CauseTrail Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 18, 2026

Last Updated: September 18, 2026

CauseTrail ("CauseTrail," "we," "us," or "our") is a website monitoring and intelligence service operated by AndyBZ Creative, a business registered in the State of Florida, United States.

This Privacy Policy explains how CauseTrail collects, uses, processes, stores, and discloses information when you visit CauseTrail.io, create or use a CauseTrail account, connect a website to CauseTrail, or otherwise interact with our services.

For purposes of this Privacy Policy, the CauseTrail website, application, WordPress connector, monitoring services, artificial intelligence features, alerts, APIs, and related functionality are collectively referred to as the "Service."

By using CauseTrail, you acknowledge the practices described in this Privacy Policy.

1. Information We Collect

Account Information

When you create or maintain a CauseTrail account, we may collect information including:

• Name
• Email address
• Company or organization name
• Account credentials
• Account preferences
• Subscription and plan information
• Communication preferences
• Login and account activity

Passwords are protected using industry-standard password hashing practices. CauseTrail does not intentionally store user passwords in plaintext.

Billing Information

CauseTrail uses Stripe to process payments and manage paid subscriptions.

CauseTrail may receive and store limited billing-related information from Stripe, including:

• Stripe customer identifier
• Subscription identifier
• Subscription plan
• Subscription status
• Billing period
• Payment status
• Transaction information
• Limited payment-method information provided by Stripe, such as card brand and last four digits

CauseTrail does not directly collect or store complete credit or debit card numbers.

Payment information submitted during checkout is processed by Stripe.

Connected Website Information

When you connect a website to CauseTrail, we may collect technical information necessary to identify, monitor, analyze, and support that website.

Depending on available features, this may include:

• Website name
• Domain
• Website URL
• WordPress version
• PHP version
• Server software and environment information
• Installed plugins
• Plugin versions and activation status
• Active theme and version
• WordPress configuration information relevant to monitoring
• CauseTrail connector version
• Connection status
• Last communication or heartbeat time
• Website health information

CauseTrail does not require or intentionally collect WordPress administrator passwords, database passwords, WordPress security salts, or similar credentials as part of its normal website connection process.

Monitoring and Diagnostic Data

CauseTrail processes technical information generated by connected websites in order to provide monitoring, diagnostic, security, analytics, and website-intelligence functionality.

Depending on enabled features, this information may include:

• PHP errors
• PHP warnings and notices
• Application errors
• HTTP errors and status codes
• Stack traces
• File paths
• Line numbers
• Request URLs
• Timestamps
• Error frequency and occurrence information
• WordPress events
• Plugin activity
• Theme activity
• WordPress update history
• Login and security events
• IP addresses
• User agents
• Bot and crawler information
• Traffic metadata
• Performance information
• Uptime and availability information
• Website configuration changes
• Diagnostic information
• Technical event relationships and correlations

CauseTrail attempts to collect only information reasonably necessary to provide the Service.

Sensitive Information

CauseTrail is not designed to intentionally collect highly sensitive information from monitored websites, including:

• Passwords
• Authentication credentials
• Private API keys
• Access tokens
• Complete payment card information
• CVV numbers
• Authentication cookies
• Private database credentials
• Health information or other sensitive personal information unrelated to website monitoring

Where technically appropriate, CauseTrail uses filtering, sanitization, minimization, or redaction mechanisms designed to reduce the likelihood that sensitive information contained in logs, requests, URLs, or diagnostic information is stored or transmitted.

Customers are responsible for configuring their websites and use of CauseTrail in a manner that avoids unnecessarily transmitting sensitive personal information to the Service.

CauseTrail Usage Information

When you use CauseTrail itself, we may automatically collect information regarding your interaction with the Service, including:

• IP address
• Browser information
• Device information
• Login activity
• Pages and features accessed
• Dates and times of access
• Application errors
• Diagnostic information
• Referring URLs

We use this information to operate, secure, maintain, understand, and improve CauseTrail.

