PRIVACY POLICY
SalonModels.com
Hank Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Salon Models
Effective Date: September 14, 2026 · Last Updated: September 14, 2026
1. Introduction
SalonModels.com (the “Site”) is owned and operated by Hank Enterprises, LLC, a New York limited liability company doing business as Salon Models (“Salon Models,” “we,” “us,” or “our”). This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect through the Site, how we use and share it, how we protect it, and the choices you have.
Salon Models is a platform that connects two groups of users:
- Hair Models — individuals who create a profile, post requests to receive hair services such as haircuts, color, and blow drys, and search postings made by stylists looking for models.
- Hair Stylists — licensed stylists and salon professionals who pay a monthly membership fee, create a profile, search postings made by models, and post their own requests for models for social media content or in-salon education.
Both groups can search each other’s postings, upload photographs, and communicate through the Site’s messaging feature.
By registering for an account or otherwise using the Site, you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with it, please do not register for or use the Site.
2. Eligibility — The Site Is for Adults Only
The Site is intended solely for users who are 18 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. Do not register for an account, create a profile, submit a posting, upload a photograph, or send messages through the Site if you are under 18.
We do not verify ages. If we become aware that a user is under 18, we will close that user’s account. If you believe someone under 18 is using the Site, please contact us at the address in Section 17.
This restriction applies to both models and stylists. Parents and guardians may not create an account on behalf of a minor, and models may not appear in or arrange services through the Site on behalf of a minor.
3. Information We Collect
Almost everything we hold about you is information you typed in or uploaded yourself. We do not buy personal information about you from data brokers, and we do not pull information out of your social media accounts. The subsections below walk through what you share, in the order you share it.
3.1 What You Give Us
The following is everything you type in or upload. Some of it is collected when you register; the rest you can add, change, or remove from your profile or your postings at any time.
- Your first and last name. We collect both when you register. Only your first name is shown to other users — on your profile and on every posting you create. Your last name is kept as part of your account record and is not displayed on the Site.
- Your location. You select two things from lists when you register: a city, meaning the metropolitan area you are in, and a borough or neighborhood within it. At launch the Site operates only in New York City, so the choices are the New York City boroughs. Your location is what determines which postings you see — you are shown postings from the models and stylists in your metropolitan area, and you can filter those postings by borough or neighborhood.
- Your email address. This is your unique identifier on the Site — each account must use a different one. We use it to identify your account, to sign you in, and to contact you as described in Section 6. It is not displayed to other users.
- Your password. Stored in hashed form, not as readable text.
- Photographs. A profile photograph, which is required of every user at registration; the photographs attached to your postings; and, for stylists, any inspiration (“inspo”) photographs showing a style they would like to create. Section 4 covers images in detail.
- Your “About Me” section, if you are a model. An optional free-text field on a model’s profile, where you can write whatever you would like other users to know about you. Stylist profiles do not have one.
- Your Instagram link. Your Instagram handle or a link to your Instagram profile, if you choose to add one.
- Your postings. The service, chosen from a fixed list; your availability, chosen from a calendar; and two optional free-text fields — one for availability details and one for notes about the posting. Models post to find a stylist for a service such as a haircut, color, or blow dry, and include a current photograph of their hair — either their profile photograph or additional photographs they upload. Stylists post to find a model, choose whether the posting is for social media content or in-salon education, and may attach inspiration photographs. Each group can search the other’s postings.
- If you are a stylist: your salon name and address. This is required at registration. As you begin typing a salon name the field suggests matching businesses using the Google Maps API, and selecting one fills in the salon’s name and street address — see Section 3.8 for what that means for your information. Your salon name and address are shown on your profile and on every posting you create.
- If you are a stylist: your specialties and what you are seeking. Two optional lists on your profile — the services you specialize in, and whether you are looking for models for social media content, in-salon education, or both.
Your first name and your location do more than open your account. They become part of your profile, and they are carried onto every posting you create — a model’s posting looking for a stylist and a stylist’s posting looking for a model alike. Other users of the Site will see them. Because location determines what the Site shows you, it also determines who sees you: your postings are shown to everyone searching your metropolitan area, not only to users in your own borough. Section 7 sets out everything other users can see.
