Cookies
Last updated: 11 August 2026
Five cookies, total, and one of them isn't even ours. This page lists every one, in plain language: what it's called, how long it lasts, and why it exists. For the fuller picture of what we do and don't collect, see our privacy policy.
Essential — can't be turned off
hmu_session (30 days) keeps you signed in as a founder. hmu_oauth (5 minutes) exists only during the moment you're signing in with Google, to stop that step from being hijacked. hmu_newkeys (10 minutes) holds an API key you just created so the next screen can show it to you once — it's gone the moment you close it or ten minutes pass, whichever comes first. All three are ours, HttpOnly (invisible to any script on the page, including ours), and none of them work as a tracker: they only mean something to your own account.
Preference
hmu_lang (1 year) remembers that you picked English or Spanish by hand, so we stop guessing from your browser or your location. Set once from the language switcher, it decides your language on every visit until you change it or it expires.
Attribution
hmu_attr (30 days) is set the moment you click a badge, a counter or a shared link that came from us, and holds a token we generated — not your name, not your email, nothing about you. If you sign up afterward, it lets us credit whichever startup's badge or share actually brought you here. It's first-party, it's ours, and nobody else can read it.
Analytics — third-party, from Google
Google Analytics sets its own cookies, typically named _ga and _ga_<container id>, which Google's own documentation lists as lasting up to two years. They let us see, in aggregate, which pages get visited and roughly where from — not who you are. We don't run a consent banner before these load today; see below if you'd rather they didn't.
Turning analytics off
Blocking third-party cookies in your browser, or installing Google's own opt-out add-on, stops Google Analytics from tracking your visit — nothing on the site depends on it working, so nothing breaks. The essential and preference cookies above aren't affected by any of this: they're not trackers, and blocking third-party cookies doesn't touch first-party ones like ours.
Changes to this policy
If a cookie gets added, removed, or changes what it's for, this page is updated to match before the change ships.