Store Scanner Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what information the SiteGuarding Store Scanner app for Shopify (the "App") collects, how we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what choices you have. It applies only to the App. The general privacy policy of the siteguarding.com website covers your use of that website.

1. Who we are

The App is provided by SiteGuarding CY Ltd, a company registered in Cyprus under number HE389777, with its registered office at Panayioti Tsangari 14, 4047 Limassol, Cyprus ("SiteGuarding", "we", "us").

You can contact us about privacy at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

2. What the App does

The App is a read-only security scanner for Shopify stores. It reads the theme files of your store through the Shopify Admin API, and, only after you turn this on, it opens the public pages of your online store in its own browser, the way a visitor would. It then shows you findings such as suspicious or injected scripts, hidden links, card forms on storefront pages, checkout buttons that lead to another website, changes to theme files and issues with your domain's email records.

The App does not change your store, does not block visitors and does not have access to your orders or your customers. The only exception is the optional checkout path check, which adds one product to a cart that is never used for an order. It asks Shopify for one permission only: read access to your themes (read_themes).

3. Our role

When the App processes information about your store, including any personal information in it, on your behalf to provide the scanning service, you are the controller and we act as your processor. Our Data Processing Addendum describes this processing and forms part of our agreement with you.

We act as a controller for a small set of information we need to run our business: your store's account and plan status, support correspondence, billing records we receive from Shopify, and security and system logs.

4. Information we collect

4.1 From Shopify, when you install and use the App

Your store's identifiers: the myshopify.com domain, the Shopify store ID and the primary domain of your online store.
The store's contact email address, which we use as the default recipient of alerts and service messages.
A Shopify access token that lets the App read your themes. We store it encrypted.
The Shopify user ID of the staff member who uses the App, taken from the session token Shopify sends with each request. We record it when someone turns storefront scans on or off, marks a finding as expected or changes settings.
Your theme files: the list of files in your published theme and, on paid plans, in your unpublished themes, with their checksums, and the contents of code files (Liquid, JavaScript and JSON). We store the contents encrypted.
Your plan, trial and subscription status, which we read from Shopify. We do not receive your payment card or bank details: Shopify handles all billing.
Notifications that Shopify sends us about your store (webhooks), such as theme changes, uninstallation and privacy requests.

4.2 From your public storefront, if you turn storefront scans on

When you turn storefront scans on, the App opens public pages of your online store, as any visitor can, and reads what it sees: page addresses, HTML, the scripts that load and run, the addresses those scripts contact, links, forms and their destinations, and cookies and trackers set when the page loads. The raw page content is used for the scan and deleted when that part of the scan ends. We keep the results: the addresses of the pages checked, the scripts and links found, and findings with their evidence, such as a code fragment. If you also turn on the checkout path check, the App adds one product to a cart, clicks the checkout button and records where it leads. If the click opens another page of your store, the App may load that page once. It then stops before the checkout opens.

The scanner does not type into forms, does not submit forms, does not sign in to customer accounts, does not place orders and does not open Shopify's checkout pages. The only exceptions are your storefront password form, if you give us the password, and the add to cart form, if you turn on the checkout path check. The scanner may scroll, move the mouse and click an empty part of a page to see how scripts react. It stops common analytics and advertising pixels (Google, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft, Pinterest, Snapchat, Hotjar and Shopify's own) from sending data during a scan, so most scans do not show up as visits. Other tools on your store may still record a visit. Public pages can contain personal information that you or your customers have published, for example a name shown with a product review. The App does not look for such information and does not use it, but it can appear in the evidence we keep for a finding.

4.3 From you, in the App

Email addresses you add as alert recipients, and Slack incoming webhook addresses you add. We store them encrypted.
Your storefront password, if your store is password protected and you choose to enter it, and a crawler access signature, if you create one in Shopify and enter it. We store them encrypted and use them only to scan your store.
Your settings, such as the scan schedule, and findings you mark as expected.
Your storefront scan consent: the exact text you were shown, its version, the domains covered, the time and the Shopify user ID of the person who gave or withdrew it.
On the Business plan, report branding: an agency name, a contact line and a logo image that replace our branding in PDF reports.
Messages you send to our support team, and their content.

4.4 Information we create

Scan results, findings, reports, an inventory of external scripts and domains, theme change history, results of public DNS checks of your domain (SPF, DMARC and DKIM records) and an audit log of actions in the App.

Technical records for detection. When a scan flags a script, a domain or a piece of code as suspicious, we keep a technical record of it: the address without query values, with data values such as numbers and emails and your myshopify and primary domain names replaced by placeholders; the names of query parameters; a code fingerprint (SHA-256 hash); the identifiers of the detection signals; dates and counts of where and when it was seen; and an excerpt of up to 300 characters of the code, or of the text of a flagged link or hidden element, with comments and longer text removed. Our database links a record to your store so that we can count it and delete it. We also keep, for 30 days and without any link to a store, a cache of fingerprints and scan verdicts for third party scripts, including clean ones, so that we do not analyze the same script twice. We use these records to recognize threats and to reduce false findings, as described in Sections 6 and 8.

4.5 Technical information

When the App's interface loads inside your Shopify admin, our server receives standard request information, such as IP address, browser user agent, time and requested address. We use it to operate and secure the service. Server logs are rotated automatically and old entries are deleted.

4.6 What we do not collect

The App does not request access to orders, customers, products, payments or payouts. It does not collect personal information of your customers on purpose, does not read or store payment card data, and does not add any code to your storefront. Because of this, when Shopify forwards a customer's data access or deletion request to us, we usually have no customer data to provide or delete; we still record and answer every such request.

5. Cookies

The App's interface inside your Shopify admin does not set cookies and does not use browser local storage. Shopify's admin and Shopify App Bridge, which the App runs inside, are governed by Shopify's own privacy policy.

