LEGAL
Privacy policy
Who we are
TradeGear is a hosted service for translating a website and for answering visitors' questions in their language. It has three parts: what runs on your website — the WordPress plugin, Shopify app or Wix app — a dashboard where you manage your account and languages, and a chat panel your visitors use. This policy covers all three, and the servers that run them.
The service answers at two addresses. app.tradegear.org serves the dashboard, the translation
service and the chat page your visitors see. assistant.tradegear.org connects websites,
receives the business knowledge you choose to share and answers visitors' questions. What runs on your
website talks to these two and to no other service of ours; if an administrator points the WordPress plugin
at their own deployment in its advanced settings, that deployment's operator is responsible for it
instead.
The provider is TradeGear, 19 Victoria Way, London SE7 7QR, United Kingdom. You can reach us about anything in this policy at info.tradegear@gmail.com.
Who decides what
Your website is yours. You decide which features are switched on, which pages are translated, and which business content the assistant may use. We carry out those instructions on your behalf, so for your visitors' data you are the one who answers to them, and we are the service that acts for you. That is why the WordPress plugin offers a suggested paragraph for your own privacy-policy page: describe the features you actually enabled, and link to this page.
What we collect
Your account
When you create an account we hold your email address, the name of your workspace, the websites you register, the languages you choose and the plan you are on. Signing in is handled by Google's identity service, which tells us that an account is verified and which account it is; your password is never sent to us and we never see it.
A Shopify shop, when you add the app
For a Shopify shop we hold the shop's own address and name, the access tokens that let the app read it, the public content it shares with the assistant, and the translations we write. We hold no customer, order or personal detail, and no email address of yours: Shopify keeps that side of your account.
Adding the app is the whole of it — there is no separate sign-up here, and the tokens are stored encrypted rather than on your shop. What Shopify grants the app is your shop's translations and locales, which it reads and writes, and read access to your products, content, navigation, themes and policies; it does not include customers, orders or payments. Removing the app pauses the website and drops its tokens, and the erasure request Shopify sends afterwards removes the record and everything we held for the shop.
A Wix site, when you add the app
Opening TradeGear from your Wix dashboard supplies a signed installation context. We verify it and hold the app installation and site identifiers, the connection credentials, the public catalogue content used by the assistant, and records of translations we write. Connection credentials are encrypted on our servers; they are not sent to the storefront or stored in its browser.
The app reads public product titles, descriptions, prices, availability and product links. It writes supported product translation fields through Wix Multilingual and can add the assistant launcher using Wix's embedded-script service when you enable it. It does not read private customer accounts, orders or payment details. Your Wix account stays with Wix; no separate TradeGear sign-up is required.
Your website content, when you enable translation
The plugin sends the text of the pages being translated, a small set of attributes and metadata (for example image alternative text, page titles, and the descriptions a page publishes for search engines and social previews), each page's address, the source and target languages, and your site's identifier. It does not send your page's HTML, your WordPress users, your customers, your orders or your payment details.
To translate a page well we also read it as a whole, either by fetching the page from its public address or by having a website we cannot reach send us a copy. That copy is read for the meaning around each sentence and then discarded; what we keep is the short context we derived from it, not the page.
Two details are worth your attention:
- A page's address includes its query string. If a page address carries a search term,
a filter or a reference in the part after
?, that value is part of the record we keep for that page. Do not enable translation for a page whose address contains something you would not want stored. - Form text is page text. Labels, headings, button text and options inside a form are extracted and sent like any other visible text. Text typed into a field is not sent, and neither are WordPress administration, login, REST API and checkout paths — those are excluded by default. Account and order pages are not excluded automatically, so add a path exclusion for any page that shows a person their own information.
On a Shopify shop there is no page address to read and no path to exclude: the app translates the shop's own records — menus, theme text, the catalogue, pages, articles and policies — through Shopify's translation API, and Shopify serves the result. Checkout, customer accounts and Shopify's own messages are the theme's locale text, which is Shopify's rather than yours; a language's worth of it is the same on every shop, so it is translated once and shared rather than held for yours alone.
