Privacy Policy

This explains what Sulitista collects, why, how long it is kept, who can see it, and what you can do about it.

What Sulitista collects

• Account info: your email address, your password (stored hashed, Sulitista never sees it in plain text), and the name of your store. Sulitista does not ask for your full name, your birthday or an ID when you sign up.
• Store info: your store name, handle, tagline, how-to-order and payment/shipping details, contact links (Messenger/WhatsApp), and a coarse location (province and city/municipality, never a home address).
• Listings: whatever you publish, including photos, descriptions, and prices.
• Who invited you: if you sign up with an invite link, Sulitista saves which store or link invited you.
• Technical info: your IP address when you sign up (to prevent fraud), and basic aggregate view/inquiry counts on your storefront and listings.
• Identity check (only if you choose it): a photo of you holding a government ID, your surname, your given names and your date of birth. See the next section.

The identity check is your choice

You do not have to do it. A store that wants the Verified check mark can send the owner’s ID photo, name and date of birth from its dashboard. You tick a box to agree before it is sent.

• Who sees it: only Sulitista staff who check IDs. The photo is never shown to buyers, other stores or anyone else. The photo may show your ID number. Sulitista does not copy or keep the number.
• What they check: that your face matches the ID, that the name and birthday match what you typed, and that you are 18 or older.
• The photo and the birthday you typed are deleted as soon as a decision is made. If nobody has decided after 14 days, they are deleted anyway and you are asked to send again. You can cancel a waiting request yourself, and the photo is deleted right away.
• What Sulitista keeps after a successful check: that you are Verified, your name as on the ID (only Sulitista staff who review stores can see it), and a secret number made from your name and birthday. The number cannot be turned back into your birthday, but it can be matched to the same name and birthday, so Sulitista treats it as personal information. It is used so that one person does not have many accounts, and so that a person who was removed cannot come back.

Removed accounts and declined applications

If an account is closed for breaking the rules, Sulitista keeps the secret number from its identity check (if it had one) and a secret number made from its email address, so the same person cannot come back. These are kept for 5 years, then removed unless there is a good reason to keep them. If a store application is declined, the email address (as a secret number, with a reason code) is kept for 30 days so it cannot apply again sooner. If you think a refusal is a mistake, write to Sulitista through the contact page. A person will look again, and Sulitista tries to answer within 15 days.

Invites

Sulitista records who invited each store, to help keep the community healthy. The store that invited you cannot see what you type at sign-up, your password or your private details. Sulitista also keeps a short list for each store that invites others: the date and a reason code for each invited store that was not approved or banned, with no names. It is used to spot a trend, and to pause, replace or close an invite link if needed. The record of who invited you is deleted when your account is deleted, except inside a record of a ban.

Why Sulitista collects this

To run storefronts and listings; to let stores earn the Verified mark; to make sure one person does not have many accounts; to stop a removed store owner from quietly coming back; to prevent fraud; to respond to reports and enforce the rules; and to meet legal obligations as a platform operating in the Philippines.

How long it is kept

• ID photo and the birthday you typed: deleted when a decision is made, and after 14 days at the latest.
• Your name from the identity check: while your store is Verified, then 12 months after it stops being Verified, so a complaint about your store can be traced to a real person. It is deleted at once if your account is deleted.
• The secret number from the identity check: while your account exists.
• Your sign-up IP address: 90 days.
• The email address of a declined application: 30 days.
• The invite list of a store (the date and a reason code for each invited store that was not approved or banned, with no names): 12 months.
• A removed account’s secret numbers, and a short record of the removal (the store’s handle, the reason and the date): 5 years.
• A report filed against a store: the full record (details, contact info) for 24 months after it is closed, then reduced to an anonymized outcome-only stub kept indefinitely for pattern detection. Evidence photos attached to a report: 45 days after it is closed.
• A suspended store’s content: 90 days to appeal or fix, then removed.
• Deleted data can stay in the hosting provider’s backups for a short time, until the backups are replaced.

Deleting your store and data

A store owner can delete the store and all its data from the dashboard (Delete my store and data).

• The owner types the password again. The deletion happens 14 days later, and the owner can cancel before then.
• If a report about the store is open, or Sulitista is checking the store, the deletion is held. It goes ahead when that is finished.
• Deleted: the store, its listings, blog posts and photos, the email address, the password, and any identity check details (the name and the secret number).
• Kept: the store’s handle for 12 months, so nobody else can take it. Reports about the store, for the times written above. If an account was removed for breaking the rules, a short record of the removal for 5 years.

Anyone who is not a store owner can ask for their data to be deleted through the contact page.

Cookies

Sulitista uses a session cookie to keep you signed in, a short-lived cookie from Cloudflare Turnstile to tell humans from bots on its forms, and a 24-hour cookie for each listing, store or blog post you view, so a page refresh doesn’t inflate the view counts. None of these store your IP address, device fingerprint, or any personally identifying detail. A blog post page shows how many times the post was viewed. That is a count only, and nobody can see who viewed it. If Google Analytics is enabled, it sets its own cookies too and may process your IP address as part of standard web analytics before Google returns the data to Sulitista in aggregate, anonymized form. See “Who Sulitista shares data with” below.

Videos in blog posts

A blog post can include a video from YouTube or Vimeo. A YouTube video shows a still picture from YouTube, so when the page opens your browser asks the YouTube image server for it, and Google can see that the page was opened. Vimeo videos load nothing from Vimeo while you read. Only when you press play does your browser connect to the video service itself, which may set its own cookies and see that you watched. Their own privacy policies apply from that moment.

Who Sulitista shares data with

Cloudflare (spam/bot protection on the forms), the hosting provider Hostinger, and Google when enabled, for aggregate site-traffic analytics (Google Analytics) and search-performance monitoring (Google Search Console), governed by Google’s own privacy policy. Sulitista does not sell data and does not use advertising networks. Google Analytics, when on, is used only to understand overall traffic, never for ads or to identify you individually.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what Sulitista holds on you, ask to correct it, object to how it is used, withdraw your consent to the identity check (cancel a waiting request, or ask for your data to be deleted), or ask for your account to be deleted. Use the contact page to make a request. Some things may have to stay, for example a record of a ban, and Sulitista will tell you what is kept and why. You also have the right to complain to the National Privacy Commission (privacy.gov.ph).

Children

Sulitista is an 18+ platform. When you sign up, you confirm that you are 18 or older. Sulitista does not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. Your age is checked only if you choose the identity check.

Changes to this policy

Sulitista may update this policy as the platform grows. Material changes will be noted on this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy: reach Sulitista through the contact page.