Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 22, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how HWGrow.com (“HWGrow,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, shares, and retains information when you use the website, create an account, participate in Community Chat, publish or interact with Grow Journals, purchase memberships or other products, or otherwise use HWGrow services.

Operator: HWGrow, Inc.

1. Age Requirement

HWGrow is intended only for adults age 21 and older. We do not knowingly permit people under 21 to create accounts or participate in member features. If we learn that an account holder is under 21, we may suspend or permanently terminate the account and delete associated information where appropriate.

2. Information We Collect

Account and profile information

When you create or maintain an account, we may collect your email address, public display name, password credentials in encrypted or hashed form through WordPress, profile photo, account role or membership status, notification preferences, and account security information. Your email address is used for login; your public display name is the name shown to other members.

If you use Google or another supported sign-in provider, we may receive information that provider makes available to us, such as your email address, name, and profile image.

Login and security information

If you request a temporary six-digit email login code, we process your email address, a short-lived verification code, expiration information, and security/rate-limit data needed to prevent abuse. We may also process IP addresses, browser or device information, cookies, and one-way hashed or pseudonymous identifiers for login security, spam prevention, rate limiting, fraud prevention, likes, bans, and moderation.

Community onboarding information

Before posting in Community Chat, members are asked to confirm they are at least 21, accept the Community Rules, and answer questions such as where they heard about HWGrow and how many seed-to-harvest grows they have completed. We use this information to understand and operate the community, enforce eligibility, and improve the member experience.

Grow Journals and other public user content

Grow Journals are designed to be public and searchable. Information you choose to publish may include your public display name, journal title, grow medium, breeder and strain information, start and harvest dates, journal entries, photos, videos, comments, likes, and related activity. Public journals and their content may be indexed by search engines and may remain discoverable through third-party caches or archives even after content is changed or removed from HWGrow.

Community Chat

Community Chat can be viewed by logged-out visitors in real time. Posting requires an eligible logged-in account and completion of onboarding. Chat messages, photos, reactions, reports, room information, timestamps, and moderation information may be processed to operate the rooms and enforce the Community Rules.

Chat is not private or confidential. Do not post personal information or anything you would not want other people to see.

Community photo likes and Highlight Gallery

Logged-in and, where enabled, logged-out visitors may be able to like eligible chat photos. To reduce vote manipulation, we may use cookies, browser identifiers, hashed IP/network identifiers, account IDs, timing information, and other anti-abuse signals.

Only eligible photos posted in the Eye Candy Pics room can be promoted to the permanent HWGrow Highlight Gallery. The promotion threshold is configurable and may change. A promoted photo may be resized, cropped, converted to vertical format, overlaid with the poster’s public display name, included in HWGrow galleries or reels, and shared on HWGrow’s official social channels as described in the Terms of Use. Photos in Ask a Question are not eligible for automatic Highlight promotion.

Comments, follows, and activity

We process comments, likes, journal follows, activity-feed events, and notification preferences so members can interact with journals and see recent activity. Journal owners may receive comment notifications by email unless they turn that preference off.

Purchases and subscriptions

When you purchase a product or membership, we process order details, subscription status, billing-related records, and information needed to provide the purchased access. Payment card information is handled by our payment processor(s), such as Authorize.Net, and we do not intend to store full payment card numbers on HWGrow servers.

Uploads and media metadata

Uploaded images are re-encoded and resized where applicable, which is intended to strip embedded EXIF/GPS metadata before the retained HWGrow copy is stored. Because no technical process is perfect, you should still avoid uploading images that reveal your location, identity, home address, license plates, or other sensitive information. Uploaded files may also be checked for file type, size, malware, or other security risks.

Affiliate and product-link information

HWGrow participates in affiliate programs, including Amazon. Product links posted in journals, chat, or HWGrow content may be routed or rewritten through HWGrow’s affiliate-link system. We may keep redirect, product, ASIN, source, destination, timestamp, and diagnostic records needed to maintain links, prevent abuse, and generate affiliate reports. HWGrow may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.

Karma, rewards and completed-journal bonuses

We process contribution and voting history, distinct posting dates, journal completion status, eligibility checks, karma totals and badges, reward points, balances, bonus sequences, transfer identifiers and delivery status to calculate and administer community benefits. Public badges, featured contributions and journal activity may be visible to other visitors; your private balance, account email and administrative review records are not displayed as part of a public badge.

For Selfie Seeds™ store credit and eligible account perks, account email and the reward or eligibility information needed for the service may be exchanged with Selfie Seeds™ to match your account, deliver credit, verify access and prevent duplicate awards. Completion-credit confirmation emails and reward service notices are separate from marketing subscriptions. No payment-card information is needed for the reward transfer.