On Wix, translation uses supported product fields through Wix Multilingual rather than fetching whole pages. Wix stores and serves the published translations. Existing merchant-written translations are preserved, and you choose when to publish a language in Wix.
Your visitors' questions, when you enable the assistant
A message sent through the chat panel forwards the message text, the language it was asked in, and two random identifiers: one for the conversation and one for that single request. Nothing else goes with it — no IP address, no browser information, no page address, no signed-in user, no order. The conversation identifier is a random value; it does not identify a customer and is not shared between websites. On WordPress it is held in a cookie on your site. On a Shopify shop the message is carried through Shopify's own app proxy, which passes it on to us with the signature that proves which shop it is for. On Wix, a short-lived visitor session authorizes messages for that connected site; it contains no customer account or order data.
Business knowledge, when you enable knowledge synchronization
Your WordPress site pushes its own published pages and the products visible in its catalogue: titles, descriptions, addresses, prices and availability. It is a one-way push, and it does not include drafts, private or password-protected pages, hidden products, or your cart, checkout and account pages. A Shopify shop is read the same way and with the same limits: the products, pages and articles a visitor can open, and nothing that is hidden, scheduled or password-protected. On Wix, the current integration reads the public product catalogue, not private customer records or orders.
When you switch the plugin off
The plugin reports its own state change: your website's identifier and a short reason — deactivated, activated or uninstalled. Nothing else is included, and nothing is erased. We use it to pause that website's translation, knowledge synchronization, assistant and billing while it is off, and to resume them on the same connection when it is switched back on. On a Shopify shop the same moment is the app being removed, and Shopify tells us directly rather than your shop reporting it. Wix also tells us when its app is removed: the connection is disabled and new synchronization and visitor sessions stop. Removal does not itself erase the stored installation, encrypted connection credentials or translation-ownership records; contact us to request their deletion.
Technical records
Our servers, and the cloud platform they run on, record the address of the machine that made a request, the path requested and the result. Those records are how the service is operated and kept safe. We do not join them to a visitor's conversation or to a page's translation record.
Our account pages also send fixed setup-step labels, such as signup form opened, account created, email verified and website saved, to help find setup failures. These browser observations carry no email address, account identifier, form values, message text, advertising identifier or full page URL. They use no cookies or persistent visitor identifiers and are deduplicated only within each page load. Counts can include repeat visits and automated traffic; we check actual account and website records separately. They follow the server log retention settings below.
Optional WordPress diagnostics
The plugin keeps up to 50 technical events on your own WordPress server for seven days. Sharing these events with TradeGear is off by default. If a site administrator enables it in Settings → TradeGear, recent and future event categories, outcomes, HTTP status codes, plugin version and timestamps are sent in background batches to our service and associated with the registered website in Google Cloud Logging. They contain no page text, chat messages, email addresses, visitor identifiers, arbitrary error messages or credentials. Sharing uses no translation or assistant allowance. Turning it off stops future uploads; already delivered events follow our cloud log retention settings. We also retain first-use dates and the latest technical failure for that registered website until its record is erased. You can clear the local log or copy a redacted setup report from the same settings panel. Copying sends nothing; deleting the plugin removes its local diagnostics.
To understand account setup, we compare account creation, current email-verification state, website connection, the first observed translated page and the first nonempty assistant response returned. We record authenticated account activity dates to identify activity again within seven days; background API requests can count too. These are operational milestones, not proof that a person visited or read a response. We do not receive anonymous plugin installation or activation events.
Cookies and browser storage
On our own marketing and account pages at app.tradegear.org, we load Google Ads only if you accept advertising cookies. It measures successful account creation and paid subscriptions following our ads, using ad click identifiers and a random transaction reference. We do not send your email, account ID, website content or chat messages to Google. We do not enable personalized advertising or enhanced conversions. You can reject cookies or change your choice using Cookie settings in the footer.