Two of the things you give us are not shown to anyone else: your last name and your email address. We hold both as part of your account record, so that there is a real person behind every account, but neither appears on your profile, in your postings, or anywhere else another user can see.
A model’s “About Me” section is visible to other users. Because it is an open-ended box, it is the easiest place on the Site to share more than you meant to. Write what helps a stylist decide to work with you — and please read Section 3.6 before you write anything about your health, your home address, or your finances.
Your Instagram link is optional and is also shown to other users. Adding it connects your Salon Models profile to a public social media account, which is often the point — it lets a stylist see your hair or a model see a stylist’s work. It also makes you easier to identify away from the Site, so whether to add it is your choice. We do not log in to your Instagram account and we do not collect your followers, your posts, or anything else from it. We store only what you enter in the field.
3.2 Messages You Send Through the Chat Feature
The Site includes a chat feature so that models and stylists can communicate with each other. We store the messages you send and receive so that your conversation history stays available to you and to the person you are talking with.
You can also upload and send photographs through the chat feature, and those images are stored with the conversation. So is anything else you type into a message — a phone number, an address, a link, an appointment time. Section 8 explains the circumstances in which we may access message content.
3.3 Reports and Blocks
The Site gives you two tools for dealing with another user you do not want to interact with, and using either one creates a record.
Blocking is the faster remedy, and for most situations it is the right one. If another user simply bothers you, or you would rather not deal with them for any reason at all, blocking takes effect immediately and requires no judgment from us. Reporting is for content or behavior that should not be on the Site at all — anything unlawful, a person who appears to be under 18, threats, or someone using photographs they have no right to use.
- Reporting: you can report a posting or you can report a user’s profile. You choose a reason for reporting the user from a list. There is no report button inside the chat itself, but every conversation links directly to the other user’s profile — so if someone sends you a message you want to report, follow that link, report the profile, and select the inappropriate-message reason. We receive your report, the reason you selected, the profile or posting you reported, and your identity as the person who reported it, and we keep that record. When the report concerns a message, the conversation between you and that user is saved with the report so that we can review it. We consider the reports we receive and take whatever action we think is appropriate, which may include removing content, warning a user, or suspending or closing an account — but we cannot promise any particular outcome.
- Blocking: models and stylists can block each other, and a block runs in both directions. Once you block someone, neither of you can see the other’s profile or postings, neither of you can send the other a message, and the conversation between you disappears from view for both of you. We store the fact of the block so that we can enforce it.
Report first, then block. Because reporting is done from a user’s profile, and a block hides that profile from you, you cannot report someone once you have blocked them. If the behavior is something we should know about — anything unlawful, someone who appears to be under 18, a threat, or a photograph used without permission — report it before you block.
Blocking hides a conversation; it does not erase it. We keep the messages and images that were exchanged before a block on our systems, where you can no longer see them. We do this deliberately: a block often follows an interaction that went wrong, and the conversation is the record we would need to act on a report, to protect another user from the same behavior, or to respond to a legal claim.
Reports and blocks are used for safety and enforcement of our Terms of Service. We are not able to act on a report without reviewing the content it concerns, which is why Section 8 explains that reported messages may be read.
We do not screen content before it appears. Profiles, postings, photographs, and messages are published as users create them. We do not review them in advance and we do not monitor conversations, so we rely on users to tell us when something is wrong.
3.4 Membership and Billing Information (Stylists)
If you are a stylist, your $9.99 per month membership is processed by Stripe, our third-party payment processor. You enter your card details and billing ZIP code with Stripe, not with us. We do not ask for a billing address. From Stripe we receive and store limited records of your subscription: its status, billing dates, transaction amounts, and the last four digits and brand of your card.
3.5 When You Contact Us
If you email us, submit a support request, report another user, or send us feedback, we keep that correspondence along with the contact details you used.
