Privacy Policy
We will avoid collecting Personally Identifying Information (PII) whenever possible. We do not make money by selling your data. We earn an affiliate commission when you purchase one of our recommendations as a reward for driving the sale.
We have zero need (or desire) to know who you are, how you like to shop or what websites you like to visit.
As such, we minimize the amount of data we collect on you.
These are the kinds of questions we want to answer with the data that we collect:
- What product categories are popular?
- How well does our product work within those categories?
- When we recommend a product, did the user actually purchase it?
- What features of Vetted do people find valuable?
- What features of Vetted do people find less valuable?
- What data do people use to inform themselves about purchasing decisions?
- How many people are using Vetted?
Not a single one of those questions require us to know what any individual user is up to. We look at 100% anonymized aggregate data to help people choose what to buy, by looking at what features are being used, and what people find useful. In fact, as of today, there is no concept of user accounts on Vetted — we have no place to store any user-level data in any of our databases.
We only collect data when you're on a handful of our supported retail or shopping websites performing shopping searches. This is currently limited to Amazon only.
With regards to our Chrome extension, please note that although the Chrome Web Store requires us to ask for permission to "read and change site data on all the websites you visit," this is NOT what we're actually doing. The only time we collect any data at all is in the aforementioned scenario. We do not touch your e-mails, or any other browsing data in any way.
We welcome the Chrome team to change the way permissions work so we can easily request a more limited set of data.
1. Completely anonymized search queries on e-commerce sites
We look at this data in aggregate to determine what products and product categories are popular in order to understand where to focus our efforts on. In particular, we try to identify deficiencies in our product and category coverage. For example, when you search for something on Amazon, this is the only data that we see:
{ 'query': 'earphones', 'site': 'amazon' }
2. Completely anonymized product pages on e-commerce sites
Like above, we look at this data to determine what products are popular. For example, if you browse to a product's page on Amazon, and the product exists in our database, we receive the following data:
{ 'sku': 'B0000ABCDE', 'store': 'amazon' }
3. Completely anonymized purchase information
If you purchase one of our recommendations (thank you - we hope you'll enjoy your purchase!), this is the only data that we see:
{ 'sku': 'B0000ABCDE', 'store': 'amazon', 'purchased': 'yes' }
4. HTTP Server Logs
Like most websites, our web servers log information about requests and responses. This includes the IP Address and User-Agent associated with the request. As a general rule, when we examine logs, we do not pay attention to either the IP address or the User-Agent. However, we may occasionally look at similar requests when debugging. We make no attempt to tie those requests to any specific user. Here's an example of a request log that we see:
5. Analytics
We currently use event analytics via Google Analytics, and Amplitude. We currently use it for generic user-flow analysis, and nothing at the individual/per-user level. We will be replacing these services with our own that would collect minimal and only pertinent data the moment we can afford to do so.
(For the sake of transparency, you should be aware that we are running them. Sorry!)
Here's a sample user-flow data that we can retrieve using Amplitude:
- 191 users clicked "Filter products".
- 92 of those users then successfully filtered the list of recommendations.
- 12 of those users clicked on one of the products shown.
You can choose to provide us with your e-mail address in order to receive deal notifications to categories you're interested in. If you do, your e-mail is managed by a third party (MailChimp). Doing so will not associate your e-mail address with the Vetted extension or website usage. You can unsubscribe at any time, and if you are not subscribed to any categories, your e-mail address will be deleted from our records.
When we say “completely anonymized,” we mean that there is no personal data attached at all. No tracking cookies, no IP addresses, no user agents, etc. Just the data we described, and a timestamp.
Vetted links out to numerous websites, including links to product reviews and stores that sell those products. Our links to stores may be affiliate links, allowing us to earn a commission on products purchased. Affiliate links do not contain any Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and we do not receive reports about any individual users’ purchases, but affiliate sites may provide us with aggregate data on customer purchases. As we link out to many third-parties, please note that sites outside of Vetted have their own data collection practices and privacy policies that are out of our control.
Our future offerings may include personalization, but these offerings will be opt-in, and be covered by additional policies clarifying any expanded data collection.
