What Scout accesses, what it never touches, and where your data goes.

01 · Scope

Who this policy covers

This policy covers two groups of people.

MerchantsShopify store owners and staff who install Meerkat Scout. We hold your shop domain, the name and email attached to your Shopify account, and the catalog data described below.
Website visitorsAnyone reading this site. We collect very little from you; see section 10.

It does not cover your shoppers, because Scout does not collect personal data about them. Section 3 explains how that is enforced.

02 · Access

What we access from your Shopify store

When you install Scout, Shopify asks you to approve a set of permissions. Every one of them is read-only. Scout never writes to, edits, or deletes anything in your Shopify catalog.

DataWhat's includedRequested

Products and variantsTitles, descriptions, prices, images, SKUs, barcodes, inventory levels, and product options.At install

Store metadataShop domain, store currency, and locale — needed to format feeds correctly for each channel.At install

OrdersOrder lines, quantities, and totals — used only by Conversion Intelligence to connect feed quality to sales. Personal fields are stripped before storage (section 3).Optional, later

Order access is not requested at install. If you later turn on Conversion Intelligence, Shopify will prompt you to grant the read_orders scope. You can decline, and every other part of Scout keeps working.

03 · Exclusions

What we deliberately don't collect

Scout does not collect personal data about your customers. Specifically, we do not store customer names, email addresses, shipping or billing addresses, phone numbers, or IP addresses.

When order data is ingested for Conversion Intelligence, personal fields are removed before the record is written to storage — not scrubbed afterwards. This is enforced by an automated schema test in our build pipeline: if a personal field ever appears in the order schema, the build fails and the change cannot ship.

Scout also does not collect payment card details (see Billing) and never modifies your Shopify products.

04 · Purpose

How we use your data

We use catalog and store data only to provide the service you installed:

Mirroring your catalog and keeping the mirror current.
Transforming it through your rules and generating a feed per channel.
Publishing feeds to the channels you connect and collecting each channel's diagnostics.
Resolving marketplace categories and monitoring competitive prices for your products.
Generating pricing and content recommendations.
Connecting feed quality to sales, if you enable Conversion Intelligence.
Operating, securing, and supporting the app, and billing through Shopify.

We do not sell your data, use it to advertise to anyone, or use one merchant's catalog to benefit another.

05 · Recipients

Where data goes

Scout sends product data to outside services in four situations. Only product and store data leaves Scout; shopper personal data cannot, because we never hold it.

RecipientWhat is sentWhy

Sales channels you connectYour product feed — the fields each channel requires.Google Shopping, Google Ads, Microsoft Bing, Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, Amazon, Walmart, eBay. Only the ones you connect.

Marketplace taxonomy APIsProduct identifiers (titles, SKUs, barcodes).Amazon, Walmart, and eBay category resolution.

Search API providerProduct titles and, where present, GTIN or MPN identifiers. No customer, order or payment data.Looks up public shopping listings for competitive price monitoring (Price Intelligence). Raw responses are deleted within 30 days.

AI model providerProduct context only: titles, descriptions, attributes and price signals. No customer, order or payment data.Generates the pricing and content recommendations shown in Scout. Used under terms that exclude training on submitted data.

Infrastructure — Google Cloud Platform, Google Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS)All stored data, encrypted.Hosting the service and holding encryption keys.

Each channel processes the feed it receives under its own privacy policy and merchant terms. Scout does not share data with advertisers, data brokers, or any other third party.

06 · Retention

What we store, and for how long

StoredKept until

Catalog mirror — a current copy of your product data.You uninstall and Shopify confirms erasure

Feed generation and publication historyYou uninstall and Shopify confirms erasure

Channel diagnostics — rejections and warnings, normalized.You uninstall and Shopify confirms erasure

Raw third-party API responses — unprocessed replies from channels and APIs.30 days maximum, then deleted automatically

Channel credentials — tokens for the channels you connect, encrypted at rest with keys held in a key management service.You disconnect the channel or uninstall

Billing records — plan and charge history from Shopify Billing.7 years, with identifying linkage severed

The uninstall timeline is described step by step on the GDPR & Data Rights page.

07 · Security

How we protect it

Single-store scopingEvery record is tied to exactly one store, and that boundary is enforced at the database level. One merchant's data is never reachable from another merchant's session.
Encrypted credentialsChannel credentials are encrypted at rest; keys live in a key management service, not in application code or configuration.
Read-only by designScout holds no permission to change your Shopify catalog, so a fault in Scout cannot alter your store.
Tested exclusionsThe automated schema test described in section 3 blocks any release that would store shopper personal data.

Scout does not currently hold third-party security certifications. We will update this page if that changes. If you find a security issue, contact us at security@meerkatscout.com.

08 · Payments

Billing

All charges are handled through Shopify's billing system and appear on your Shopify invoice. Scout does not process, store, or ever see your payment card details. We receive only the plan you selected and confirmation that a charge was approved.

09 · Rights

Your rights and deletion

Every merchant can request an export of the data Scout holds for their store, or its erasure, at any time. Scout also implements Shopify's three mandatory privacy webhooks — customer data request, customer redact, and shop redact — and acts on each automatically.

Details of each right, the uninstall and deletion timeline, and how to make a request are on the GDPR & Data Rights page.

10 · This website

Visitors to this website

This marketing site sets no advertising or tracking cookies. [SERVER LOG CLAIM — confirm with chosen host: whether logs exist, what they contain, and how long they are retained]

If you book a demo or contact us, we keep the details you send in order to reply. Cookies used by the site and the app are listed on the Cookie Preferences page.

11 · Updates

Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect, where it goes, or how long we keep it, we will update this page, change the effective date at the top, and notify installed merchants inside the app before the change takes effect.

12 · Contact

Contact

The data controller for merchant account data, and the processor for your catalog data, is:

Meerkat Scout, a sole proprietorship owned by Nana A. Smith 255 Park Avenue, Worcester, MA 01605, United States Privacy: privacy@meerkatscout.com