Privacy policy

BestShopsPH compares prices across online stores in the Philippines. This page describes exactly what we record, because the honest answer is short.

We have no accounts

There is nothing to sign up for. We hold no names, no email addresses, no passwords and no payment details, because the site never asks for them.

What we record when you click a store link

Following a link to a store passes through our own redirect so the sale can be attributed to us. At that moment we store:

• a random click identifier, generated for that click and never reused;
• which offer or promotion was clicked, and which store it points to;
• the page you came from on this site, and the referring page if your browser sends one;
• your browser’s user-agent string;
• a salted hash of your IP address — never the address itself. It exists to spot automated click floods, and it cannot be reversed to recover the original address.

When a purchase results, the store tells us the order value and our commission, matched to that click identifier. Stores do not tell us who you are, and we do not ask.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people find useful. It sets cookies in your browser and sends Google your page views, approximate location, and general device and browser details. Your IP address is truncated before it is stored.

We do not send Google your name, your email, or anything you type into the feedback form, and we never send it the affiliate link you clicked. Analytics does not run in the admin area. What Google does with the data is governed by Google’s privacy policy, and you can opt out entirely with the Google Analytics opt-out add-on.

Cookies

Google Analytics sets the cookies described above. Beyond those, this site sets no advertising cookies of its own, and a single session cookie exists for the site operator’s admin area which is never set for ordinary visitors.

The stores you click through to — Lazada, Shopee and others — do set their own cookies, under their own privacy policies, over which we have no control.

Advertising

We do not currently serve third-party advertising. If that changes, this page will say so before it happens, naming the provider and what it collects. Third-party vendors such as Google use cookies to serve ads based on prior visits, and where applicable you can opt out via Google Ads Settings or aboutads.info.

How we make money

We earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the price you pay, and it does not affect ranking: the catalog is ordered by what sells and what costs least, and commission is not an input to that order. Listings we judge to be samples, freebies or implausible are withheld from the site entirely.

Where the data lives, and for how long

Records are held in a managed PostgreSQL database hosted in the United States, and the site runs on Vercel.

Click records are deleted automatically 24 months after they are made. That deletion is a nightly job, not a policy we intend to get around to.

Two other places hold a salted IP hash and are not on that schedule: a message you send us through the feedback form, and the record of failed sign-in attempts to our admin page. The first is kept while we may still need to act on it or reply to you, along with whatever name and email address you chose to give; the second exists only to lock out repeated guesses. Ask us and we will delete either.

Conversion records are kept longer, because they are accounting history: what was ordered, for how much, and what we were paid. When the click they came from is deleted the link between them is severed, so what remains is an order reference and an amount, and nothing that points to a person.

Your rights

Under the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 you may ask what we hold about you and request its deletion. In practice we hold no identifier that would let us find you — there is no account, and the IP hash is not reversible — so a request is most useful if it includes the click identifier from a link you used.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request to see or delete what we hold about you: contact us here.