Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

We collect information in two categories: information you provide directly, and information collected automatically when you use the service.

Information you provide directly:

• Account email address — required only if you create a registered account. Used for login, account recovery, and transactional notifications (e.g., low balance alerts). We do not use this address for marketing without explicit opt-in.
• Payment information — when you add credits to your account balance. Payment processing is handled by third-party processors. We do not store full card numbers or banking credentials on our servers.

Information collected automatically:

• Usage data — which services you activated a number for (e.g., "Google verification"), activation timestamps, and credit balance changes. This data is used to display your transaction history and for fraud prevention.
• Technical data — IP address, browser type, and device type, collected for security monitoring, rate limiting, and abuse prevention. This data is not used to build behavioral profiles.

How We Use Your Information

We use the data we collect strictly to operate and improve the service. Specifically:

• To provision virtual phone numbers and deliver SMS verification codes to your dashboard.
• To manage your account balance and display your transaction history.
• To send transactional emails (e.g., purchase confirmation, account alerts) when you have a registered account.
• To detect and prevent fraudulent activity, abuse of the platform, or violations of our Terms of Service.
• To comply with applicable legal obligations when required by law.
• To improve service reliability, diagnose technical issues, and monitor system health.

We do not use your data for behavioral advertising, cross-site tracking, or profiling unrelated to the operation of this service.

Data We Do Not Collect

Our service is intentionally designed to require as little personal information as possible. We do not collect:

• Your real name or surname.
• Your physical address or location (beyond the country-level approximation from IP, used for fraud detection).
• Your personal phone number. You are not required to provide one at any point.
• Government-issued identification documents.
• The content of SMS messages after they have been delivered and read from your dashboard.
• Social media profiles or accounts.

This minimal-collection approach is a core design principle of SMSActivate.us — not an afterthought. Our service exists precisely so that you don't have to expose your personal data to every platform you interact with.

Virtual Numbers & SMS Data

The virtual phone numbers you use through our platform belong to our infrastructure, not to you personally. This has important implications:

What the platform you're verifying with sees: Only the virtual number. Your real identity, location, and personal phone number are never transmitted to or visible by the platform you're verifying on.

What we see: That a number from our pool received an SMS for a given session. We see the verification code in order to display it in your dashboard. We do not read, log, or store the content of that code beyond the duration of your active session.

Number recycling: After a single-use number expires, it is returned to our pool and may be reassigned to another user. There is no record linking the previous user to the new session. Long-term rental numbers are tied to your account for the rental duration only.

Cookies & Tracking

We use a minimal set of cookies necessary for the operation of the service:

• Session cookies — to keep you logged into your account. These expire when you close your browser or log out.
• Preference cookies — to remember lightweight UI preferences. These do not contain personally identifiable information.

We do not use:

• Third-party advertising cookies or tracking pixels.
• Fingerprinting or cross-site user tracking.
• Analytics platforms that build behavioral profiles (e.g., Meta Pixel, Google Ads retargeting tags).

Basic, anonymized traffic analytics may be used to understand aggregate usage patterns (e.g., which pages receive the most visits). This data is not tied to individual user identities.

Third-Party Services

We work with a limited number of third-party services to operate the platform:

• Payment processors — to handle credit card and cryptocurrency transactions securely. Payment processors have their own privacy policies and are responsible for the data they process during payment. We receive only confirmation of successful payment and an anonymized transaction reference.
• Infrastructure providers — hosting, CDN, and server providers used to run the service. These providers have access to server logs (including IP addresses) as part of normal infrastructure operation and are contractually bound to data protection standards.
• Telecom and carrier partners — wholesale number providers through which our virtual US phone numbers are provisioned. These partners operate under carrier-grade regulatory requirements.

We do not share personally identifiable user data with any third party for marketing, advertising, or data broker purposes. Third parties we work with are limited to what is strictly necessary to deliver the service.

Data Retention

We retain data for the minimum period necessary to operate the service and meet legal obligations:

• Account data (email, balance history) is retained for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period after account closure for support and audit purposes.
• Transaction records (activation logs, credit purchases) are retained for a limited operational period — typically no more than 12 months — for support, billing disputes, and fraud prevention, then deleted.
• SMS message content is not persistently stored. Once delivered to your dashboard and the session ends, message content is not retained.
• IP and technical logs are retained for a short period (typically 30–90 days) for security and abuse prevention, then purged.

You may request deletion of your account and associated data at any time. See the Your Rights section below.

Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

• Right of access — to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Right to rectification — to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Right to erasure — to request deletion of your account and associated personal data, subject to any legal retention obligations.
• Right to data portability — to receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Right to object — to object to processing of your data in certain circumstances.
• Right to withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, to withdraw that consent at any time.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us through the support page at hero-sms.com. We will respond to verified requests within 30 days.

Security

We implement technical and organizational measures to protect your data against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. These include:

• Encrypted data transmission (TLS/HTTPS) across all pages and API endpoints.
• Access controls limiting internal access to personal data on a need-to-know basis.
• Regular security reviews of our infrastructure and third-party integrations.
• Rate limiting and anomaly detection to identify and block abusive or unauthorized access attempts.

No system is completely immune to security risks. While we work diligently to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach that affects your rights, we will notify affected users in accordance with applicable law.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes to our practices, technology, legal requirements, or other factors. When we make material changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.

We encourage you to review this page periodically. Your continued use of the service after any changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy. If you do not agree with the revised terms, you should discontinue use of the service and contact us to request account deletion.

Contact

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests related to this Privacy Policy or the handling of your personal data, please contact us through the support page at hero-sms.com.

We aim to respond to all privacy-related inquiries within 5 business days.