Legal
Privacy policy
Last updated October 23, 2026
Botsense scores visits and checkouts on a merchant’s Shopify store to label traffic as human, suspect, or bot. On the paid plan it can also act on orders and checkouts it has proven to come from bots. This page explains what we collect to do that, what we deliberately don’t collect, and how long we keep it.
What we do not collect
- We do not store customer email addresses. Labels and holds are written to your Shopify admin, where Shopify keeps them.
- We do not store names, shipping addresses, or payment details. Those stay inside Shopify.
- We do not build an advertising profile of any shopper.
What we collect, and why
- Network signals. TLS and TCP fingerprint data and round trip timing, used to tell a real device from a relay, proxy, or automated client.
- Browser integrity signals. The result of a layout challenge answered once per session, and any contradictions between what a browser claims about itself and how it actually behaves.
- Behavioural signals. Pointer and input event shape, used to tell real mouse or trackpad hardware from synthetic input.
- IP address. Used as part of the network signal above. Deleted automatically after 30 days.
Retention
IP addresses are deleted after 30 days. Verdicts (human, suspect, bot), the reasons behind them, and a record of any hold or block we applied (or would have applied in shadow mode) are kept for 30 days so merchants can review flagged orders. They are never linked back to a stored email address because we don’t store one. Orders held on the paid plan carry a hold and a tag in Shopify, which stay in the merchant’s admin until the merchant releases or removes them.
What the paid plan can do
On the paid plan a merchant can choose to hold fulfillment on orders from visitors we have proven to be bots, and to stop those visitors at checkout. Both start in shadow mode, where we only record what we would have done, and the merchant switches them to live. Checkout blocking uses a short list of bot sessions that we prepare in advance and store in the shop’s own Shopify settings for at most six hours; it is applied only to sessions on that list. The free plan only labels and never holds or blocks anything.
Fail open
If our scoring service is unreachable, the storefront and checkout continue exactly as if the app were not installed. No visit or checkout is held up waiting on us. If the prepared list cannot be read, or anything in the checkout check fails, the checkout goes through.
GDPR
We implement Shopify’s mandatory GDPR webhooks: customer data request, customer redaction, and shop redaction. A data subject request submitted through the merchant’s store is honoured within the required window.
Who sees this data
Only the merchant who installed the app can see their own store’s dashboard, flagged orders, and verdicts. We do not sell or share data across merchants.
Contact
Questions about this policy or a data request can go to support@getchatbait.com.