Together, Sections 3.1 through 3.5 are the complete set of information you share with us: your first and last name, your city and borough or neighborhood, your email address, your profile photograph, your salon name if you are a stylist, your “About Me” text if you are a model and your Instagram link if you add them, the contents of your postings and the photographs attached to them, the messages and images you send through chat, the reports and blocks you make, and — for stylists — membership billing records. That is the whole list, and we do not buy information about you from anyone.
3.6 Information We Do Not Want — Please Do Not Share It
Salon Models does not need, does not want, and does not ask for your health information. Hair services are not medical services. Nothing about connecting a model with a stylist requires us to know anything about your health, and we have deliberately built the Site without any field that asks for it.
Please do not enter any of the following anywhere on the Site — not in a model’s About Me section, not anywhere else in your profile, not in a posting, and not in a chat message:
- Health and medical information of any kind — scalp or skin conditions, allergies or sensitivities (including reactions to hair dye, bleach, or other salon products), medications, pregnancy, medical treatments, hair loss and its causes, or anything else about your physical or mental health.
- Government identification numbers, such as a Social Security number, driver’s license number, or passport number.
- Financial account numbers, payment card numbers, or login credentials for any account.
- Your home address or exact street address.
- Personal or health information about anyone else.
If something about your health genuinely affects a service you are arranging — an allergy to a product a stylist would use, for example — raise it directly with that stylist in person at your appointment. That conversation belongs between you and the stylist. It does not belong in your profile, in a posting, or in the chat feature, because everything in those places is stored in our systems, and we would rather never hold that information at all.
We do not read profiles, postings, or messages looking for this kind of information, so the only reliable protection is not to enter it in the first place. If you have already shared health or other sensitive information on the Site, you can take it down yourself: edit or clear your “About Me” section from your profile page, or delete the posting it appears in.
3.7 Information We Collect Automatically
When you visit or use the Site, we and our service providers may automatically collect certain technical information, including:
- IP address, browser type and version, operating system, device type, and device identifiers;
- pages and postings viewed, filters you apply, features used, links clicked, and the dates and times of your activity;
- referring and exit pages; and
- general location inferred from your IP address, such as city or region.
We collect this information using cookies and similar technologies as described in Section 10.
Security screening. We use Cloudflare to help protect the Site. To tell real visitors apart from automated attacks, it processes your IP address and technical characteristics of your browser and device. We use this to block bots, fake registrations, and password-guessing attacks — not to build a profile of you or to advertise to you.
3.8 Third-Party Services Built Into the Site
- Payment processor: Stripe provides us with confirmation of successful and failed payments, subscription status, chargeback and refund information, and limited card details as described above.
- Instagram and other social platforms: if you provide an Instagram handle or link, we store it as part of your profile. We do not access your Instagram account, followers, or private content unless you separately and expressly authorize a connection.
- Hosting and infrastructure providers: Supabase, which hosts our database, account authentication, and image storage, and our other hosting and analytics providers may supply us with technical logs and security information relating to use of the Site.
- Cloudflare: our network security provider, which provides us with security information about traffic to the Site, including blocked-request logs and indicators of automated or abusive traffic.
- Google Maps: the salon field in stylist registration uses the Google Maps API to suggest salons as you type. When you use that field, what you type — together with your IP address and technical information about your browser — is sent to Google so that it can return suggestions. Google handles that information under its own privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy, not under this Policy. We receive back and store the salon name and address you select.
4. Photographs and Images
Photographs are central to how Salon Models works, so this section explains images separately and in plain terms.
4.1 The Images We Collect
- Profile photographs: every user uploads a photograph to their profile at registration.
- Posting photographs: when a model creates a posting, a current photograph of their hair is required. You may use your existing profile photograph, upload additional photographs, or both.
- Inspiration photographs: stylists may upload “inspo” photographs to a posting, showing a hairstyle, cut, or color they would like to create. These live only inside a posting — they are not part of your profile — and they stop being visible when the posting is no longer live.
- Photographs in messages: you may send photographs to another user inside a chat conversation. These are stored with the conversation and are visible to the people in it.
