Privacy Policy
1. Who we are
Escouter is a price-comparison service for Cyprus, operated by CIYA TECHNOLOGIES LTD, a company registered in the Republic of Cyprus (registration number HE 486666), with its registered office at Agiou Pavlou & Kadmou 2, Floor 3, 1105 Nicosia, Cyprus. CIYA TECHNOLOGIES LTD is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
Contact: hello@escouter.com
2. What we collect
- Account data: if you sign in with Google, the email address Google confirms for you and Google's identifier for your account. There is no password, and we keep no Google token.
- Newsletter data — your email address, the date and text of your consent, and whether you have confirmed it.
- Product features — price alerts you create, saved products, and the categories or city you pick.
- Technical data — IP address, browser type, pages requested and timestamps, kept in server logs to keep the service working and defend it against abuse.
- Usage statistics: every page except sign-in, your account, your alerts and the search pages loads Open Analytics, our own statistics server at analytics-c.ciya.so. Pages send it the address and title of the page, the page you came from, how long you stay and how fast the page loads, with a random visit number. They also send five actions by name: viewing a product, adding one to the basket, adding one to compare, going to a shop and a filter. An action carries only the product, offer, shop or category it is about. A filter carries only which kinds of filter are in use. The search pages (/search, and /q/ followed by the words) do not load Open Analytics, and a page you open from a search is told only that you came from Escouter, so your search words do not reach it. The server sees your IP address but never stores it as it is: it keeps a salted hash that changes every day.
- Our own records: our database records searches, product views, products added to or taken out of the basket, basket views, comparisons, and the filters and sorts in use. A record holds the time, the page, the product, a count, and for a search its words, cut to 80 characters, with anything that looks like an email address, a phone number, an IP address or a link taken out. A record never holds your IP address, your browser, a cookie or anything that tells one visitor from another. We also count clicks to shops, with no IP address and no cookie. Both show us which parts of the service are useful.
We do not ask for your name, address or payment details, and we never receive your card details: buying happens at the shop.
3. Why we use it, and on what legal basis
- To run your account and the service — performance of a contract.
- To send you the newsletter — your consent, given when you tick the box. Every mail has a one-click unsubscribe link.
- To send price alerts you asked for — your request (contract).
- To keep the service fast, secure and working, including abuse prevention — our legitimate interest.
4. Cookies
We use the minimum necessary, each only when you use the feature it serves. A postcode cookie (pf_postcode) keeps the postcode you enter, so delivery is priced to your area, for up to a year. A basket cookie (pf_basket) keeps the products you add to your basket, and nothing else, for up to 30 days. A saved cookie (pf_saved) keeps the products you save, and nothing else, for up to 30 days. If you sign in with Google, a session cookie keeps you signed in until you close your browser, two short cookies carry the sign-in itself (one lasts at most five minutes, the other ends with your browser), and a cookie named pf_in tells the page to show your account link. It says only that this browser has signed in. The compare list stays in your browser's session storage. Open Analytics sets no cookie. It keeps the random visit number in your browser's session storage, where it ends when you close the tab and is replaced after 30 minutes without activity, and it keeps events it has not sent yet and its own settings in your browser's local storage. If your browser has Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control turned on, it sends no page views, clicks or timings. We do not use advertising cookies at launch.
5. Who else touches your data
- Cloudflare: content delivery, DNS and inbound email routing.
- Our server host: where the application and its database run.
- Our email provider: for the newsletter, price alerts and account mails.
- Google: only if you sign in with Google. Your browser goes to Google to sign in, and Google tells us your email address, whether Google has confirmed it, a work account's domain, and its identifier for your account. We keep the address and the identifier.
Shops you click through to (for example a shop's own site) have their own privacy policies once you leave us. Where a link is an affiliate link, we tell you on the page.
6. How long we keep it
- Account data: while your account exists, then up to 12 months.
- Newsletter: until you unsubscribe, plus a record of the unsubscribe.
- Server logs: about 30 days.
- Open Analytics records: 90 days.
- Our own records of searches, product views, basket, compare and filter use: 13 months.
7. Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, have it moved, or object to processing. Write to hello@escouter.com and we will answer within one month. If you have an account, you can download your data or delete the account yourself on your account page. You can also complain to the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection, 1 Iasonos Street, 1082 Nicosia, Cyprus, dpa@dataprotection.gov.cy.
8. Security
There are no passwords to store, because you sign in through Google. Connections are encrypted, access to production is limited, and we keep backups that are regularly test-restored. If a breach affects you, we tell you and the Commissioner as required.
9. Transfers outside the EU
Some of our providers are global, so data may be processed outside the EU/EEA under the safeguards those providers offer (standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision).
10. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will note it here and — for signed-in users — tell you in the service.