6. How we use information

We use the information described above to:

provide the App: read your themes, scan your storefront when you allow it, produce findings, reports and exports, and keep the history your plan includes;
improve detection in the App: review technical records of suspicious scripts and domains, with the help of an AI service, to recognize threats and reduce false findings. The results are used only in the App;
send the alerts you set up and service messages, for example that monitoring has stopped because the App lost access to your store;
apply the limits and features of your plan;
give support when you contact us;
keep the App and our systems secure, prevent misuse and investigate problems;
comply with our legal obligations and with Shopify's requirements for apps, including deletion requests.

We do not sell personal information. We do not use information from your store for advertising, to build profiles of you or your customers, or to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models. We count how many stores a suspicious script or domain appears on, to tell rare code from common code. We never show such counts to merchants or to third parties, other than our AI review provider as part of a technical record, and we do not compare stores with one another for anyone. We do not send you marketing messages through the App.

7. Legal bases (EU and UK)

Where we act as a controller, we rely on: performance of our contract with you (to provide the App, support and plan features); our legitimate interests in operating, securing and improving the App and defending legal claims; and compliance with legal obligations (for example accounting and responding to authorities). Where we act as your processor, we process information on your instructions, and you are responsible for the legal basis.

8. Who we share information with

Service providers who host and run the App for us, listed in the Sub-processors section of our Data Processing Addendum. They may use the information only to provide their services to us.
Anthropic, the provider of the Claude AI service, which reviews some technical records for us (Section 4.4). Before sending, we replace your myshopify and primary domain names and leave out the link to your store. These records are built to hold no contact details or customer data, and excerpts are sent only for code that was seen, unchanged, on at least two stores. Anthropic may not use this information to train its models. Anthropic acts as our service provider under a data processing agreement and is listed in the Sub-processors section of our Data Processing Addendum.
Shopify, as needed to run the App on the Shopify platform: for example, Shopify Flow triggers you set up receive finding details, and Shopify handles billing.
Destinations you choose: alert emails go to the addresses you add, and Slack messages go to the Slack workspace behind the webhook you add. Their handling of the information is governed by their own terms.
Authorities or other parties when the law requires it, or when needed to protect our rights, our users or the public.
A buyer or successor if our business or the App is transferred, under terms that protect your information as described here.

9. Where information is stored

The App's servers and database are hosted with OVH GmbH in Germany. Alert emails are sent through SiteGuarding's own mail server, hosted with Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany. A daily copy of the App's database backups is also kept, for no more than 30 days, on a SiteGuarding server and a storage service of Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany. If you add a Slack webhook, Slack may process alert messages outside the European Economic Area under its own terms. Technical records sent to Anthropic for review are stored in the United States and may be processed in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. These records are designed not to contain personal information. If any were present, the transfer is covered by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, which are part of our data processing agreement with Anthropic. If we transfer personal information outside the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom in any other way, we will use an approved safeguard of the same kind.

10. How long we keep information

While the App is installed, scan results and theme change history are kept for the history period of your plan: the latest scan on the Free plan, 90 days on Starter, 12 months on Pro and Business. The latest copy of each theme is kept as a comparison baseline, for no longer than the history period or 30 days, whichever is longer. Older data is deleted automatically every day.
When you uninstall the App, its access token is deleted at once and scans stop. Shopify then sends us a request to delete your store's data, normally 48 hours after uninstallation, and we delete your store's data from our database when we receive it, and in any case within 30 days of uninstallation.
Technical records for detection are kept for no more than 30 days after they were last seen on a store, and review files that hold copies of them for no more than 30 days after the review. The link between a record and your store is deleted as soon as you uninstall the App, and from then on the record is no longer reviewed. A record that no store is linked to any more is deleted within 30 days, unless public research confirms that the script or domain is malicious. Such a record has no link to your store and none of its domain names.
Anthropic deletes what we send for review within 30 days of receiving it. If its automated safety systems flag an item, Anthropic may keep that item for up to 2 years under its own policy.
Database backups are kept for no more than 30 days and are then deleted, so deleted data leaves our backups within 30 days.
After deletion we keep only a minimal record that a deletion request for your store domain was received and carried out, to show that we complied. We keep this record for 3 years.
Support correspondence is kept for 2 years.
We may keep information longer only where the law requires it.

11. Security

We protect information with technical and organizational measures appropriate to the risk. These include: encryption in transit (HTTPS); encryption at rest with AES-256-GCM for access tokens, theme file contents, alert email addresses, Slack webhook addresses, storefront passwords and crawler signatures, with the encryption key kept separately from the database; separation of each store's data in the application; a scanning browser that runs in an isolated environment, separate from our database, with no access to our internal networks; access to production systems limited to authorized staff; and logs that do not contain secrets or form contents. No system is completely secure, but we work to keep these measures up to date.

12. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal information, to restrict or object to certain processing, and to withdraw consent at any time. We offer these rights to every user, regardless of location. You can:

turn storefront scans off at any time in the App's Settings;
remove alert recipients and webhooks in Settings;
uninstall the App to stop all processing and start deletion;
write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to make any other request. We will answer within one month, and may need to confirm that the request comes from the store.

If your request concerns personal information we process for a merchant, for example as a customer of a store, we will pass it to that merchant and help them answer it.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you can also complain to a data protection authority. Our lead authority is the Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection in Cyprus.

13. Children

The App is for businesses. It is not directed to children and we do not knowingly collect information about children.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the App or the law changes. We will post the new version on this page with a new date and, for material changes, tell merchants in the App or by email before the changes apply.

15. Contact

SiteGuarding CY Ltd, Panayioti Tsangari 14, 4047 Limassol, Cyprus. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

SiteGuarding Store Scanner Privacy Policy