4.2 What Photographs Can Reveal
A photograph is personal information. Images you upload may show your face, your appearance, your hair type, texture, and color, and details of the place where the photograph was taken — including the inside of your home, your workplace, or an identifiable street. Please look at what is in the frame before you upload.
Photograph metadata. Photographs taken on a phone or camera can carry hidden metadata, including the date and time, the device used, and in some cases the precise GPS coordinates where the image was taken. We remove location metadata from images uploaded to the Site, but we cannot guarantee that every image is stripped, so please consider what a photograph might reveal before you upload it.
4.3 Photographs of Other People
Only upload photographs you have the right to upload. Do not upload a photograph of another identifiable person without that person’s permission, and never upload a photograph of anyone under 18.
This applies to inspiration photographs in particular. Images saved from Instagram, Pinterest, or a salon’s website often show a real, identifiable person and are usually owned by the photographer, the stylist, or the salon that created them. Before uploading an inspiration photograph, consider whether you have permission to use it. Section 4.5 explains how to make a copyright complaint.
4.4 Removing Photographs
You can delete a photograph from your profile, remove a posting, or close your account at any time. We cannot retrieve an image that another user has already viewed, screenshotted, or saved.
4.5 Copyright Complaints and Takedown Requests
If you believe an image on the Site infringes a copyright you own or are authorized to act for, email us at copyright@salonmodels.com and we will look into it.
To help us act on your complaint quickly, please include the following:
- your name, mailing address, and email address;
- a description of the copyrighted work you believe has been used;
- identification of the posting where the image appears, with enough detail for us to find it — a link to the posting is best;
- a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
- a statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or are authorized to act on the owner’s behalf; and
- your physical or electronic signature.
When we receive a valid notice, we remove or disable access to the material. In appropriate circumstances, we may terminate the account of a user who repeatedly posts material that infringes the copyrights of others.
One practical note. Inspiration photographs and other posting images exist only inside a posting, and a posting stops being visible once its availability date passes. The image you are writing about may therefore no longer be on display by the time you reach us.
5. How We Use Your Information
We use the information described above for the following purposes:
- to create, maintain, and secure your account and verify your registration;
- to keep an accurate account record — including the last name we collect but do not display — so that there is an identifiable person behind each account for support, safety, and enforcement purposes;
- to display your profile, photographs, and postings to other users as described in Section 7, and to enable searching and filtering of postings;
- to show postings by area — your location determines which postings you are shown when you search and which users are shown your postings, and it lets you narrow results to a particular borough or neighborhood within your metropolitan area;
- to operate the messaging feature so models and stylists can communicate with each other;
- to manage your stylist membership and keep records of it — payments themselves are processed by Stripe, as described in Section 3.4;
- to contact you by email, and to send promotional materials to salons, as described in Section 6;
- to provide customer support and respond to your inquiries and reports;
- to monitor for, investigate, and prevent fraud, spam, harassment, impersonation, and violations of our Terms of Service, and to enforce those Terms and protect the safety of our users;
- to consider the reports users make about profiles and postings — including reports about messages, which are made from the sender’s profile — to take action on them where we think it appropriate, and to enforce blocks between users;
- to analyze how the Site is used so we can improve, troubleshoot, and develop features; and
- to comply with applicable law and legal process, and to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
6. How We Contact You
6.1 Email to You
We may contact you by email at the address associated with your account. There are two kinds of email we send:
- Transactional email: account confirmations, notifications about messages and postings, membership and billing notices, password resets, security alerts, and notice of changes to our Terms of Service or this Policy. These are part of the service, and you cannot opt out of them while your account is open.
- Promotional email: news about Salon Models, new features, tips, and offers. Every promotional email includes an unsubscribe link, and you may opt out at any time using that link or by contacting us. Opting out of promotional email does not stop transactional email.
6.2 Promotional Contact With Salons
If you are a stylist, we may contact the salon you registered with, using promotional or marketing materials about Salon Models — for example, information about stylist memberships, or about what the platform offers salons and the stylists who work in them.
Our outreach to salons is general marketing about the platform. We do not give a salon your personal information for the salon’s own marketing purposes.
