Draft
Privacy Policy
Draft. This document is a draft under legal review and is not yet in effect. Placeholders in [brackets] will be filled in before launch.
This policy explains what information the Civet Shopify app ("Civet", "we", "us") processes, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and your rights. Civet is operated by [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [ADDRESS] ([PRIVACY EMAIL]).
In short: Civet processes your store's content (products, collections, and similar) to translate it. Civet does not access your customers' personal information, orders, or payment details. We don't sell data, and we don't use your content to train AI models.
1. Who this applies to
- Merchants who install Civet. For the store content Civet processes, the merchant controls the data and Civet processes it for them (we act as a "processor" or "service provider").
- Website visitors and waitlist signups at getcivet.com. If you join our early access waitlist, contact us, or browse our website, we act as the data controller for the contact and inquiry details you submit.
- Store customers. Civet doesn't request access to customer or order data through Shopify, so we don't hold information about your customers. See §6 for how we handle Shopify's customer privacy requests anyway.
2. What we process
| Category | Examples | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Waitlist and inquiry data | Email address, store URL, catalog size, target languages, variant, IP/country, early access correspondence | You, via our website form at getcivet.com |
| Store account info | Shop domain, shop ID, store name, primary language, enabled languages and markets, Shopify plan type, app plan and trial status | Shopify, when you install and while you use Civet |
| Store owner or staff contact | Name and email of the person who installs the app or contacts support | Shopify (shop owner email) and your support emails |
| Store content | Product and collection titles, descriptions, handles, product types, option names and values, image alt text, translatable metafields, SEO titles and descriptions, existing translations | Shopify Admin API (read access to products and translations) |
| Content you give us | Glossary terms, brand voice instructions, settings, edits you make in the preview | You, in the app |
| Generated content | Translations, run history, undo snapshots (previous and new values), translation memory | Created by Civet |
| Technical and usage data | Session tokens (encrypted), request logs, error reports, product-analytics events such as "preview completed" (no personal content), AI usage and cost records | Generated as you use Civet |
| Public storefront pages | Public HTML of a sample of your store pages, used by the SEO check | Your public website |
| Waitlist signup (website) | Email address, store URL, catalog size range, languages you're interested in, and which page version you saw | You, when you join the early access waitlist at getcivet.com |
| Waitlist priority (derived) | A priority score, a plan tier and a rough revenue estimate we calculate from your catalog size and languages, so we know which stores the early versions will fit best | Calculated by us from your signup answers. It's never used for anything with legal or similarly significant effects, and you can ask us to delete it |
| Website requests | IP address and browser details in standard server logs. Your IP is also used briefly in memory to rate-limit the waitlist and the free readiness tool, and isn't stored by Civet | Your browser, when you visit getcivet.com |
| Readiness tool input | The store URL you enter, and the public pages of that site we fetch to score it | You. Results are shown to you and not stored |
What we don't process: customer names, emails, addresses, or orders. Payment card data (Shopify handles billing). Shopify "protected customer data".
Note: product content you write could contain personal information (for example, a maker's name in a description). We process it only as part of your content.
3. Why we process it (and legal bases under GDPR)
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Manage waitlist, invite early access users, answer inquiries | Waitlist and inquiry data | Consent / legitimate interests (you can unsubscribe anytime) |
| Early access emails: a welcome email, a few short notes while we build, and your invite when it's ready | Email address, store URL, catalog size, languages | Consent (unsubscribe link in every email) |
| Prioritize early access invites and notify the founder of new signups | Waitlist signup and derived priority score | Legitimate interests |
| Run the website and the free readiness tool, and prevent abuse (rate limiting) | Website requests, readiness tool input | Legitimate interests |
| Provide the Service: translate, preview, apply, undo, sync, SEO check | Store content, generated content, account info | Performance of our contract with you; processing on your instructions as processor |
| Billing status and plan limits | App plan, trial status, product counts | Contract |
| Keep costs and the Service safe and reliable (budgets, abuse prevention, debugging) | Usage and cost records, logs | Legitimate interests |
| Support | Contact info, support emails | Contract / legitimate interests |
| Improve the product (aggregate funnel analytics) | Usage events without personal content | Legitimate interests (or consent where required) |
| Legal compliance | As needed | Legal obligation |
We don't sell or "share" personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are used in the CCPA/CPRA, and we don't use your content to train AI models.
