Blackout Dates
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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 October 2026

Overview

Blackout Dates (“the App”) is a Shopify app that lets you set up date-based scheduling for pickup, local delivery, and postal orders, including closed dates, per-product rules, delivery pricing, and calendar sync. This policy explains what information we collect when you install or use the App, how we use it, and your rights over that data.

Blackout Dates is run by Layton Labs, which is responsible for the information this policy describes. How to reach us is in the Contact section below.

We keep this simple: we collect only what we need to run the service, we never sell your data, and we permanently delete your store's data when Shopify tells us to, about 48 hours after you uninstall (backups, error reports and server logs expire on their own schedules, described below).

Information we collect

Merchant information

When you install the App through the Shopify App Store, Shopify provides us with:

  • Your shop domain (e.g. yourstore.myshopify.com)
  • An OAuth access token that allows the App to call the Shopify Admin API on your behalf
  • Session identifiers used to authenticate your admin session

App configuration data

Data you create while using the App:

  • Store-wide closed dates, their names, and days of the week you have blocked
  • Store-wide settings: order cut-off time, preparation time, minimum order value, pickup hours and time slots, local delivery times and their limit, whether customers check their postcode before local delivery, time zone, public-holiday region, and the wording and accent colour of your date picker
  • Per-product availability rules: allowed dates, allowed weekdays, preparation time, fulfilment type, seasons and shelf life, kitchen station and allergen tags, and whether the date picker is enabled
  • Delivery method preferences (pickup, local delivery, postal) and associated surcharge rules (Plus and Pro)
  • Your locations' settings and names, and per-location closed dates (Pro)
  • Booking counts per date, time slot, product and shared limit (and per location), used to enforce your limits. No customer details are included.
  • Capacity limit names and sizes (Pro)
  • A randomly generated calendar sync token used to authenticate the Pro calendar feed URL
  • Your current plan, which we read from Shopify's billing records and keep so your pages can open without waiting for that check, and with it when your free trial ends and whether your store is a Shopify development store, so our own figures can tell paying stores from trials and test stores
  • Getting Started progress and alerts you have dismissed
  • What your store mainly sells, if you answer the optional question in Getting Started
  • A public Storefront API token the App creates so your storefront can pass the customer's chosen delivery method to checkout, keeping the email and phone already on their cart, and, if you turn on the postcode check, ask Shopify whether your local delivery reaches a postcode. These requests go from the customer's browser straight to Shopify, not through the App's servers.
  • If you connect Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook: OAuth access tokens, refresh tokens, token expiry timestamps, and an identifier for the account you connected (so we can tell if you switch accounts), used to push calendar events on your behalf
  • Storefront health reports: when the date picker last loaded and rendered on your store, and the last error message it hit (for example, Shopify refusing to save a date because of stock), up to 300 characters. These are sent from your customers' browsers. The App doesn't put customer details in them, but it stores the message as it arrives, so a message could repeat what a customer typed.
  • App usage counts: how many times each of the App's admin pages was loaded for your store on each day, and which App it was loaded through. These hold no customer or staff details, and are deleted within 13 months.
  • The setup step your store had reached when the App was uninstalled, added to a weekly count that doesn't name your store. These counts are deleted within 13 months. To count each uninstall once, we keep a record of Shopify's uninstall notification for 3 days.
  • From Shopify's records for the App: when your store installed and uninstalled it, its subscription and free trial, and any reason you gave Shopify when uninstalling. We read these when we look at the App's usage; the App doesn't keep a copy. After you uninstall, we may use your store's address from these records to visit your public store and contact you through the details it shows, to ask how the App could have been better. We keep no contact details for this.
  • Upgrade and review prompts: which locked features you tapped an upgrade link on, how often and when, the plan you then moved to (and whether at a founding price), and Shopify's answer when the App asked you for a review.
  • Whether your store took one of the founding places, and when. When your store's data is deleted, the place stays counted as taken but nothing in it names your store.