2. How We Use Information

CauseTrail may use information to:

• Provide and operate the Service
• Authenticate users
• Authenticate connected websites
• Monitor connected websites
• Detect website errors
• Group and organize related events
• Identify security and operational events
• Analyze website health
• Analyze traffic and bot activity
• Detect abnormal website behavior
• Calculate issue severity or impact
• Analyze website performance
• Correlate website changes with subsequent events
• Generate AI-assisted explanations
• Generate probable-cause analysis
• Generate troubleshooting recommendations
• Send notifications and alerts
• Maintain website history
• Process subscriptions
• Provide customer support
• Prevent fraud and abuse
• Protect CauseTrail and its customers
• Diagnose problems with the Service
• Improve CauseTrail
• Develop new features
• Maintain security
• Comply with applicable legal obligations

CauseTrail does not sell personal information to data brokers.

CauseTrail does not use customer website monitoring data for targeted advertising.

3. Customer Website Data

CauseTrail customers determine which websites they connect to the Service.

Customers must own, manage, or otherwise have authorization to monitor websites connected to CauseTrail.

For monitoring data collected from customer websites, the customer generally determines the purpose for which the website is being monitored, while CauseTrail processes technical information as necessary to provide the Service.

Customers are responsible for:

• Having appropriate authority to connect a website to CauseTrail
• Ensuring their use of CauseTrail complies with applicable laws
• Providing required privacy disclosures to their own website visitors
• Obtaining any permissions or consent required by applicable law
• Avoiding unnecessary transmission of sensitive information to CauseTrail

Where CauseTrail processes personal information solely on behalf of a customer, CauseTrail may act as a service provider or data processor with respect to that information, depending on applicable law and the circumstances.

4. Data Minimization

CauseTrail follows the general principle of collecting and processing information reasonably necessary to provide website monitoring and intelligence functionality.

Where technically appropriate, CauseTrail is designed to:

• Avoid collecting unnecessary request bodies
• Avoid collecting unnecessary form submissions
• Detect and redact passwords
• Detect and redact authentication credentials
• Detect and redact API keys
• Detect and redact access tokens
• Avoid storing complete payment information
• Minimize unnecessary personal information contained in logs
• Limit information transmitted to artificial intelligence providers
• Remove, anonymize, aggregate, or delete monitoring data when it is no longer required

CauseTrail's monitoring architecture generally follows the principle:

Collect → Sanitize → Normalize → Store → Analyze

Customers should not intentionally configure CauseTrail to collect sensitive information that is unnecessary for website monitoring or diagnostics.

5. Artificial Intelligence Processing

CauseTrail uses the OpenAI API to provide certain artificial intelligence features.

These features may include:

• Technical issue summaries
• Plain-language explanations
• Issue classification
• Pattern analysis
• Probable-cause analysis
• Event correlation
• Issue prioritization
• Troubleshooting recommendations

When these features are used, CauseTrail may transmit limited technical information relating to a monitored website to OpenAI for processing.

CauseTrail is designed to limit information submitted for AI processing to information reasonably necessary to perform the applicable analysis.

Where technically appropriate, CauseTrail uses filtering and redaction mechanisms intended to reduce the transmission of passwords, authentication credentials, API keys, cookies, payment information, and other sensitive information.

CauseTrail does not intentionally submit customer monitoring data to OpenAI for the purpose of training generalized artificial intelligence models.

AI-generated analysis may contain errors and should not be considered a guaranteed technical diagnosis.

Users should review relevant technical evidence and exercise appropriate judgment before making consequential changes to production websites.

6. Infrastructure and Data Storage

CauseTrail currently uses Hetzner for cloud hosting and infrastructure.

CauseTrail application data may be stored using PostgreSQL databases hosted within CauseTrail's infrastructure.

Information may be processed or stored in locations where CauseTrail or its service providers maintain infrastructure.

CauseTrail uses reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect stored information.

7. Subprocessors and Service Providers

CauseTrail uses selected third-party providers to operate portions of the Service.

Current key providers include:

Hetzner

Purpose: Cloud hosting, computing, networking, infrastructure, and data storage used to operate CauseTrail.

OpenAI

Purpose: Artificial intelligence processing used for technical analysis, explanations, classification, event correlation, probable-cause analysis, and related CauseTrail intelligence features.

Stripe

Purpose: Payment processing, recurring subscription billing, invoices, and billing management.