Your consent choice is stored in this browser for up to 180 days. With consent, Google may set
first-party advertising cookies such as _gcl_aw (normally 90 days); we also remember sent
conversion references to prevent duplicates. Google's processing is described in
Google's advertising policy.
Refusing advertising cookies does not prevent signup, checkout or use of the service.
The product demo on our landing page uses YouTube's privacy-enhanced player. It loads only when you choose to play the video. Playing it connects your browser to YouTube; its processing is described in Google's privacy policy.
We put no advertising tracking on your customer storefront or in the chat panel. These are the cookies the WordPress plugin sets on your website:
| Name | Set when | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
tradegear_lang | a visitor opens a translated page | remembers which language they chose | 30 days |
tradegear_test | an administrator opens a preview link | allows that administrator to preview translations before they are public | 7 days |
tradegear_assistant_visitor | a visitor opens the chat panel | a signed, random conversation identifier so a visitor's own turns stay together | up to 7 days |
On a Shopify storefront only the last of those is ours: Shopify keeps a visitor's language in its own locale address, so there is no language cookie of ours to set, and the chat panel is the one part of the app that holds anything in the browser.
On Wix, Wix handles the storefront language. Our launcher keeps its visitor session in memory for up to fifteen minutes and obtains a new session when needed; it does not set a TradeGear language or visitor cookie. The chat panel uses the session storage described below.
Your own site sets its own cookies — WordPress for signing in, a shop for its cart and a customer session, and Shopify for its own storefront — and those are yours to describe in your own privacy notice.
The chat panel keeps the transcript of the open tab in the browser's session storage, so it survives moving between pages. It is scoped to your site, the language and the conversation, and it is discarded when the tab is closed.
What we do not do
- We do not sell your data or your visitors' messages, and we do not build advertising profiles.
- We do not put tracking or analytics scripts on your pages or in the chat panel.
- We do not store a visitor's IP address alongside their conversation.
- We do not ask a visitor for payment details, passwords or identity documents, and we do not let the assistant claim to have checked an order or changed one.
- We do not send your content to a third-party model provider, except while our own assistant model is starting up: a visitor's question and the business knowledge it needs may then be answered by the third-party model provider listed below. Translations are always produced by language models we operate inside our own cloud environment.
Who else processes it
We use a small number of suppliers, each bound by its own agreement with us:
- Google Ads — advertising attribution on our own marketing and account pages, only with your consent.
- Google Cloud — hosting, storage, the translation cache, the model inference we run there, and the secret store that holds service credentials.
- Google's identity service (Firebase Authentication) — account sign-in and email verification.
- A third-party model provider — answering a visitor's assistant question only while our own assistant model is starting up, as described above.
- Stripe — taking payment and managing a subscription, if you take a paid plan. Card details go to Stripe, not to us.
Your own website — and, on WordPress, whoever hosts it — also holds what connects it to us, because a WordPress site keeps those credentials in its own database. Shopify is the platform a Shopify shop runs on and the party its owner holds the shop account with; it handles the shop's own data under its own privacy policy, and it is where a Shopify shop's plan is chosen and paid for.
Wix is the platform a Wix site runs on. It handles your Wix account, storefront, Multilingual translations and embedded scripts under its own terms and privacy policy.
If an advanced setting points the WordPress plugin at a deployment someone else operates, that operator's policies apply instead of this one.
