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Your information belongs to you
We carefully analyze what types of information we need to provide our services, and we try to limit the information we collect to only what we really need. Where possible, we delete or anonymize this information when we no longer need it. When building and improving our products, our engineers work closely with our privacy and security teams to build with privacy in mind. In all of this work our guiding principle is that your information belongs to you, and we aim to only use your information to your benefit.
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We protect your information from others
If a third party requests your personal information, we will refuse to share it unless you give us permission or we are legally required. When we are legally required to share your personal information, we will tell you in advance, unless we are legally forbidden.
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We help merchants and partners meet their privacy obligations
Many of the merchants and partners using Shopify do not have the benefit of a dedicated privacy team, and it is important to us to help them meet their privacy obligations. To do this, we try to build our products and services so they can easily be used in a privacy-friendly way. We also provide detailed FAQs, documentation and whitepapers covering the most important privacy topics, and respond to privacy-related questions we receive.
- preventing risk and fraud
- answering questions or providing other types of support
- helping merchants find and use apps through our app store
- providing and improving our products and services
- providing reporting and analytics
- testing out features or additional services
- assisting with marketing, advertising, or other communications
machine learning” (European law refers to this as “automated decision-making”) to help us improve our services. When we use machine learning, we either: (1) still have a human being involved in the process (and so are not fully automated); or (2) use machine learning in ways that don’t have significant privacy implications (for example, reordering how apps might appear when you visit the app store).
We use cookies and similar tracking technologies on our website and when providing our services. For more information about how we use these technologies, including a list of other companies that place cookies on our sites, a list of cookies that we place when we power a merchant’s store, and an explanation of how you can opt out of certain types of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.
online portal. Please note that if you send us a request relating to your personal information, we have to make sure that it is you before we can respond. In order to do so, we may use a third party to collect and verify identification documents.
If you are not happy with our response to a request, you can contact us to resolve the issue. You also have the right to contact your local data protection or privacy authority at any time.
Finally, because there is no common understanding about what a “Do Not Track” signal is supposed to mean, we don’t respond to those signals in any particular way.
Our teams work tirelessly to protect your information, and to ensure the security and integrity of our platform. We also have independent auditors assess the security of our data storage and systems that process financial information. However, we all know that no method of transmission over the Internet, and method of electronic storage, can be 100% secure. This means we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal information.
We are a Canadian company, but we work with and process data about individuals across the world. To operate our business, we may send your personal information outside of your state, province, or country, including to the United States. This data may be subject to the laws of the countries where we send it. When we send your information across borders, we take steps to protect your information, and we try to only send your information to countries that have strong data protection laws.
Transfers outside of Europe and Switzerland
If you are in Europe or Switzerland, your personal information is controlled by our Irish affiliate, Shopify International Ltd. Your information is then sent to other Shopify locations and to service providers who may be located in other regions, including Canada (where we are based) and the United States. When we send your personal information outside of Europe, we do so in accordance with European law.
If you are in Europe or Switzerland, when we send your personal information to Canada it is protected under Canadian law, which the European Commission has found will adequately protect your information. If we then send this personal information outside of Canada (for example, when we send this information to our Subprocessors), this information is protected by contractual commitments that are comparable to those provided in Standard Contractual Clauses.
Finally, while we do what we can to protect your information, we may at times be legally required to disclose your personal information (for example, if we receive a valid court order). For information about how we respond to such orders, please review our Guidelines for Legal Requests.