly processing server logs that may contain IP addresses, solely to ensure the security and integrity of our Site. These logs are deleted within 14 days.

Children

This Site is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a minor has submitted information to us, please email privacy@hfcg.ai and we will delete it promptly.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top and post the new version on this page. For material changes, we will notify waitlist subscribers by email before the change takes effect.

Contact us

The Howard Fried Consulting Group, Inc.
2010 Crow Canyon Place
San Ramon, CA 94583
United States

Email: privacy@hfcg.ai

This policy was written to be read by humans, not just lawyers. If anything is unclear, please ask.