Privacy Policy

What we collect

When you order we receive your name, email address, delivery address, and what you bought, including the wording, shape, finish and size you chose. That is the whole list.

We never see your card number. Payment happens on a page hosted by Stripe, and what comes back to us is a confirmation, the last details needed for the receipt, and nothing you could pay with.

Your basket and your light or dark preference are stored by your own browser and stay there. Neither is sent to us as a basket. What does leave is the count described under visitor measurement: the product, its price and how many, with nothing attached that says who you are.

If you ask us to make up a design, we collect the family name you typed, the wording, shape and finish you chose, your email address, and a one-way fingerprint of the network address the request came from. See below.

Visitor measurement

We use Google Analytics to count visits and to see which signs people actually look at. It sets a cookie and tells us things like which country you arrived from, roughly, and which page you landed on. It runs on every page of this shop.

It also follows the shape of a sale: something added to a basket, a checkout started, an order finished. So it is told which sign, shape and size went into the basket and what the order came to. What it is never given is anything that identifies you to us, not your name and not your address. We use it to answer whether anyone is finding the shop and whether baskets turn into orders, not to follow a person.

When you use the search box, the words you type are sent to Google Analytics along with how many signs matched them. That is often a family name, so it is worth being plain about it. We read it to find what people look for and cannot find, which is how the range grows. It is the search term on its own, with nothing attached that says who typed it, and it is not sent to Meta.

If you are in the European Economic Area, it sets no cookie at all. We tell Google to treat you as not having consented, so you are counted without being stored, and there is no banner to dismiss because there is nothing to agree to.

We also count page views with Umami, which runs on a server we rent and manage ourselves rather than on an analytics company's. It records the page you opened, the site that sent you here, your browser, device and screen size, your language, and roughly where you are, down to the city. It sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser. Your IP address is used to work out that location and to tell one visit from another, and it is not saved. Page addresses are recorded without anything after a question mark, so the words in a search are not kept this way.

We also keep our own count of what goes into baskets, on our own server rather than Google's: which sign, which size and finish, what it costs and how many. It sets no cookie and carries nothing that says who you are. Not your name, not your address, not the wording you asked to be cut. It covers what is bought as well as what is added, so we can see how many baskets turn into orders. We keep it for three months and then it is gone. It tells us which signs people actually want, which is a different question from which pages they opened.

When a search finds nothing, we also keep the words you typed, on our own server, so we can see what people come looking for and we do not sell. Searches that DO find something are not kept this way. It is the words on their own, with nothing attached that says who typed them, and it is gone after three months.

If you use one of the design tools and leave without adding the sign to your basket, we count that. Only that. The name or the house number you typed is not sent anywhere, and it never has been: it is drawn in your browser and discarded there.

If you would rather not be counted by Google, any browser setting or extension that blocks Google Analytics works here, and nothing on this site behaves differently when you use one. Google's own opt-out is at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. Our own basket count is part of this site rather than someone else's code, so a blocker does not stop it. What it records is the product and never the person.

Two cookies on this shop are not ours: the one above and the Meta one described below. Everything else your browser stores here is the basket or your light and dark preference. The basket stays in your browser, and what leaves it is the count described above: the sign, not the person, and nothing you typed.

The review invitation

On the page you land on after paying, we offer you the chance to be sent a review survey by Google. Taking it is entirely your choice and nothing happens unless you opt in on that page.

To make the offer at all, that page sends Google your email address, your order reference, the country it is shipping to and the date we expect it to arrive. Nothing else goes with it: not your name, not your street address, and not which sign you bought. If you opt in, Google emails you later, and any rating you give is about us as a shop rather than about a particular sign.

If you do not opt in, Google does not email you. The offer appears on that one page, once, and nowhere else on this site.

If you leave without paying

The basket has an optional email box. Filling it in saves you typing your address again on the payment page, because we pass it to Stripe to fill that field in for you. Leaving it blank is fine and changes nothing about your order.

If you start paying and then leave without finishing, we are told that a cart was left behind and what it was worth. If you gave us an email address we keep it with that record. If you did not, there is nothing on it that says who you are.

Stripe gives us a link that would rebuild that cart, and it stops working after 30 days. We do not send any email about a cart left behind. If that ever changes, an address you typed into the box above is the only one we would have to send it to.

A cart left behind and the email list below are separate records. Signing up in the footer does not mean you will be emailed about a cart, and leaving a cart behind does not put you on the list.

Meta advertising

We advertise on Facebook and Instagram, and to know whether that is worth paying for we run Meta's code on every page of this shop. It sets a cookie of its own, called _fbp. It tells Meta when a page is opened, what went into a basket and when a checkout was started. Once an order is paid for, our own server separately tells Meta what it came to.

Your email address and the country are scrambled before they are sent, into a string that cannot be turned back into either. Meta are not told your name, your street address, your IP address, or which surname you had cut into the sign. The message sent when an order is paid for carries the total and the country, not a list of what was in it.

One thing is worth saying plainly rather than burying. This is the part of the site that can follow you elsewhere: Meta may recognise you on Facebook or Instagram and show you our signs there. That is advertising rather than measurement, and it is the only third party this shop loads anything for.

Blocking it changes nothing about how this shop works: the basket and the checkout do not depend on it, and nothing behaves differently when you use a blocker. Your own controls are in Meta's ad preferences.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the code is never loaded. No Meta cookie is set and nothing about your visit is sent. There is no cookie banner on this shop, and rather than ask you to agree to something buried in a dialog, we simply do not run it there. We only deliver within the United States, so an order can never be going to an EEA address.

