Privacy Policy

This policy describes how Halp Holding LLC (“thewaitlist,” “we,” “us”) collects, uses, and retains information when you use thewaitlist.com. It covers three groups: visitors to our marketing pages, business owners who create and manage queues, and customers who join queues at a participating business.

Information we collect

Business owners

• Email address, business name, and business type — when you create an account
• Queue history and account activity associated with your business
• Plan and subscription status — if you upgrade. Payment is handled by Stripe; we never see or store your card number
• IP address, browser type, and approximate location (city, region, country) when you sign up — used to spot abuse, to see which areas signups come from, and to look up your business (see “How we use your information”)
• How you found us — if you arrived from an ad or a campaign link, the campaign details on that link, the page you landed on, and the site that referred you (see “Cookies and analytics” below)
• A record of each email we send you, such as a sign-in link — the address it went to, the subject line, whether it was delivered, and the IP address of the request that triggered it. A sign-in email we decline to send (for example, after too many requests) is recorded the same way

People who contact us

• Your name and business, a cell number or email address, and whatever you write in your message — when you send the contact form on our website
• IP address, browser type, and approximate location when you send it — used to filter spam and to see where inquiries come from — and, if you arrived from an ad or a campaign link, the same “how you found us” details described above

Customers joining a queue

• Name — and a phone number, if you choose to get texts — entered on the queue join page
• Queue position and status — when you joined, the wait estimate given when you joined, when you were notified, and when your visit was completed
• A scrambled code for the network you joined from (never the address itself), used only to stop one network from flooding a line with fake names, and deleted with your queue entry
• If the business turns on its line board, your first name and last initial, your place in line and whether you’ve been called can be shown on a screen the business sets up, until your visit is finished. Your phone number is never shown there
• If you opt in to texts: a record of that consent — your phone number, the wording you agreed to, the date and time, and the IP address and browser used

All visitors

• IP addresses and standard server request metadata, collected automatically by our hosting infrastructure. We do not build profiles from this data.
• On our marketing pages only — the homepage, pricing, signup, and landing pages such as For schools — pages viewed, buttons clicked, the site or ad that referred you, approximate location, and device and browser type, collected through Google Analytics. See “Cookies and analytics” below. This never happens on queue pages or dashboards.

How we use your information

• Operate and improve thewaitlist, including more accurate wait estimates
• Send transactional emails (sign-in links, account confirmations)
• Send SMS notifications to customers about their queue position
• Respond to support requests
• Reply to inquiries sent through our contact form
• Measure how our marketing pages and ads perform
• Detect and prevent abuse
• When you sign up (or later, if we review your account), we may look up public information about your business, like its website and listings, with an AI service (Anthropic). It receives only your business name and type, your approximate location (city and state), and your email's web domain when it looks like your business's own website — never your name or email address. The result is a private note for our team; it doesn't change anything in your account

We never use information from queue pages, dashboards, or customers' phone numbers for advertising, behavioral tracking, or profiling. On our marketing pages we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which ads lead to signups. Ad personalization and remarketing are turned off, and we do not build profiles of individual visitors.

SMS notifications

When you provide your phone number to join a business's queue, you consent to receive SMS messages about your queue position from that business via thewaitlist. These are transactional notifications only — never marketing.

• Opt-in: Texts are optional. You can join a line with just your name. If you want text updates, enter your mobile number and check the SMS consent box on the join form; checking that box is your consent to receive SMS notifications for that visit.
• Message frequency: Typically 1–3 messages per visit — position confirmation, ready notification, and occasionally a follow-up.
• Opt-out: Reply STOP to any message. You'll receive a single confirmation and no further messages.
• Help: Reply HELP for support contact information.
• Message and data rates may apply.
• No marketing use, no sharing: Phone numbers given to join a queue are used solely for that queue's notifications. We do not sell, rent, or share mobile numbers, text-messaging opt-in data, or consent records with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. They are handled only by the service providers that store and deliver the messages for us, and they are never sent to Google Analytics, Google Ads, or any other analytics or advertising service.

If you contact us

If you send us the contact form, we use your details only to reply to you about thewaitlist — by email, or by a call or text from a person on our team if you gave a phone number. This is a one-to-one reply. We do not add you to a mailing list or to any automated text program, and we do not pass your details to anyone for marketing. Tell us to stop at any time and we will.

Third-party services

We use the following service providers. Each handles data under its own privacy policy.

Google Analytics and Google Ads receive only the marketing-page data described under “Cookies and analytics.” They never receive names, email addresses, phone numbers, contact-form messages, or anything from queue pages or dashboards.

We do not sell personal information to any third party.

Cookies and analytics

The product itself — queue pages, the join form, your place in line, the line board, and the owner dashboard — uses only functional cookies and carries no analytics or advertising tags:

• a sign-in session cookie for business owners (keeps you signed in; expires after 30days of inactivity), plus short-lived security cookies used while you sign in;
• a queue-position cookie set when you join a line so your device can show your own spot (it contains only a queue entry number, signed so it can’t be altered, and expires after 24 hours);
• a theme cookie that remembers light or dark mode;
• on a shop’s own screen that the owner connected to their line board, a cookie that remembers which shop’s line board to show, so it reconnects by itself (it contains only a random code, and lasts 365 days from its last use).

If you join a line, your name — and, if you opt in to texts, your number — may also be remembered in your own browser’s local storage, on your device only, so the form is prefilled if you return. If you upgrade to a paid plan, checkout is provided by Stripe, which sets its own cookies to process the payment and prevent fraud.

Our marketing pages — the homepage, pricing, signup, and landing pages such as For schools — also load Google Analytics, which we link to our Google Ads account to measure ad conversions. It sets cookies (such as _ga and _gcl_au) and sends Google the pages you view, what you click, the site or ad that brought you here, your approximate location, and your device and browser type. We use this to count visits and to learn which ads lead to signups. Google signals, ad personalization, and remarketing are turned off, so this data is not used to show you ads based on your visit. We never send Google your name, email address, phone number, or anything you type into a form.

Those pages also set one cookie of our own, wl_attr, the first time you arrive from an ad, a campaign link, or another website. It holds the campaign details on the link you followed (including Google’s click ID, if there was one), the page you landed on, and the site that referred you, and it expires after 90 days. Only our own servers read it: if you sign up or send the contact form, those details are saved with your account or inquiry so we know what brought you here. The homepage also keeps a note in your own browser’s storage, on your device only, that you have seen, closed, or answered the founding-offer prompt, so it doesn’t keep coming back.

Your choices: if your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, we do not load Google Analytics at all. You can also install Google’s Analytics opt-out add-on (tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout), manage ad settings at myadcenter.google.com, or block cookies in your browser. The site works the same either way. Google explains how it handles this data at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Data retention

Your rights

You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information by emailing help@thewaitlist.com. We'll respond within 30 days.

We do not sell personal information. California residents: thewaitlist does not sell your personal information and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. If that ever changes, we will update this policy and add a way to opt out before it takes effect.

Children's privacy

thewaitlist is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, contact us at help@thewaitlist.com.

Contact

Questions about this policy or requests regarding your data:

We may update this policy. Material changes will be noted with an updated effective date at the top of this page.