7. Information That Is Visible to Other Users
Salon Models is a platform whose core function is to make models and stylists discoverable to one another. Information in your profile and in your postings is visible to other registered users of the Site who are permitted to view it. Specifically, other users can see:
- your first name, and your city and borough or neighborhood — on your profile and on every posting you create;
- your profile photograph, which appears on your profile and on your postings;
- your “About Me” section, if you are a model and have written one;
- your Instagram handle or profile link, if you entered one;
- your salon name and address, if you are a stylist; and
- the full contents of any posting you create — the service, your availability and any availability details, your notes, and every photograph attached to it, including inspiration photographs on a stylist’s posting.
Anything you send in a chat message, including photographs, is visible to the user you sent it to.
Please treat everything you put in a profile or posting as information you are choosing to share with other users. In particular:
- Your location is a city and a borough or neighborhood, both chosen from lists — the Site does not ask for a street address. Do not add one yourself in a model’s “About Me” section, your posting details, or a photograph.
- We do not display your last name or your email address to other users. Both are part of your account record, and your email address serves as your account identifier rather than a public field.
- Once another user sees, copies, or saves information or a photograph you have shared, we cannot control what that user does with it. Removing a posting or closing your account does not retrieve what another user has already saved.
Some information may also be visible to people who are not logged in if we make certain postings or profile pages publicly viewable or if search engines index them.
8. Messages and Chat
Messages sent through the Site — including any photographs sent inside them — are stored on our systems so that you and the recipient can access your conversation history. Messages are not end-to-end encrypted.
We do not read your messages in the ordinary course of operating the Site, and we do not use the content of your messages or your photographs for advertising. However, we may access, review, retain, and disclose message content and images where we reasonably believe it is necessary to:
- investigate a report of harassment, fraud, spam, solicitation, impersonation, unlawful or explicit imagery, safety concerns, or another violation of our Terms of Service;
- protect the rights, property, or safety of Salon Models, our users, or the public; or
- comply with applicable law, a subpoena, court order, or other legal process.
If someone sends you a message you believe is inappropriate, you can report it — but not from inside the chat. Use the link in the conversation to open that user’s profile, report the profile, and select the inappropriate-message reason, as described in Section 3.3. Do this before blocking them: a block hides their profile from you, and with it the only route to reporting. Reporting is what allows us to look at the conversation: we cannot assess a report of that kind without reading the messages it concerns, so the conversation is saved with your report. You can also block the user, which removes the conversation from view for both of you and stops any further contact, though it does not delete what was already exchanged — we retain it, as described in Section 3.3.
Arrangements you make with another user — including appointments, meeting locations, payments made outside the Site, and any information or photographs you exchange by text, phone, social media, or in person — take place outside our platform and are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Please use good judgment about what you share and the arrangements you make.
9. How We Share Information
We do not sell your personal information. We do not share personal information with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising or targeted advertising, and we do not rent or trade user lists.
We share personal information only in the following circumstances:
- With other users: as described in Sections 7 and 8, in order to make the platform function.
- With service providers: we use vendors who process information on our behalf and under contract, only for the purposes we specify. These include Supabase (database, account authentication, and image storage), Cloudflare (network security), Google (the Maps lookup in the stylist salon field), our website hosting provider, our payment processor (Stripe), email delivery providers, customer support tools, and analytics providers.
- For legal reasons: we may disclose information if required to do so by law or if we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to comply with a subpoena, warrant, court order, or other legal process; to enforce our Terms of Service; to investigate suspected fraud or illegal activity; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Salon Models, our users, or others.
- In a business transfer: if Salon Models or Hank Enterprises, LLC is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, sale of assets, or bankruptcy, user information may be transferred as part of that transaction.
- With your consent or at your direction: when you ask us to share information or agree to a specific disclosure.
- In aggregated or de-identified form: we may create and use aggregate or de-identified statistics (for example, the number of postings in a city) that cannot reasonably be used to identify you.
