Last Updated: December 19, 2025
Who we are
Our website address is: https://ioniancherry.com. This website is an educational project created by students of the Department of Informatics at the Ionian University. It simulates the operations of an online clothing store.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Comments and Reviews
When visitors leave comments or product reviews on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website (e.g., for a review), you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact Forms
If you use our contact form, we collect your name and email address to answer your questions. We do not use this information for marketing purposes.
WooCommerce (Store Data)
While you visit our site, we will track:
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Products you’ve viewed: We’ll use this to, for example, show you products you’ve recently viewed.
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Location, IP address and browser type: We’ll use this for purposes like estimating taxes and shipping (simulated).
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Shipping address: We’ll ask you to enter this so we can, for instance, estimate shipping before you place an order, and send you the order!
When you purchase from us, we’ll ask you to provide information including your name, billing address, shipping address, email address, phone number, credit card/payment details and optional account information like username and password. We use this information for purposes, such as:
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Sending you information about your account and order.
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Responding to your requests, including refunds and complaints.
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Process payments and prevent fraud.
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Set up your account for our store.
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Comply with any legal obligations we have, such as calculating taxes.
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Improve our store offerings.
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Send you marketing messages, if you choose to receive them.
If you create an account, we will store your name, address, email and phone number, which will be used to populate the checkout for future orders.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
Shop Cookies: We also use cookies to keep track of cart contents while you’re browsing our site.
Who we share your data with
Educational Note: As this is a university project, we do not sell, trade, or transfer your data to outside parties for commercial purposes.
- Payment Processors: We accept payments through PayPal and Stripe. When processing payments, some of your data will be passed to PayPal or Stripe, including information required to process or support the payment, such as the purchase total and billing information.
Please note that we do not store your full credit card details on our servers. All transactions are processed through secure, encrypted connections directly with the payment providers.- For more details, please see the PayPal Privacy Statement and Stripe Privacy Policy.
- AI Recommendations (Gemini API): To provide you with personalized shopping suggestions and upselling recommendations, we may send anonymized data regarding the contents of your cart (product titles and categories) to the Google Gemini API. This process is automated and aims to enhance your shopping experience by suggesting relevant items. No personally identifiable information (such as your name or email) is shared with the AI service for this purpose.
If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
Store Data Retention: Based on our system settings, we retain personal data for the following durations:
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Inactive accounts: 6 Months
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Pending orders: 3 Days
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Failed orders: 3 Days
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Cancelled orders: 2 Days
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Refunded orders: 6 Months
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Completed orders: 6 Months
After these periods, personal data is automatically anonymized or deleted from our system to protect your privacy.
Security of Your Data
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. To prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have implemented suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures. Our site uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption technology to ensure that all data passed between the web server and your browser remains private and integral.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where your data is sent
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Contact Information
For specific privacy concerns regarding this educational project, please contact us via the Contact Us page or at support@ioniancherry.com.