Privacy Settings

Hoardly gives you control over who sees your content and activity.

Hoard Visibility

Each hoard has its own visibility setting, changed from Hoard Settings → Privacy:

Visibility	Who can see it
Public	Everyone, including logged-out visitors; listed in browse and search
Unlisted	Anyone with the link, but hidden from browse, search, and your profile
Friends	Only your friends
Private	Only you, plus anyone you grant access via Permissions

TIP

Free accounts can have up to 2 hoards that aren't Public. Supporters don't have that limit.

The same section also sets the default privacy for new items in that hoard. Individual items can be Public, Friends, or Private.

Profile Visibility

Under Preferences → Privacy, set who can view your profile:

Setting	Who can see your profile
Public	Everyone
Friends Only	Only your friends
Private	Nobody; your profile page is hidden

Regardless of the setting, logged-out visitors can still reach your public hoards directly. You can also choose whether the list of people you follow is public.

Choosing a Username and Email

Your username is public: it shows on your profile, hoards and comments. Your email is never shown to other users, it's only used for signing in and account emails.

To make your account hard to link back to you:

• Don't use your real name, birth year or employer in your username.
• Don't reuse a handle from another site, it's easy to search for.
• Use an email alias or a separate address instead of your main inbox.
• Avoid email addresses that contain your name.

Community Privacy

Communities you belong to are shown on your profile. Unlisted communities and your membership in them aren't surfaced in discovery.

Data & Account Deletion

To permanently delete your account and all associated data:

1. Go to Preferences → Account.
2. In the Delete Account section, click Delete Account and follow the confirmation steps.

WARNING

Account deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. All your items, hoards, and account data will be removed.

Signing up again after deleting

Once an account is deleted, its email address can't be used to create another one. Hoardly can only enforce that if it remembers the address was used, so here is exactly what it keeps.

When you sign up, Hoardly stores a fingerprint of your email: a one-way hash made with a secret key that only the server holds. The address itself isn't stored in it. Deleting your account removes your email, your profile and your data as usual. The fingerprint stays, but it is cut loose from your account: nothing links it to a username, a hoard or a person. The only other thing kept with it is the date it was first recorded.

What this means in practice:

• It can't be turned back into your email. The hash can't be reversed, and without the secret key nobody can even test guesses against it. A copy of the database on its own tells you nothing.
• It can answer one question. When someone signs up, Hoardly hashes the address they typed and checks whether the fingerprint already exists. That is the only thing it's used for.
• Aliases count as the same inbox. Before hashing, the address is lowercased, anything after a + is dropped, and dots are ignored for Gmail addresses. name+shop@gmail.com and n.ame@gmail.com give the same fingerprint as name@gmail.com.
• It exists to stop one inbox creating multiple accounts, including after a deletion.

If you deleted your account and want to come back, email support@hoardly.app and I'll remove the fingerprint so you can sign up again.