Answer a Customer's Data Request

When a shopper asks for a copy of their data, or asks you to erase it, Siren answers for its own records through WordPress’s tools under Tools: Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data. Siren appears there as “Siren referral program”, and it also suggests text for your privacy policy. Every edition includes them. WordPress lets administrators use these tools (Super Admins on a multisite network), not Siren’s Platform Managers.

Siren covers only the records it keeps. You decide what a request needs under your own privacy policy, with your own legal advice where you need it.

How Siren finds the customer

On a site that keeps its own Siren records, Siren looks for the shopper two ways: the WordPress account with the request’s email, and the keyed hash of that email, so guest checkouts are found too. It follows the customer records it finds, including customers merged together and their visits. If the email belongs to one of your collaborators, their collaborator record is included. A WordPress site connected to Siren Cloud finds the customer only by their WordPress account, so run every request by email on Siren Cloud as well, as Requests on a connected WordPress site describes.

Export a customer’s data

Add the request under Tools > Export Personal Data. WordPress emails the person to confirm it, unless you choose to skip that, and then you download the file. Siren’s part of the file has these groups, each starting “Referral program”:

• Store identifiers: the accounts and store customer IDs Siren has for them.
• Partners: whether they’re linked to one of your partners. The partner is never named.
• Purchases: the sales Siren recorded, with date and status.
• Activity: their visits, with when Siren first and last saw them.
• Customer records and how stores know you: each customer record, with the name and store customer ID each store has, and the email shown as “Kept only as a keyed hash of your email address, which Siren can’t reverse”.
• Coupon codes used: each code, with the date and the sale.
• Collaborator record: for a collaborator, their name, nickname, email address, status, and join date.

If Siren couldn’t read its records, its part of the file is a “Referral program” note with the error instead. Check the file before you send it.

Erase a customer’s data

Add the request under Tools > Erase Personal Data. Once the person confirms, click “Erase personal data” on their row. Siren removes:

• The shopper’s customer records, their identities, and the links from those records to visits, sales, and collaborators.
• Merge suggestions that name them.
• The store IDs and lifetime links on their visits.

Siren keeps their visits, marked as erased, and the sales, commissions, payouts, and coupon uses that came from them, without the links to the shopper. That keeps your accounting whole. A browser that still holds their referral cookie finds nothing, so a later visit starts fresh. A collaborator linked to them for lifetime commissions stops earning from their future purchases, and an activity note on the collaborator says so. Rewards already earned from them stay. Erasing a second time changes nothing.

Because sales stay, WordPress usually reports “Personal data was found for this user but some of the personal data found was not erased.” The summary combines every plugin’s eraser, and Siren’s own lines are listed under it:

• “Sales and commission records stay for the store’s accounting, without the links to this customer.”
• “Siren holds nothing it can find by this email address.” WordPress then reports “No personal data was found for this user.”
• “Siren could not finish erasing this customer. Run the erasure again to finish it.”, sometimes with a line ending “Send the request again to finish it.” Run the request again.

When the person is also a collaborator

Siren erases a collaborator’s record only when nothing is owed to them: no approved or draft reward, no payout that isn’t marked paid, and no credit balance. Settle those first: pay or reject the rewards, pay or cancel the payouts, and let the credit be spent or cleared. Running the erasure again won’t help until then. A collaborator who has no purchases or visits with you can get “Siren holds nothing it can find by this email address.” and “No personal data was found for this user.” from WordPress even when Siren couldn’t erase them, so before telling them their data is gone, check under Siren > Collaborators that their record reads “Deleted collaborator #” and a number.

When nothing is owed, Siren renames the record “Deleted collaborator #” and its number, and removes their email, tracking codes, coupon links, PayPal email, payout and store links, product ownership, and group memberships. Their payouts, earnings, and credit stay under that name.

Privacy policy text

Siren adds suggested text to WordPress’s privacy policy guide, under Settings > Privacy, in a section called “Siren”. On a site connected to Siren Cloud, the text says Siren Cloud stores the records for you. It covers what Siren keeps, why, where it’s stored, how long, and the shopper’s rights, and it calls your collaborators “partners”. Siren’s text leaves the legal basis and your retention period for you to fill in. Its “How long we keep it” section says records go once they’re no longer needed. Siren doesn’t delete them on a schedule, so edit that sentence to match what you do. The guide also suggests describing the referral cookie in your cookie notice.

What Siren doesn’t cover

Siren’s tools cover Siren’s records only. The person’s WordPress account, their orders in your store plugin, and other plugins’ data are outside them, though WordPress runs every plugin’s exporter and eraser in the same request. Siren sets no retention period and doesn’t delete customer records on its own.

On Siren Cloud, Admins answer requests from the “Customer data” tab under Settings > Import & Export, as Customer Data Requests on Siren Cloud describes.