Privacy Policy — Announcements

Last updated: September 24, 2026

Merchentia (“we”, “us”) operates the Merch - Announcements Shopify app (the “App”). This policy explains what data the App accesses, stores, and shares.

Summary

The App lets you create announcement bars and inline banners on your storefront. It stores the announcement settings you create (your content and how/where/when each one shows) and limited, non-identifying analytics (how many times each announcement was seen or clicked). It requests one read-only permission (read_products) solely so you can pick which products or collections to target. It stores no shopper personal data, never accesses your customers or orders, and is completely free — there is no billing and we never see any payment details.

What the App stores

• Shop session credentials — an access token and basic shop identifiers (your *.myshopify.com domain), used to authenticate the App and operate the embedded admin.
• Your announcement settings — the announcements you create: their text, custom HTML, image URLs, link URLs, colours and styling, placement, the pages/devices/audience you target, schedule, and (for the relevant types) countdown and free-shipping settings. This is your business content, which you choose to publish on your storefront.
• Non-identifying analytics — to power the in-app analytics, the App records a daily count of impressions and clicks per announcement. These are aggregate counts only — we do not store shopper names, emails, accounts, IP addresses, or persistent tracking identifiers.
• Shop settings — your chosen timezone and optional global CSS.
• When you last opened the App — a single date and time per shop, used only to recognise that you reinstalled the App, so your data is not deleted.
• We store no shopper personal data, no payment details, no order information, and no Shopify customer accounts.

Permissions the App uses

The App requests a single, read-only Admin API scope: read_products. This is used only so you can browse and pick specific products or collections to target an announcement at. The App never writes to your store and cannot read your customers or orders.

How announcements reach your storefront

• Your active announcement settings are delivered to your storefront as cached data through a signed (HMAC-verified) Shopify App Proxy request; the shopper’s browser then displays them.
• For a free-shipping progress bar, the shopper’s browser reads the current cart total using Shopify’s own storefront cart endpoint (/cart.js) — this happens in the shopper’s browser and cart contents are not sent to us.
• Impression and click events are reported back only as anonymous counts (an announcement id and the type of event), never tied to a shopper.
• The embedded admin home performs a one-off, best-effort fetch of your storefront home page to check whether the App’s theme embed is enabled, so it can guide you. No shopper data is collected by this check.

Custom HTML & CSS

If you choose to use custom HTML or CSS in an announcement, it is sanitized on our servers before it is stored or shown — scripts, event handlers, and unsafe URLs are removed — to protect your storefront and your shoppers.

What the App does not do

• It does not use the Script Tag API; all storefront code is a Shopify Theme App Extension that is removed automatically when you uninstall.
• It does not collect shopper personal data, build shopper profiles, or sell data.
• It does not process payments. The App is free; there is no subscription and we never see payment details.

Data sharing

We do not sell or rent your data. We share data only with the service providers needed to run the App: Shopify (installation and authentication) and our hosting and database providers (Render and Neon, which run the App and store your announcement settings and analytics counts). There are no other sub-processors.

Where your data is hosted

The App and its database run in the EU (Frankfurt, Germany) — our hosting provider (Render) and database provider (Neon) both run this App in an EU-central region. Your announcement settings and analytics counts are processed and stored there.

GDPR / data requests

The App implements Shopify’s mandatory compliance webhooks:

• customers/data_request — the App stores no shopper personal data, so there is nothing to provide; the request is acknowledged.
• customers/redact — there is no shopper personal data to delete; the request is acknowledged.
• shop/redact — sent by Shopify about 48 hours after you uninstall. On receiving it we delete all of your shop’s stored data (announcements, targeting rules, settings, analytics counts, and when you last opened the App), within the 30 days Shopify allows — unless you have reinstalled the App, opened it, and it is still installed, in which case it is kept.

Uninstalling the App revokes its access immediately and removes its storefront code. Your stored data is normally kept until Shopify’s shop/redact request, sent about 48 hours after you uninstall, so that an accidental uninstall can be undone: reinstall the App and open it within that time and your announcements are still there. It is then deleted as described above.

Data retention & security

Your announcement settings and analytics are retained while the App is installed and normally until Shopify’s shop/redact request, sent about 48 hours after you uninstall it. They are then deleted within the 30 days Shopify allows, unless you have reinstalled the App, opened it, and it is still installed. Data is stored by our infrastructure providers using industry-standard security and access controls.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: ask@merchentia.com.