Ask HWGrow questions and feedback

We process questions, answer versions, ratings, written corrections, suggested links, timestamps and account or session identifiers to provide the assistant, review feedback, prevent abuse and administer eligible feedback rewards. When an AI service is used, that provider processes the question and relevant context needed to generate a response. Authorized staff can review feedback and audit history, including through internal review summaries. Submitting feedback does not by itself publish it; approved corrections may be used in subsequent answers. Do not submit confidential or sensitive personal information.

Technical information

Our servers, security systems, WordPress, WooCommerce, and related services may collect IP addresses, browser user-agent information, request logs, error logs, cookie identifiers, device/browser information, and similar technical data for security, reliability, troubleshooting, analytics, and fraud or abuse prevention.

3. How We Use Information

We use information to:

create and secure accounts and provide password or email-code login;
provide free, Supporter, Masterclass, journal, chatbot, and community features;
display public profiles, journals, comments, chat, and Highlight content;
personalize dashboards, follows, activity feeds, and notifications;
process purchases, recurring memberships, cancellations, and access roles;
moderate content, investigate reports, rate-limit abuse, detect spam, enforce bans, and protect users and HWGrow;
maintain affiliate links and generate operational or affiliate reports;
diagnose errors, protect site security, prevent fraud, and maintain reliable service;
comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Use.

4. Automated Moderation

HWGrow uses automated and rule-based tools to identify high-confidence spam, prohibited links, sales or payment solicitation, duplicate posting, personal information, threats, hateful or explicit material, excessive posting, and other violations. Lower-confidence situations may produce a warning, temporary hold, rate limit, or request to edit rather than an automatic ban. Automated systems can make mistakes. Members may report content or contact HWGrow regarding moderation issues.

5. Cookies and Similar Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies for login sessions, account preferences, WooCommerce functions, security, six-digit login flows, anti-spam measures, guest photo likes, rate limits, and other site functions. Third-party embedded content or services may also set their own cookies or collect information under their own privacy policies.

6. When We Share Information

We may share information with service providers and platforms that help us operate the site, including hosting and infrastructure providers, email-delivery services, payment processors, WordPress/WooCommerce services and extensions, login providers such as Google when you choose to use them, Amazon affiliate/catalog services, security or spam-detection providers, analytics providers, and embedded-content providers.

We may also disclose information if we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with law, respond to valid legal process, protect users or the public, investigate fraud or security incidents, enforce our agreements, or protect the rights and property of HWGrow.

Public content is, by definition, shared with the public. This includes public display names, public Grow Journals, public comments, publicly visible chat, and Highlight Gallery content.

7. Data Retention

Retention depends on the type of information and why we need it:

Accounts: generally retained while the account exists and as needed for security, billing, legal, and recordkeeping purposes.
Grow Journals and comments: may be retained as public site content unless removed in accordance with site rules, legal obligations, or an approved request. Closed journals are designed to be archived and locked against further user editing.
Community Chat: designed as temporary rolling content. The operational retention window is configurable and may be approximately 24 hours by default, but messages or media may be retained for a shorter or longer period depending on system settings, storage controls, backups, moderation, security, technical failures, legal obligations, or investigations. We do not promise that every copy disappears at a specific minute.
Highlight Gallery: promoted Eye Candy photos may be retained as persistent public content until removed by HWGrow or as otherwise required by law.
Moderation/security records: may be retained longer than the underlying chat content when reasonably necessary for abuse prevention, audit, ban enforcement, legal compliance, or security.
Backups and caches: deleted information may remain temporarily in backups, caches, logs, or third-party search/archive systems until those copies rotate or expire.

Reward, completion, transfer and review records may be retained as needed to reconcile balances, prevent duplicate awards, resolve disputes and meet legal obligations, even if underlying public content is removed. This does not change your applicable privacy rights.

8. Your Choices and Rights

You can edit many account details and notification preferences from My Account. Depending on where you live, you may also have legal rights to request access, correction, deletion, portability, or other treatment of personal information. Requests are subject to identity verification and exceptions for security, fraud prevention, billing, legal obligations, freedom of expression, and other lawful purposes.

You may contact us using the HWGrow Contact page for privacy requests. Removing personal information from HWGrow does not guarantee removal from search-engine caches, third-party archives, screenshots, reposts, or other copies outside our control.

9. Marketing and Service Emails

Account creation does not automatically mean you consent to marketing emails. We may send transactional or service-related messages such as login codes, account notices, billing notices, security notices, or journal-comment notifications. Marketing or content-update consent, where offered, is handled separately and can be changed independently of account or paid access.

10. Third-Party Links and Embedded Content

HWGrow may contain embedded videos, product links, social-media content, or links to third-party websites. Those services may collect information independently and are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. HWGrow is not responsible for third-party privacy practices.

11. Security

We use reasonable administrative and technical measures intended to protect information, including access controls, rate limits, media sanitization, moderation systems, and other safeguards. No website, transmission method, or storage system can be guaranteed completely secure.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the site, community features, technology, or law changes. The “Last updated” date above identifies the current version. Material changes may also be presented through the site or account experience where appropriate.