4. Sub-processors (who we share data with)
We share data only with service providers that help us run Civet, under contracts that limit their use of it.
| Sub-processor | What for | Data | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Inc. | Platform, authentication, billing, storage of your translations | All Civet data flows through, or is stored in, your Shopify store | [per Shopify] |
| Anthropic, PBC | AI translation (Claude API, including the Message Batches API) | Store content, glossary, and brand voice text sent for translation. No customer data. | United States |
| Resend, Inc. | Waitlist email delivery and contact audience storage | Email address, store URL, catalog size, languages, derived priority score and tier, page version | United States |
| Vercel Inc. | Website hosting (getcivet.com, the waitlist and the readiness tool) | Website requests and server logs; waitlist submissions in transit | United States |
| Sanity AS | Website content management | Website copy only. No visitor or merchant personal data | [REGION] |
| [HOSTING: Fly.io, Inc. / Railway] | Application hosting | All app data while it's processed | [REGION, e.g. US/EU] |
| [DATABASE: Neon Inc. / Railway] | Database (encrypted at rest) | Account info, store content copies, run history, translation memory, logs | [REGION] |
| [ERROR MONITORING: Sentry] | Error reports | Technical data, which may include shop domain | [REGION] |
| [ANALYTICS: PostHog] | Product analytics | Shop ID and usage events, no store content | [REGION] |
| [EMAIL PROVIDER] | Transactional and support email | Contact email, message content | [REGION] |
AI provider details: Anthropic processes the content we send to return translations. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, API inputs and outputs aren't used to train its models, and they're retained only for a limited period for trust and safety.
We'll update this list before adding a new sub-processor.
5. How long we keep data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Translations written to your store | Stored by Shopify in your store. They stay after you uninstall Civet, and you can manage them in Shopify. |
| Run history and undo snapshots | 30 days (Free) or 90 days (paid plans) after each run, then deleted automatically |
| Translation memory, glossary, settings, store content copies | While Civet is installed |
| Webhook bookkeeping | 7 days |
| Logs and error reports | [30] days |
| Waitlist and inquiry records | Until you unsubscribe, request deletion, or the early access program concludes |
| Website server logs | Kept by Vercel under its standard log retention |
| Readiness tool input | Not stored. Used only to produce the result you see |
| After you uninstall | Shopify notifies us 48 hours after uninstall (the shop/redact request). We then permanently delete all data for your store from our database within [7] days, and always within 30 days. We stop all processing as soon as you uninstall. |
| Billing and cost records | Removed with the rest of your store's data. We may keep aggregated, de-identified totals, plus [a one-way hash of your shop ID to prevent repeat free trials]. |
| Backups | Encrypted database backups roll off within [7–30] days |
6. Privacy requests (GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and similar laws)
Store customers: Civet doesn't store your customers' personal data. When a customer makes a privacy request to a merchant, Shopify forwards it to us automatically:
- `customers/data_request` (access request): we confirm to the merchant that Civet holds no data for that customer.
- `customers/redact` (deletion request): we confirm that no customer data is held, and we delete anything linked to that customer if it ever exists.
- `shop/redact` (store deletion, 48 hours after uninstall): we delete all the store's data, as described in §5.
We complete these within 30 days, as Shopify requires.
Merchants and staff: you can ask to access, correct, delete, or export your personal information, or object to or restrict some processing, by emailing [PRIVACY EMAIL]. You can delete all of your store's Civet data at any time by uninstalling the app. We'll respond within the time the law requires (generally 30 days for GDPR, 45 days for CCPA). We won't discriminate against you for exercising your rights. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.
California residents: in the last 12 months we have collected the categories in §2 (identifiers, commercial information about your app plan, internet/usage activity) for the purposes in §3. We do not sell or share personal information, and we don't use or disclose sensitive personal information.
7. International transfers
Civet and some of its sub-processors are based in the United States. When data from the EEA, UK, or Switzerland is transferred, we rely on [Standard Contractual Clauses / the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified].
8. Security
We encrypt data in transit (TLS) and encrypt Shopify access tokens and the database at rest. We verify every Shopify webhook signature, request only the Shopify permissions Civet needs, limit access to production data to the founder, and keep store data separate per shop. No method is 100% secure. If a breach affects your data, we'll notify you and the authorities as the law requires.
9. Children
Civet is a business tool for Shopify merchants and isn't directed at children.
10. Changes
We'll post updates here with a new "Last updated" date, and we'll notify merchants in the app or by email about material changes.
11. Contact
[LEGAL ENTITY NAME], [ADDRESS], [PRIVACY EMAIL].