10. Cookies and Similar Technologies
We use cookies and similar technologies to keep you logged in, keep the Site secure, and understand how the Site is used. The categories we use are:
- Strictly necessary cookies: required for the Site to function — authentication, session management, load balancing, and security. This category includes cookies set by Cloudflare to identify trusted traffic and block automated attacks. These cannot be turned off through the Site.
- Analytics cookies: help us understand aggregate usage — which pages are visited, how users navigate the Site, and where problems occur.
Most browsers let you refuse or delete cookies through their settings. If you block strictly necessary cookies, parts of the Site — including logging in — may not work.
Do Not Track. Browsers offer a “Do Not Track” setting, for which no common industry standard has been adopted. We do not currently respond to Do Not Track signals.
11. Payments and Stylist Memberships
Stylist memberships are billed at $9.99 per month. Payments are processed by Stripe, Inc., a third-party payment processor. When you enter payment card information, it is transmitted directly to Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card number, expiration date, or security code.
Stripe processes your payment information as an independent controller of that data under its own privacy policy, which we encourage you to review at stripe.com/privacy. We store only the limited billing records described in Section 3.4, which we use to manage your subscription, provide receipts, handle refunds and disputes, and satisfy our tax and accounting obligations.
The terms of your subscription, including automatic renewal and cancellation, are governed by our Terms of Service.
12. How We Store and Protect Your Information
12.1 Where Your Information Is Stored
Your account information, profile, postings, messages, and photographs are stored in a PostgreSQL database and file storage system hosted and operated by Supabase, our database and infrastructure provider, on cloud servers located in the United States. Supabase also provides the authentication system that manages account sign-in.
Supabase acts as our service provider and processes this information on our behalf and under contract — it is not permitted to use your information for its own purposes. Supabase maintains SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications and encrypts stored data at rest using AES-256 encryption. You can review Supabase’s own security and privacy practices at supabase.com/security and supabase.com/privacy.
12.2 How We Protect It
We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction, consistent with the New York SHIELD Act (N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 899-bb). These safeguards include:
- encryption of data in transit using industry-standard TLS, and encryption of stored data at rest;
- storage of account passwords in hashed form rather than as plain text;
- database access rules that restrict each user’s data to that user and to the users authorized to see it;
- storage of uploaded photographs in access-controlled storage rather than in publicly accessible locations;
- Cloudflare’s network protection, which filters automated and abusive traffic;
- delegation of card processing to a PCI-compliant payment processor, so that full card details do not reach our systems.
No method of transmission over the internet and no method of electronic storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, and you share information through the Site at your own risk. Please choose a strong, unique password, keep it confidential, and notify us immediately if you believe your account has been compromised.
If a breach of the security of the system involving your private information occurs, we will notify you and any applicable regulators as required by N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 899-aa and other applicable breach-notification laws.
13. Your Choices
- Review and update your information: you can view and edit your profile, photographs, postings, and account details at any time by logging in to your account.
- Close your account: you may close your account through your account settings, or by contacting us at the address in Section 17.
- Promotional email: you may unsubscribe using the link in any promotional message. We will still send you transactional messages about your account, postings, membership, and security.
- Cookies: you can manage cookies through your browser settings as described in Section 10.
14. Third-Party Links and Off-Platform Activity
The Site may contain links to third-party websites and services, including Instagram profiles supplied by users and pages operated by our service providers. We do not control those services, and this Privacy Policy does not apply to them. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of any third-party service you visit.
Similarly, once you leave the Site to communicate with, meet, or transact with another user, this Policy no longer governs the information or images you exchange.
15. Users Located Outside the United States
The Site is intended for users located in the United States. If you access the Site from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those in your country. By using the Site, you consent to that transfer and processing.
16. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page. If we make material changes — for example, changes to the categories of information we collect, how we use it, or who we share it with — we will provide notice through the Site or by email to the address associated with your account before the changes take effect, where required by law.
Your continued use of the Site after an updated Policy takes effect means you accept the updated Policy. We encourage you to review this page periodically.
17. Contact Us
If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, or if you want a photograph removed, contact us by email at:
privacy@salonmodels.com
Salon Models is operated by Hank Enterprises, LLC, a New York limited liability company.