Privacy policy
Last updated 2 October 2026
1. Who we are
United Support is a customer support agency. We handle email, live chat and payment disputes on behalf of e-commerce brands. We also publish Supportly, a helpdesk app for Shopify stores. This policy explains what we do with personal information, including information you give us through your Google account.
United Support is a trading name of UNITED SUPPORTLY LTD, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17391459). Our registered office is 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom.
You can reach us about anything in this policy at support@unitedsupport.co.
2. The two roles we act in
We handle personal information in two different roles, and your rights work differently in each. This is the most important thing to understand about this policy.
When we run a support inbox for one of our clients, we are a processor. The client - the brand you bought from - decides what happens to your information; we act on their written instructions and for no other purpose. If you want to know how that brand handles your information, or you want to exercise your rights over it, contact the brand directly and read their privacy policy. If you contact us instead, we will pass your request to them without undue delay and help them answer it.
When we handle information about our own website visitors, business enquiries, client contacts, staff and job applicants, we are the controller. Sections 6 to 14 of this policy describe that, and you can exercise your rights with us directly.
Section 3 covers our Shopify app, and section 4 covers a third thing: what happens when one of our clients connects their own Google account to our support desk.
3. The Supportly app for Shopify
Supportly is our helpdesk app for Shopify stores. A merchant installs it on their own store and approves the permissions below; from then on their support agents can answer a customer without leaving the desk. In this section the merchant is our client, and we are their processor.
What the app can access
The app asks a store for these permissions and no others. It can read the store's customers; its orders, including orders older than 60 days; its fulfilments and tracking numbers; its products and inventory; and its discount codes. It can change an order's shipping address, cancel an order, refund an order, and create discount codes.
Nothing else. The app has no access to checkout, no access to the store's theme, and no access to payment credentials.
Customer information
Through those permissions the app sees the names, email addresses, phone numbers and shipping addresses of a store's customers - the fields Shopify classes as protected customer data. We use them for one purpose: answering that customer's support request. We never use them for marketing, for profiling, for resale, or to train models.
When it flows
Orders are fetched from Shopify when an agent opens a ticket and are kept in memory for a short time; they are not written to our database. A customer's name and email address arrive by webhook when a customer record is created or updated in the store, and are stored on their support profile so the ticket can be matched to them.
Access
Every read and every write of customer order data is logged with the agent who did it, the ticket, the store and the action - never the customer's own details. Agents sign in with one-time codes; there are no passwords. Sessions expire, and an administrator can end every session an agent holds, remotely and immediately.
Credentials
The store's access tokens are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored, refreshed automatically, and deleted the moment the store uninstalls the app.
Shopify privacy requests
Shopify sends every app three mandatory privacy webhooks, and the desk answers all three.
customers/data_request- a customer has asked a store connected to the desk for the data we hold about them. We record the request, tell our administrators at once, and the merchant receives the customer's data within 30 days. Shopify's rule is that the merchant, not the app, hands it to the customer. The same request from a store that installed the app but was never connected to the desk is recorded and closed at once, because we hold nothing from that store.customers/redact- a customer erasure from a store connected to the desk. We remove what we obtained from Shopify about that customer. The support correspondence itself is the merchant's own record of their own business, so it stays by default; a merchant can instruct us to delete that as well, and we do. The same request from a store that was never connected to the desk is recorded and closed at once, and nothing is changed, because we hold nothing from that store.shop/redact- a store erasure, which Shopify sends 48 hours after an uninstall. We delete the store's connection, its tokens and its webhook records.
Our own refund ledger keeps the store's name as a label after an erasure. It holds no customer details - it is the merchant's financial record of refunds their agents issued.
4. Google account data
Our support desk can write a record of every refund into a Google Sheet that you own. Connecting your Google account is optional, and this section describes exactly what happens when you do.
What we can access
We request a single Google Drive permission, drive.file. It grants access to individual files only - specifically:
- spreadsheets our application creates for you, and
- spreadsheets you select yourself using Google's own file picker.
It does not permit us to list, search, open or read any other file in your Google Drive, and we do not ask for a permission that would. If you disconnect and reconnect, only the files you choose at that point are accessible again.
We also request your Google account's email address, so the desk can show which account is connected.
What we do with it
- We add rows. When one of our agents issues a refund, we append a single row to the spreadsheet you chose - the date, the payment provider, the store, the order number, the reason, whether it was full or partial, the amount, and the products refunded.
- We read the sheet's name and its tab names, so we can confirm access works and let you choose which tab to write to.
- We can create a spreadsheet for you, if you ask us to, so the columns are set up correctly from the start.
That is the complete list. We do not read the contents of your spreadsheet, edit rows we did not write, or delete anything.
What we store
- A refresh token from Google, which lets the desk keep writing rows without asking you to sign in again. It is encrypted before it is stored.
- The email address of the connected Google account.
- The identifier and tab name of the spreadsheet you chose.