CauseTrail may add, remove, or replace service providers as the Service develops.

CauseTrail may maintain a separate public Subprocessors page containing additional information about third-party providers that process customer information.

8. Cookies and Similar Technologies

CauseTrail may use cookies and similar technologies for:

• Authentication
• Session management
• Security
• User preferences
• Application functionality
• Analytics

Certain cookies may be necessary for CauseTrail to function correctly.

If CauseTrail introduces additional marketing, advertising, or tracking technologies, this Privacy Policy and any applicable consent mechanisms may be updated accordingly.

9. Data Retention

CauseTrail generally retains website monitoring and diagnostic data for up to 60 days from the date it is collected.

This may include:

• Website events
• Error occurrences
• Diagnostic information
• Traffic and bot activity
• Security events
• Website change history
• Performance information
• Related monitoring data

After the applicable retention period, data may be deleted, anonymized, aggregated, or otherwise removed from active CauseTrail systems in accordance with our operational procedures.

Certain information may be retained for longer where reasonably necessary, including:

• Account records
• Subscription records
• Billing and transaction records
• Security records
• Fraud-prevention records
• Information required to comply with legal obligations
• Information required to resolve disputes
• Information required to enforce agreements
• Temporary backup copies retained through normal backup-rotation procedures
• Aggregated or de-identified information that no longer reasonably identifies an individual

Deleting a CauseTrail account or disconnecting a website may cause associated monitoring data to be scheduled for deletion earlier than the standard retention period, subject to reasonable technical, backup, security, and legal requirements.

CauseTrail may modify retention periods as the Service develops. Material changes will be reflected in this Privacy Policy or applicable product documentation.

10. Data Security

CauseTrail uses reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect information.

These may include:

• Encryption in transit
• Secure authentication
• Password hashing
• Access controls
• API authentication
• Request validation
• Data sanitization
• Sensitive-data redaction
• Application monitoring
• Security logging
• Restricted administrative access

No online service can guarantee absolute security.

Customers should notify CauseTrail promptly if they believe their account, connection credentials, or monitored website has been compromised.

11. Your Privacy Choices and Rights

Depending on your location and applicable law, you may have rights concerning your personal information, including rights to:

• Request access
• Request correction
• Request deletion
• Request a portable copy
• Object to certain processing
• Restrict certain processing
• Opt out of certain uses of personal information

Privacy requests may be submitted to:

[email protected]

CauseTrail may need to verify your identity before fulfilling certain requests.

Where CauseTrail processes information solely on behalf of one of our customers, requests relating to that information may need to be directed to the applicable customer.

12. Children's Privacy

CauseTrail is a professional website-monitoring service and is not directed to children under 13.

CauseTrail does not knowingly create accounts for or intentionally collect personal information directly from children under 13.

If CauseTrail learns that personal information has been collected from a child contrary to applicable law, we will take appropriate steps to address it.

13. International Users

CauseTrail is operated from the United States.

Information may be transferred to and processed in the United States or other jurisdictions where CauseTrail's service providers operate.

Users outside the United States acknowledge that privacy and data-protection laws may differ between jurisdictions.

Where required by applicable law, CauseTrail will use appropriate mechanisms or safeguards for international transfers of personal information.

14. Legal Disclosures

CauseTrail may disclose information when reasonably necessary to:

• Comply with applicable law
• Respond to valid legal process
• Protect CauseTrail's rights or property
• Protect customers or the public
• Investigate fraud or abuse
• Detect or respond to security incidents
• Enforce CauseTrail's Terms of Use

15. Business Transfers

If CauseTrail or AndyBZ Creative is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, sale of assets, or similar business transaction involving CauseTrail, information associated with the Service may be transferred as part of that transaction subject to applicable law.

16. Changes to This Privacy Policy

CauseTrail may update this Privacy Policy as the Service develops.

The "Last Updated" date identifies the most recent revision.

If a change materially affects how CauseTrail handles personal information, we may provide additional notice where appropriate or required by applicable law.

17. Contact

Questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy may be sent to:

CauseTrail
Operated by AndyBZ Creative
Florida, United States
CauseTrail.io
[email protected]