How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Translated text and the page addresses it was seen on | while the language is enabled. Turning a language off starts a short grace period of about twelve hours, after which that language's translations and its page addresses are deleted. |
| The context derived from reading a page, and the page summary built for it | kept while your website is connected. It is tied to the page's own text rather than to a language, so it survives turning one language off and is reused if you translate that page again. |
| Glossary terms you have approved, and usage records needed for billing | kept after a language is turned off |
| Cached translations used to serve pages quickly | 7 days |
| Chat conversations | the last six exchanges, until 7 days after the last message; each reply, 7 days after it was given |
| Business knowledge from knowledge synchronization | until your content changes, you switch the feature off, or you disconnect the website |
| A Shopify shop's record and the tokens that read it | while the app is installed. Removing the app drops the tokens and pauses the website; the erasure request Shopify sends afterwards removes the record and everything we held for the shop. |
| A Wix installation, encrypted credentials and translation-ownership records | while connected, and after removal until you request deletion. Removing the app disables the connection and stops new work; it does not automatically erase these records. |
| Account, plan and billing records | while your account exists, and afterwards for as long as tax and accounting rules require |
| Server and platform logs | a limited period, under the retention settings of our cloud project |
| WordPress technical diagnostics | up to 50 events for 7 days locally; events shared with consent follow the server and platform log retention settings above |
| Account and website setup milestones | until the corresponding account or website record is erased; opting out of diagnostic uploads stops future uploads but does not erase previously recorded milestones |
Your choices
- Switch any feature off in the plugin. Translation, the chat launcher and knowledge synchronization each stop separately, and switching one off stops new data for it immediately.
- Exclude a path. The plugin takes a list of path exclusions, so a page that shows someone their own information can be left alone.
- On WordPress, read any page untranslated by adding
?tradegear_notrans=1to its address. That request is not sent to us at all. - Disconnect a website in the dashboard. Its keys stop working, and the assistant forgets the site.
- Delete a language. Its translations are removed as described above.
- Cancel a paid plan in the billing portal. Your website stays online on the free plan, showing one language and the free plan's share of what is already translated; the rest is kept, not shown, until the website is on a paid plan again or you ask us to delete it.
- Remove a website from your workspace. Its keys stop working, its plan stops renewing, and its translations are kept until you ask us to delete them: add the same address again to bring them back.
- On a Shopify shop the same choices are on the app's page in your Shopify admin: the switches for the assistant, the knowledge it reads and your languages, and the plan, which Shopify bills and you change there.
- On Wix, manage translation and the assistant in TradeGear within your Wix dashboard. Publish languages in Wix Multilingual. Remove the app in Wix to stop the connection, and email us to erase the stored records.
Access, export and deletion
Ask us and we will tell you what we hold, give you a copy, or delete it. There is no self-service button for this yet — email info.tradegear@gmail.com and say which website you mean. We will confirm what we did.
For a chat conversation, deletion is normally unnecessary: conversations expire on their own after seven days of inactivity. If you need one removed sooner, write to the shop whose chat panel it was, and they can ask us to remove it. A Shopify shop's owner can read what the assistant keeps of the shop's chats in the TradeGear app.
Security
Traffic between your website and us uses HTTPS, and each website has its own credentials rather than a shared password. We do not write message content or credentials into our application logs.
One thing is worth stating plainly, because it is in your hands on WordPress: the credentials that connect your website to us are stored in your WordPress database. Anyone who can read that database, or who has an administrator account on your site, can read them. Treat them as you treat your other site secrets, and rotate them by reconnecting the website if you think they have been exposed. On Shopify there is nothing of ours on your shop to read: the tokens that read it are held by us, encrypted, and removing the app makes them worthless.
For Wix, we verify the signed owner context before allowing dashboard actions, check signed lifecycle events, and restrict visitor sessions to the connected site. Connection credentials are encrypted on our servers. Removing the app disables access through our connector.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes we change the date at the top, and we describe a material change in the WordPress plugin's update notes and on the app's own page at Shopify or Wix as applicable. Continuing to use the service after a change means the new version applies. If you do not agree with it, switch the features off or disconnect your website.
Contact
TradeGear, 19 Victoria Way, London SE7 7QR, United Kingdom · info.tradegear@gmail.com
See also our service terms.