Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Hark (“we,” “us”) operates hark.news, a service that turns email newsletters you already subscribe to into a private daily audio briefing. For anything in this policy, write to scoop@hark.news.

2. What we never have

We never receive login credentials for your email account, and we never request or hold an OAuth grant or any other standing permission to read your mailbox. There is no connection between Hark and your email account of any kind. We could not read your inbox if we wanted to, because the access does not exist.

Newsletters reach us at a private Hark address that belongs only to you. We subscribe that address, on your instruction, to the newsletters you choose during signup and afterwards. Your personal email address is never given to publishers by us, and your personal mailbox receives nothing from us. If you choose to set up Gmail auto-forwarding for newsletters you already subscribe to, that forwarding runs entirely inside your Gmail settings, under your control, and you can switch it off there at any time; we still hold no access to your mailbox.

3. What we collect

Your newsletters. The issues of the newsletters your private Hark address is subscribed to at your instruction, plus any newsletters you choose to forward to that address from your own inbox (for example paid subscriptions, via Gmail auto-forwarding you set up and control). We automatically classify this mail, keep editorial newsletters, and discard marketing and promotional messages. Mail you deliberately forward by hand is always treated as a newsletter you want.

Your selections and searches. The topics and newsletters you choose, when you chose them (this record is also your instruction to us to create those subscriptions on your behalf), and the searches you run in our newsletter catalog, including searches for newsletters we don't carry yet, which is how the catalog grows.

Account details. The mobile number where we text your briefing or verify your account, your chosen delivery time, your city or postal code (for the weather cold open), and billing details handled by our payment processor, who never expose full card numbers to us.

Listening data. Which briefings and stories you play, finish, skip, bookmark, share, or quiz on, plus streaks. Used to run the features you use, to order the stories in your briefing, and to improve the product; never sold.

4. Retention

Issues of your subscribed newsletters, and of newsletters you forward to your private Hark address, are kept for 30 days so you can read the original behind any story in your in-app inbox, then permanently deleted. Discarded marketing mail is deleted on classification, immediately.

Generated briefings, transcripts, bookmarks, and listening history are kept while your account is active so you can revisit them. Delete your account and they are permanently deleted within 30 days, except records we must keep for legal or billing reasons.

5. How we use information

To generate and deliver your briefing; to text or email you when it is ready; to run bookmarks, quizzes, streaks, and sharing; to bill you; to keep the service secure; and to improve classification and synthesis. We also use your listening activity, like which stories you finish or skip, to order the stories in your briefing. We do not sell or rent personal information, we do not use the contents of your newsletters for advertising, and we do not build advertising profiles.

6. Who we share with

Service providers who process data on our instructions only: cloud hosting, speech synthesis, SMS delivery, and payment processing. Each is bound by contract to use the data solely to provide its service. We may also disclose information if the law genuinely requires it, or in a merger or acquisition, in which case this policy continues to apply to data collected under it.

7. Sharing a story

If you share a story as a playable link, that clip and its citation become accessible to anyone with the link. Don't share what you'd rather keep private; you can revoke a shared link from your account.

8. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access inside Hark is limited to those who need it to operate the service, and our most important safeguard is architectural: we hold as little as possible, for as short a time as possible. No service can promise perfect security, which is exactly why we designed Hark so that your inbox is never at stake.

To protect sign-up and sign-in from automated abuse, we rely on rate limiting and phone verification rather than any third-party device-fingerprinting or CAPTCHA service.

9. Your rights and choices

To stop being charged, cancel your membership anytime in your account settings; the cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. Turning a newsletter off in Settings stops it from feeding your newscast, but it does not cancel your subscription. To access, correct, export, or delete your account data, write to scoop@hark.news and we'll take care of it. Depending on where you live (including the EEA, UK, and California), you may have additional statutory rights, and we honor requests under them regardless of where you live.

10. Cookies

The website uses only cookies necessary to keep you signed in and to remember preferences. No third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

11. Text messages (SMS)

We use your mobile number only to deliver the Hark service, and how we use it depends on where the number is. In the United States, Canada and Australia we text you each day when your briefing is ready, so message frequency is typically about one message per day. Numbers in every other country receive their daily briefing by email instead, and we text those numbers only for account notices such as a one-time code to verify your number. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to unsubscribe at any time, or HELP for help.

We never sell, rent, or share your mobile number, or the fact that you opted in to texts, with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing. The only parties that ever handle your number are the messaging providers that deliver the texts on our behalf, bound by contract to use it solely for that purpose. Text messaging opt-in data and consent are never shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes.

12. Email from us

We use your email address to run the service and to occasionally win you back. That means transactional email you set in motion (for example, a sign-in link you request), and, if you start a trial without subscribing, a short series of reactivation emails with an offer to come back.

Every reactivation email has a one-click unsubscribe link and we honor it immediately; you can also opt out any time by writing to scoop@hark.news. We never sell or share your email address, and we never use the contents of your newsletters to target email.

13. Children

Hark is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll tell you, in the briefing, by text, or by email you initiate, before the change takes effect. The effective date below always reflects the current version.