We do not store copies of your Google files or their contents.
What we never do
- We do not sell information obtained through Google APIs, or share it with data brokers.
- We do not use it for advertising, or to build advertising profiles.
- We do not use it to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models.
- Our staff do not read your Google files. Access is limited to the automated process that writes refund rows, except where we need to investigate a fault you have reported to us, or where the law requires it.
United Support's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Removing our access
You can disconnect your Google account inside the support desk at any time. You can also revoke it from Google directly, at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Either way we delete the stored token and stop writing to your spreadsheet. The spreadsheet itself is yours and stays untouched, including the rows already written.
5. Support information we handle for clients
To run a client's support inbox we process information about their customers. Typically that means names and email addresses, the contents of emails and chat messages, order and delivery details, refund and dispute records, and any files a customer attaches.
We handle this on our client's written instructions and for no other purpose. We do not use it to market anything, we do not use it to train models, and we do not sell it.
Every client engagement is governed by a written data processing agreement that meets the requirements of Article 28 of the UK GDPR. Among other things it commits us to act only on the client's documented instructions, to keep their information confidential, to apply appropriate security measures, to get the client's authorisation before involving anyone else in the work, to help them respond to people exercising their rights, to tell them without undue delay if we become aware of a personal data breach, and to delete or return everything at the end of the engagement.
6. Information we collect directly
- Account information for the people who use our desk - name, work email address, and a record of what they did in the system, so actions can be attributed. We also keep when they last signed in and last had the desk open, so administrators can see who is active; only the latest of each is kept, and both are deleted with the account.
- Enquiries you send us through our website or by email. Our website's quote form is handled by Formspree, which receives your name, email address, the volume you told us about and anything you wrote in the message.
- Meetings you book with us. The scheduling widget on our home page is provided by Calendly, and loads when the page does.
Our website
Our home page uses Microsoft Clarity, an analytics service that records how visitors interact with the page so we can see where the site is confusing. It sets cookies lasting up to a year, including _clck, _uetvid and _uetmsclkid, and sends what it records to Microsoft. Clarity runs on the home page only - not on this page, our terms page, or our articles.
Our website also loads fonts and code libraries from Google Fonts, Cloudflare's CDN and jsDelivr, and one image from a payment provider's server. Loading any of these tells the company involved your IP address and which page you were on.
Our support desk itself is different. It loads no analytics, no advertising pixels and no third-party fonts or scripts at all - everything it needs is served from our own servers, and its security policy blocks external code outright. This page is part of the desk and follows the same rule. The one exception is Google's file picker, which runs on a page of its own that agents only reach when they choose to connect a spreadsheet.
7. How long we keep things
| What | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Refund records in the desk | 365 days |
| Files attached to emails | 21 days |
| Original raw copies of incoming messages | 24 hours |
| Delivery records of incoming messages and webhooks (metadata only, never the message itself) | 14 days |
| History of automated actions | 30 days |
| Closed support tickets | Deleted by an administrator once older than 10 months, rather than automatically |
| Background jobs that failed, which can hold message content | 7 days |
| Shopify webhook receipts (an id and a topic, used to ignore duplicates) | 7 days |
| Completed Shopify privacy requests (they hold the customer's email) | 90 days after completion |
| Sign-in codes emailed to our agents | 5 minutes |
| An agent's signed-in session | 14 days without use, and 90 days at most |
| When an agent last signed in and last had the desk open | Until the agent's account is deleted |
| A Shopify store's access tokens | Until the store uninstalls the app, or 48 hours after at the latest |
| The address of each Shopify store ever connected to the desk, and when it was first connected - never a customer's data | For as long as the desk runs, after an uninstall too, so a later privacy request about that store's customers still reaches us |
| Your Google connection | Until you disconnect it |
Where you have connected a Google Sheet, that sheet is your own long-term record and stays under your control after our copy of a refund is deleted.
8. Where information is stored, and who else touches it
Our support desk runs on Railway, which also holds our database, our job queue and the files people attach to emails. Our public website is hosted separately, on Vercel, and is delivered from whichever of their locations is nearest the visitor.
Companies involved in running the support desk
| Company | What they do, and what reaches them |
|---|---|
| Railway | Hosts the desk, its database, its queue and stored attachments - so effectively everything we hold |
| Maileroo | Receives incoming customer email and holds its attachments until we fetch them; sends our agents their sign-in codes; and delivers replies for mailboxes set to send from their desk address |
| Zoho (ZeptoMail) | Delivers outgoing replies for mailboxes still on our shared sender, including the message body and any attachments |
| Any mail server a client configures | Where a client points a mailbox at their own SMTP provider, replies for that mailbox go through that provider rather than ours |
| Shopify | Accessed through the Supportly app with the store's own authorisation, to find customers and orders, issue refunds, cancel orders, change shipping addresses and create discount codes. Customer names and email addresses are sent as search terms |
| PayPal | Accessed with our client's own account, to read disputes, send messages to the buyer and upload evidence documents |
| Holds the spreadsheets we write refund, resend, claim, change-request and dispute records into - either a client's own Google account or ours | |
| YunExpress, 4PX | Parcel tracking. When an agent looks up a tracking number, that number - and nothing else about the customer - is sent to the carrier's tracking service |
Companies involved in running our website
| Company | What they do, and what reaches them |
|---|---|
| Vercel | Hosts unitedsupport.co |
| Microsoft (Clarity) | Records how visitors use our home page, as described in section 6 |
| Formspree | Receives what you type into our quote form |
| Calendly | The booking widget on our home page |
| Google, Cloudflare, jsDelivr | Serve fonts and code libraries to your browser, which tells them your IP address |
We do not give anyone else access to personal information except where the law requires it.