Order records

We don't store customers' names or contact details. To keep your limits and calendar accurate we do keep, for each dated order, its Shopify order ID, the dates it's booked for (and, for subscription orders, a booking reference), how many units of each item each date holds, the IDs of any calendar events we created for it, and records of which Shopify notifications we have already handled for it (so an alert isn't sent twice). For the notes on your app's home page we also keep the Shopify order ID, order number and time of the latest order placed without a date, and the order IDs and times of up to 20 recent orders placed late in the evening for the next day. These are deleted with the rest of your store's data.

Customer data

The App requests the read_customers Shopify API scope and reads customers' names, email addresses and phone numbers from your orders for these features:

  • The day's orders list (every plan), which shows each order's customer name, or their email address when there is no name
  • The Closure Impact spreadsheet (Pro), which lists the email address of each customer whose order is booked on a date you have closed, and the private link that lets them change their order's date, so you can contact them
  • Calendar sync (Pro), which puts the customer's name, email address and phone number in calendar events
  • Shopify Flow, which receives only the customer's reference, not their contact details (for example when a customer reschedules)

Shopify also includes them in the order notifications it sends us. They are never stored in our database. A spreadsheet you download is saved on your own device. If you have connected Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook, this contact information is included in calendar events pushed to those services, and served in your private calendar feed, along with any card or gift message the customer wrote in the date picker. Events pushed to Google or Outlook also carry the order's note, which can include a note the customer wrote; the calendar feed does not. See “Data sharing” below. The dates customers pick are written onto their orders in Shopify; we keep only the order records described above.

How we use your information

  • To authenticate API requests to Shopify on your behalf
  • To display and enforce your configured blackout dates and product rules in the storefront date picker
  • To write pickup and delivery date metadata to your Shopify orders (via the Shopify API)
  • To generate the Pro ICS calendar feed, which reads order data (including customer contact details) transiently to build calendar events
  • To push calendar events to Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook for your dated orders (your recent existing orders when you connect, then new ones) and keep them up to date when orders are rescheduled, edited, refunded or cancelled, if you have connected either service
  • To show you in Getting Started whether the date picker is working on your store
  • To list each day's orders for you, and the orders booked on dates you have closed, so you know who to contact
  • To see which of the App's features stores use, from your settings, the App usage counts and the upgrade taps above, which kinds of store use it, from what you told us you sell, and why stores leave, from the uninstall counts and Shopify's records above, so we know what to improve. This stays with us: no analytics service or third party receives it

We do not use your data for advertising, or for any purpose beyond operating and improving the App.

Who is responsible, and why we use it

For your store's settings and the records the App keeps about your store, Layton Labs is the controller. For your customers' details, your store is the controller and we process them only on your behalf, to provide the App's features you use.

We use your data because we need it to provide the App you installed. We use your settings, the App usage counts, the upgrade taps, the uninstall counts, what you told us you sell, Shopify's records for the App and review answers to improve the App because we have a legitimate interest in doing so; you can object to that by contacting us.

Data storage

Your data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted on Heroku (Salesforce). Heroku servers are located in the European Union (Ireland).

Your Google and Microsoft calendar tokens are encrypted before we store them. Your Shopify access token is held in our database and protected by our hosting provider's security controls. Database backups are retained for a maximum of 7 days.

Some of the services listed under “Data sharing” process data outside the UK and the European Union, including in the United States and Canada: Shopify, Sentry, Google Fonts and jsDelivr, and Google or Microsoft if you connect their calendars (and Papertrail did, for the retired version below). Where they do, they rely on safeguards such as the UK and EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Data sharing

We do not sell, rent, or share your data with third parties except as described below:

