## What Data Does Alpha Insights Collect?

Alpha Insights collects various data types to calculate profit and provide insights. This guide explains exactly what data is stored and how it's used.

### Order and Sales Data

What's collected:

- Order totals and line items (from WooCommerce)
- Product costs (manually entered by you)
- Shipping and payment costs
- Customer names and emails (from WooCommerce orders)
- Order dates, statuses, and payment methods

Why it's needed: Essential for profit calculations

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database (same server as WooCommerce)

Retention: Permanent (business records)

### Website Analytics Data

What's collected (if enabled):

- Page views and session duration
- Traffic sources (referrer URLs)
- Device types and browsers
- Anonymized IP addresses (last segment removed)
- Geographic location (city/country level)

Why it's needed: Connect traffic sources to profitable orders

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database

Retention: Configurable (30-365 days, or custom)

### Advertising Data

What's collected (if integrations enabled):

- Campaign names and IDs
- Daily ad spend by campaign
- Campaign status (active/paused/ended)
- Date ranges

Why it's needed: Calculate ROAS and attribute ad spend to orders

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database

Retention: Configurable (90 days - forever)

### Expense Data

What's collected:

- Expense amounts, dates, and categories
- Expense descriptions
- Recurring schedules

Why it's needed: Calculate net profit after all business costs

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database

Retention: Permanent

### What Alpha Insights Does NOT Collect

- Credit card numbers or payment details
- Customer passwords
- Full IP addresses (anonymized)
- Ad creative content
- Personal browsing history beyond your site
- Form inputs or checkout data (beyond orders)

### Data Sharing

#### With Third Parties

Alpha Insights does NOT share your data with third parties except:

- License verification: License key checked with WP Davies servers (no customer data shared)
- Ad integrations: When YOU connect Facebook/Google Ads, Alpha Insights fetches data via their APIs (you control this)

#### On Your Server Only

- All profit data stays in your WordPress database
- Not sent to external servers
- Not shared with WP Davies or anyone else
- You have complete control

### GDPR Compliance

Alpha Insights is GDPR compliant:

- IP anonymization available
- Cookie consent integration
- Data retention controls
- Data export tools (subject access requests)
- Data deletion tools (right to erasure)
- No unnecessary personal data collected

### Customer Data Requests

Handle GDPR requests:

- Access: Export customer's order and session data via Settings → Data & Privacy
- Deletion: Erase customer data (keeps anonymized order records for accounting)

### Data Security

#### How Data is Protected

- Stored in WordPress database (same security as WooCommerce)
- Database credentials protected by WordPress
- API keys encrypted at rest
- HTTPS encryption for all transmissions
- WordPress user capabilities control access
- No data exposed in frontend code

### Controlling Data Collection

#### Disable Analytics Tracking

Don't want visitor tracking?

1. Settings → General → Website Analytics
2. Toggle OFF
3. Only order/profit data collected

#### Reduce Data Retention

Keep less historical data:

1. Settings → Data & Privacy
2. Set Session Retention to 30 days (minimum)
3. Old data automatically deleted

### Anonymize IPs

1. Settings → Data & Privacy
2. Enable IP Anonymization
3. Last segment of IP addresses removed (192.168.1.0 instead of 192.168.1.100)

### Data Portability

#### Exporting Your Data

You can export all Alpha Insights data:

1. Go to Tools → Data Export
2. Select data types (orders, products, sessions, etc.)
3. Download as CSV or JSON

Use cases:

- Backup before major changes
- Import to other systems
- Archive old data
- Compliance requirements

### Deleting Data

You can delete Alpha Insights data:

1. Settings → Data & Privacy → Manual Deletion
2. Select data types and date ranges
3. Export first (deletion is permanent!)
4. Confirm deletion