If you are in the European Economic Area it does not load at all. There is no cookie banner on this shop, and rather than ask you to agree to something buried in a dialog, we simply do not run it there. Nothing is set and nothing is sent.

The email list

There is a signup box in the footer of every page, and another on the page you reach after ordering. Both are optional, neither is filled in for you, and nothing on this site pops up to ask.

Typing an address into one of those boxes does not put you on the list. We store the address, which of the two boxes it came from, the time, and a one-way fingerprint of the network address it arrived from, and then we send one email asking whether you meant it. Only clicking the link in that email adds you. If you never click it, nothing is ever sent to you.

Every message from the list carries a link that takes you off it, and your email program's own unsubscribe button works as well. One click is enough, there is no form and no questions, and it works whether or not you ever confirmed. We keep the record that you asked to stop, because that is what stops you being added again by mistake.

The list is not sold, rented or shared with anyone. We keep your address for as long as you are on the list. If you leave, we keep the address on a do-not-send record rather than deleting it, because a deleted address is one that can be added again by the next person who types it into the box. Ask us and we will remove that record too.

An address you give at checkout is not on this list. That address is used to send your receipt and to tell you when your order ships, which is what you gave it to us for. It is never copied onto the list. The two are separate records and nothing moves between them.

The signup box and the design request form both run a check that you are not a machine, handled by Cloudflare, who host this site. Almost every time it decides on its own and you see nothing at all. When it cannot tell, it shows you one box to tick. It sets no cookie, it does not follow you anywhere else, and nothing it collects goes to an advertiser. It is there because both of those forms make us send an email, and without it somebody could point that at a stranger.

Asking us to make up your design

On the page where you design a sign with your own family name, you can leave an email address and ask us to make the design up properly. That is the only thing on that page that sends us anything. Typing a name and watching it appear happens entirely in your browser: nothing is sent, nothing is stored, and you can use the whole page without giving us anything at all.

If you do ask, we store the family name you typed, the wording, shape and finish you had chosen, your email address, the time, and a one-way fingerprint of the network address it arrived from. A person reads the name before anything is made, because a sign is cut from steel and we do not cut whatever a form is given. We then make up the designs and send you a link to see them.

This is not the email list. An address given so we could make up your designs was given for that, and it is kept in a separate record that the list is never built from. Asking for designs does not sign you up for anything, and you will not get marketing because you asked.

Your personalised store stays up for seven days after we send you the link, and then it comes down. We keep the request itself for 30 days and then delete it, whether or not you ordered anything, so that if you write in after the link has gone we can still tell you what you asked for. Ask us sooner and we will delete it sooner.

Asking a question

The round button in the bottom corner of every page opens a box for questions about this shop. What you type there, and the earlier questions and answers in that same conversation, go to our server and to an AI model run by Cloudflare, who host this site, so it can write an answer from this shop's own pages. The answer comes from that model rather than a person, and it can be wrong.

We keep no copy of the conversation, and nothing about it is saved in your browser: it is gone when you leave the page. What we keep is a count of questions asked and of the ones it could not answer, with nothing attached that says who asked, for three months.

When it cannot answer, you can leave your question with your email address so a person can reply. We keep that question and address for 90 days and then delete them. The address is used to answer you and nothing else: it is not the email list and it is never added to it. The box runs the same check that you are not a machine as the signup box, handled by Cloudflare.

What we do not do

There is no session recorder: nothing here replays what you did on the page or records what you typed. Beyond the two measurement and advertising tags described above, nobody is following you from this shop to the next one. We do not sell or rent your details, and we do not send marketing email unless you have asked for it and confirmed it by clicking a link we sent you. That last promise is load bearing rather than a description of a shop that sends nothing: the list described above exists, and this sentence is what governs it.

Who else handles your order

Five companies see part of it, each because they do a job we cannot:

• Stripe takes the payment and holds the card details we never see. They also get your email and address to check the payment is genuine.
• Our fulfillment partner cuts, coats and posts the sign, so they get the delivery name and address and the artwork to cut.
• Cloudflare host this site and the order records.
• Google are told two separate things. Analytics is told that an order was finished, what it came to and which signs were in it, with no name and no email address attached. And the page you land on after paying sends your email address, order reference, delivery country and expected arrival date, and only those, so they can offer you the review survey described above. They get nothing at all if you never reach that page.
• Meta, who run Facebook and Instagram, are told when you add something to your basket and when you start checking out, and separately, once an order is paid for, what it was worth. Your email address and the country are scrambled first, into a string that cannot be turned back into either. They also receive the identifier their own cookie put in your browser, and the name and version of the browser itself. They are not told your name, your address, your IP address, or which sign you bought.

That means your details leave New Zealand. The workshop that makes and posts your sign is in the United States, and the payment and hosting companies operate across several countries. There is no way to make the sign otherwise.

A surname is not a secret, but it is yours

A family name sign carries a surname, and that surname is part of the order. We use it to cut the sign and for nothing else. Names already in the shop were drawn from published census surname rankings, not from anyone's order, and we do not add a name to the catalog because somebody bought it.

How long we keep it

Order records are kept for seven years, which is what New Zealand tax law requires of business records. Artwork files are removed once the order has been delivered and the window for a remake has passed.

A personalised store is taken down seven days after its link is sent. The request behind it is kept for 30 days and then deleted, along with the name and the address that came with it.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act 2020 you can ask what we hold about you and have anything wrong corrected. Email hello@metalsigndesigns.com and we will answer within 20 working days, which is the limit the Act sets.

You can ask us to delete your details. We will, except for the order records tax law requires us to keep, and we will tell you exactly what is staying and why.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

Contact

hello@metalsigndesigns.com. A person reads it.