  • Shopify: we call the Shopify Admin API using your access token to read products, read orders and customer contact details (name, email and phone, for the features listed under “Customer data”), read your plan, write order properties, tags and notes, save your date picker, delivery and closure notice settings to your store, and, when you turn those features on, adjust stock, fulfilment dates, shipping rates and checkout delivery options. Shopify's own Privacy Policy applies to data processed through their platform.
  • Shopify Flow (every plan): if you use the App's Flow triggers, we send Shopify Flow the order and customer reference, dates, delivery method and reschedule link for each event. What happens next is decided by your own Flow workflows and the services you connect them to.
  • Calendar feed (Pro): if you subscribe to your private feed link, the calendar app or service you use downloads your orders' dates, customer contact details and card or gift messages from it, but not the order note. Keep the link private; you can reset it from Calendar Sync.
  • Google Fonts and jsDelivr: the date page the App hosts for your customers loads its font from Google Fonts and its calendar script from jsDelivr, and the reschedule page loads the calendar script from jsDelivr, so those services see the visitor's IP address.
  • Public holiday lists: when you import public holidays we fetch them from GOV.UK or Nager.Date. Only the country or region is sent.
  • Heroku: our hosting and database provider. Data is processed under Heroku's Privacy Policy.
  • Google: if you connect Google Calendar, we push calendar events to your Google Calendar account for your dated orders, your recent existing orders when you connect and new ones after. An event can include the order number, products, customer name, email address and phone number (if given), the customer's card or gift message, the branch, and a link to the order in your admin. It also includes the delivery method, the order note (which can contain a note the customer wrote) and, where you've set them, best-by dates, kitchen stations and allergens. The same goes for every event we push: for a new order, for your existing orders when you connect, when we check an order's events again later, and when an order is rescheduled. This uses the Google Calendar API under Google’s Privacy Policy. The App's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements: we use it only to add, update and remove your orders' events and to keep the connection to your account working, never for advertising, and we don't transfer it to anyone else. We store your Google OAuth tokens to maintain this connection. You can disconnect at any time from the Calendar Sync settings page. Disconnecting or uninstalling leaves events already added in your calendar; delete them there if you want them gone.
  • Microsoft: if you connect Microsoft Outlook, we push calendar events to your Outlook calendar for your dated orders, with the same details as for Google. This uses the Microsoft Graph API under Microsoft’s Privacy Policy. We store your Microsoft OAuth tokens to maintain this connection. You can disconnect at any time from the Calendar Sync settings page. Disconnecting or uninstalling leaves events already added in your calendar; delete them there if you want them gone.
  • Sentry: we use Sentry for error and performance monitoring of our servers. Reports may include your shop domain, order and product reference numbers, and the address and headers of the request, but not its body, so not the customer names or contact details in the orders Shopify sends us. Sentry deletes them at the end of the retention period for our Sentry plan, currently at most 90 days. They are not deleted when you uninstall the App.
  • Papertrail (SolarWinds): our older, unlisted version of the App, which a few stores installed before the App Store listing, sent its server logs (described below) to Papertrail, which kept them in North America. That version was retired in October 2026. The App you install from the Shopify App Store never did.

Our servers also keep short-lived technical logs (shop domain, order reference numbers, error messages), and our hosting provider logs each request's IP address and the web address requested, which can include the private link of your calendar feed or a customer's reschedule link. These are not deleted on uninstall and expire under our hosting provider's log retention.

We may disclose data if required by law or to protect our legal rights.

Data retention and deletion

Your data is retained for as long as the App is installed on your store.

When you uninstall the App, Shopify sends us an app/uninstalled webhook and we immediately sign the App out of your store, revoke its Google Calendar access, delete your calendar tokens and the Storefront token, and switch off your calendar feed link. Shopify also sends a mandatory shop/redact webhook about 48 hours after uninstall; upon receiving it we permanently delete all remaining data associated with your shop (closed dates, product rules, settings, booking counts, order records, which calendar accounts were connected and which calendar events we created, and any residual session records). If you reinstall before then, nothing more is deleted, but your calendar connection is gone and needs connecting again.

If a customer asks Shopify to erase their data, we remove the calendar events we added for their orders from your Google or Outlook calendar, if it's still connected. Events in a calendar you've disconnected, or added before an uninstall, stay there until you delete them.

You can also request deletion at any time by contacting us at privacy@blackoutdates.app.

Your rights

Depending on your location, you may have rights under applicable privacy law (including UK and EU GDPR and CCPA) to:

  • Access the data we hold about your shop
  • Request correction of inaccurate data
  • Request deletion of your data
  • Object to or restrict certain processing

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at privacy@blackoutdates.app. We will respond within 30 days.

If you think we have handled your data wrongly, you can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or the data protection authority where you live.

If you are one of a store's customers, the store is responsible for your data, so please contact the store first. We will help them answer you.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top and say what changed in our changelog. Continued use of the App after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Reach us at privacy@blackoutdates.app.