Privacy Policy
Last updated: June 2, 2026
TrueView AI ("the App", "we", "us") is a Shopify application that helps merchants display AI-generated aggregate reviews of real customer reviews and public web discussions on their storefronts. This policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights.
1. Who this policy applies to
This policy covers two groups:
- Merchants — Shopify store owners and staff who install and use the App in the Shopify admin.
- Shoppers — end customers of those stores who visit product pages where the App's widget is displayed.
2. Data we collect
From merchants (through Shopify)
- Shop domain (e.g.
your-store.myshopify.com). - A Shopify-issued OAuth access token scoped to the permissions you granted at install (read/write products, read locales, read/write translations).
- Product metadata (titles, descriptions, status) fetched on demand to power the admin UI. We do not copy your product catalog into our database.
- Plan/subscription status and usage counters (how many AI reviews were generated in the current billing cycle).
- Session information required by the Shopify App Bridge (stored by the Shopify session-storage library).
Review data we collect about each product
The core purpose of the App is to find what people publicly say about the merchant's products and produce a short AI review. Source material enters the App in two ways:
- Public web research (primary). TrueView AI sends the product's title as a search query to a third-party web-search provider (Tavily), which returns publicly available results about the product — for example discussions, articles, and reviews from across the web. We store the returned result snippets (short text excerpts plus the source domain and URL) and pass the relevant ones to our AI provider to generate the AI review. TrueView AI retrieves these results through the search provider's API over publicly available content; it does not log in to source sites or bypass paywalls.
- Optional merchant import. A merchant who already owns their review data may import it into the App through a connected review platform (for example, Judge.me) via an authenticated integration. For each imported review we store the review text and rating, the source name and URL (when present), the reviewer's displayed name (when present), the review date, and the language.
We do not store email addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, or any identifiers that aren't part of a publicly displayed review.
From shoppers
The storefront widget does not collect personal data, set cookies, fingerprint devices, or track behavior. It reads product metafields rendered server-side by Shopify and displays them. No analytics beacons are sent from the widget.
3. How we use the data
- To authenticate merchants with Shopify.
- To search for publicly available information about the merchant's products via a third-party web-search provider, and to store the returned public snippets used to generate the AI review.
- To pass the collected review text to our AI provider (Groq) in order to generate an aggregate AI review, and to translate generated titles/AI-review text into a merchant-selected language using the same provider. Only product titles and review/AI-review text are sent; merchant identity and shopper identity are not.
- To enforce quota limits and process subscription billing.
- To comply with Shopify's GDPR data-request and redact webhooks.
4. Third parties we share data with
| Provider | Data shared | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Shop ID, OAuth tokens, product metafields | App platform |
| Tavily (web-search provider) | Product titles, used as web-search queries | Finding publicly available reviews/discussions about the product |
| Groq, Inc. | Product titles, public web result snippets, imported review text, and AI-generated review text | AI review generation and translation |
| Neon, Inc. | Application database | Data storage (PostgreSQL) |
| Railway Corp. | Server-side application runtime | Hosting |
| Functional Software, Inc. (Sentry) | Server-side error reports (stack traces, error messages, shop domain and operation tags) | Error monitoring and alerting (data processed in the EU) |
We do not sell personal data. We do not share data with advertisers.
5. How we generate AI reviews
TrueView AI produces short aggregate AI reviews for each product using large language models.
- Grounded in real sources. Every AI review is based on material TrueView AI actually holds — public web result snippets found via the search provider, and/or customer reviews imported by the merchant. We instruct the model not to invent features, benefits, or claims not present in that source material.
- No invented ratings. When the AI review is based on imported customer reviews, the star rating and review count shown on the storefront are computed from those actual reviews — never generated by the AI model. For web-research reviews, TrueView AI shows a qualitative cue instead — for example "mixed opinions across public sources", a descriptive "% positive across N sources" proportion, or an average of numeric ratings published by named third-party publications when those exist. The App never fabricates a star rating.
- Disclosed on every product page. The storefront widget renders a clear and conspicuous disclosure with the AI review — for example "AI review of 18 public sources" — together with a statement that it is an AI-generated summary and not a verified customer review. This supports compliance with the FTC 2024 rule on AI-generated reviews, the EU Digital Services Act, and the UK DMCC Act.
- Minimum-data threshold. The App refuses to produce an AI review without enough source material — at least three collected customer reviews (reviews mode) or five quality web sources (web research).
6. Data retention
- Merchant plan + usage: deleted on app uninstall (
APP_UNINSTALLEDwebhook). - Collected/searched review data + generated AI reviews: retained for 48 hours after uninstall, then purged on the
SHOP_REDACTwebhook. - Trial-usage record: a single record of your shop domain is kept after uninstall to enforce our one-free-trial-per-shop policy. It contains only the shop domain — no personal data — and is purged on
SHOP_REDACT. - GDPR compliance logs: retained indefinitely as the audit trail proving we honored data-request / redact webhooks. These logs contain only the Shopify customer ID (if any), never email, phone, or address.
Note: if you cancel your subscription or downgrade your plan, the AI reviews TrueView AI placed on your products are removed from your storefront.
7. Your rights (GDPR / CCPA)
Shoppers who believe the App holds data about them may submit a data-request or deletion request through the Shopify storefront their data was collected from. Shopify forwards these to us via the customers/data_request and customers/redact webhooks, which we implement.
Merchants can delete all their data by uninstalling the App and waiting 48 hours for the SHOP_REDACT webhook to fire, or by emailing us at yuval@thewhales.co.il.
8. Security
Data is transmitted over HTTPS. Credentials are stored as environment variables on Railway, not in the codebase. Database access is restricted to the app's server. We do not access merchant data except as required to operate the App.
9. Children
The App is sold to businesses. It is not directed at children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them.
10. Changes to this policy
We will update the "Last updated" date above when we make material changes. Continued use of the App after an update constitutes acceptance.
11. Contact
Questions, requests, or complaints: yuval@thewhales.co.il.