9. Where our team works
Our support team works from Belgrade, Serbia. They are employees of UNITED SUPPORTLY LTD and access our systems remotely, so no separate organisation receives your information because of where our team happens to sit. The companies that do receive information are listed in section 8.
We protect that access: everyone has their own named account, access is limited to what a person's role requires, connections are encrypted, and every action taken in the desk is recorded against the person who took it.
10. Keeping information safe
- Everything travels over encrypted connections.
- Stored credentials - including your Google token and a Shopify store's access tokens - are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they touch our database.
- Agents sign in with one-time codes sent to their work email address. There are no passwords to guess, reuse or leak.
- A session can be revoked. An administrator can end every session an agent holds, on every device, and it takes effect immediately.
- Every access to a customer's Shopify data - each read and each change - is written to our access log with the agent, the ticket, the store and the action, and never with the customer's own details.
- Every refund, and every automated action taken afterwards, is recorded so it can be traced to the person who performed it.
- Administrative settings are limited to named administrators.
If we become aware of a personal data breach we tell affected clients without undue delay and, where the law requires it, the ICO within 72 hours.
No system is perfectly secure, but we take the protection of this information seriously and review how we handle it.
11. Your rights
UK data protection law gives you rights over the personal information we hold about you. You do not have to pay anything to use them.
- Your right to be informed. You have the right to be told how we collect and use your personal information. That is what this policy is for.
- Your right of access. You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. This right always applies, although some exemptions mean you may not always receive everything we hold.
- Your right to rectification. You have the right to ask us to correct information you think is inaccurate, and to complete information you think is incomplete. This right always applies.
- Your right to erasure. You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information in certain circumstances.
- Your right to restrict processing. You have the right to ask us to limit how we use your personal information in certain circumstances.
- Your right to object to processing. You have the right to object to our using your personal information where we rely on our legitimate interests to do so.
- Your right to data portability. Where we use your information because you consented or because we have a contract with you, and we do so by automated means, you have the right to ask us to give you that information in a portable form, or to send it to another organisation.
- Rights related to automated decision making, including profiling. We do not make decisions about you by solely automated means. Refunds, replies and dispute responses are all issued by a person.
To use any of these rights, email us at support@unitedsupport.co or write to us at the address in section 14.
How long we take
We have one month to respond to a request. The month runs from when we receive your request - or, if we need to confirm your identity or the authority of someone acting for you, from when we receive that information.
If your request is complex, or if you make several requests at once, we can extend that period by up to two further months. If we do, we will tell you within one month of your request and explain why.
If you have asked for copies of your personal information and we genuinely need more detail to find it, we may ask you to clarify what you are looking for. The clock pauses while we wait for your reply and starts again the day after we receive it.
If your request is about a client's data
If your request concerns information we handle on behalf of one of our clients, we will pass it to that client without undue delay and help them respond, because the decision is theirs to make. You may get a faster answer by going to the brand you bought from directly.
12. Complaints
Complaining to us
You have the right to complain directly to us if you think we have not handled your personal information in line with data protection law. You might want to do that if you are unhappy with how we responded to a request about your information, if you are concerned about how we have kept your information secure, or if you think we have collected or used it in a way we should not have.
Email us at support@unitedsupport.co, or write to the address in section 14. You do not have to use those routes - we will accept your complaint however you send it.
We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days of receiving it. That is not how long we take to resolve it; it means we will confirm we have your complaint and are looking into it. We will then investigate, keep you updated, and tell you the outcome without undue delay.
Complaining to the regulator
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's independent regulator for data protection.
You can complain to the ICO at any time. We would ask you to give us the chance to put things right first, and the ICO recommends that too, but you do not have to wait for us before contacting them.
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Helpline: 0303 123 1113
Website: ico.org.uk
To complain: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/
If your complaint is about information we handle on behalf of one of our clients, it may be better directed to that client, or to the data protection regulator in your own country.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle information we will update this page and change the date at the top. Where a change is significant we will tell affected clients directly rather than relying on you to notice.
14. Contact
UNITED SUPPORTLY LTD
71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden
London, WC2H 9JQ
United Kingdom
support@unitedsupport.co