Privacy Policy

What we collect

What you type

• Your answers in the gift-finder: what you tell us about the person you're buying for, the occasion, and your budget.
• Your email address, if you ask to be told when we launch.
• If you send us feedback: the message, the page you were on, and an email address only if you choose to leave one so we can reply.

What you tell us about the person you're buying for is information about someone else, given by you rather than by them. Please keep it to what a gift actually needs — not health details or anything else sensitive. We don't store it against their name or against any identifier for you, and we don't show it to anyone else. Pisto is meant for adults buying gifts, including gifts for children; we don't knowingly collect information from children directly.

Collected as you use the site

• No tracking cookie. We don't set one. What you've already been shown, and any gift types you've ruled out, are kept in your own browser's storage — not on our servers — so we don't repeat ourselves while you're looking. It holds no identifier for you, it is scoped to the person you're currently shopping for, and it is cleared when you close the tab or start a new search.
• The text of your gift searches, kept so we can improve future matching. It is not linked to you in any way — no name, no account, no device identifier — and before it is stored we automatically remove email addresses, phone numbers, long numbers, and names that follow a relationship (“my grandad Bill”). Automatic removal is not perfect, which is the reason for the request above: please don't type anything sensitive in the first place.
• If you have an account: which suggestions we showed you and how you responded — viewed, dismissed, liked, disliked, marked as already owned, or clicked through to a retailer — so your results improve over time. We only keep this for signed-in people.
• Your IP address, used to protect the service from abuse and discarded shortly afterwards, and server error logs when something breaks (the route, the error, and surrounding request context). Error logs never include the free text you typed.
• Product analytics: which pages are visited, which suggestions are viewed, liked, dismissed, or clicked through to buy, and technical metadata (route, referrer, device and browser type). It is configured cookieless — no cookie, no persistent cross-session identifier — and it never receives the text you type.

How we use it

• To produce gift suggestions and the reasoning behind them.
• To remember what you've already seen or ruled out, so we don't repeat ourselves — within the current search if you don't have an account, and across visits if you do.
• To keep the service running, prevent abuse, and improve matching over time.
• To reply when you contact us, and to meet our legal obligations.

Who we share it with

We don't sell personal information. We do share it with:

• AI providers. The text of your gift-finder answers is sent to a third-party large language model provider, which processes it in the United States, to generate suggestions and reasoning. They handle it under their own terms and privacy policies.
• Hosting and database providers. The site and its database run on third-party infrastructure. They may store or process data outside Australia.
• Analytics provider. A third-party provider, for the cookieless analytics described above. It stores that data in the United States, and receives behavioural and technical metadata only, never the text you type.
• Retailers, when you click through to buy. Clicking a product takes you to a retailer's own site (for example, Amazon Australia) via a redirect on our domain. We record that the click happened — see our affiliate disclosure. We never receive your payment details, and any purchase is between you and the retailer.
• We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to protect our rights or the safety of others.

Cookies

We don't set a tracking or advertising cookie, and we don't use third-party advertising cookies. Our product analytics is cookieless. If you sign in, your browser holds a session cookie from our authentication provider so you stay signed in — that one is functional, not advertising. If any of this changes, we'll update this policy.

Overseas disclosure

Some of the providers above are outside Australia, or may process data outside it. Our AI providers and our analytics provider store or process data in the United States, and our hosting and database providers may process data outside Australia. Those providers may not be subject to the Privacy Act, and Australian Privacy Principle 8 requires us to say so plainly: by using Pisto, you understand your information may be handled overseas as described here.

How long we keep it

We keep information for as long as it serves the purpose it was collected for. Your IP address is kept only for the short window it protects the service. You can ask us to delete what we hold about you.

Your rights, and how to reach us

We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. Subject to some exceptions allowed by law, you can:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you and request a copy.
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong, out of date, or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete the information we hold about you.
• Complain about how we've handled it.

Pisto (pisto.com.au) operates this site. Email hello@pisto.com.au. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au — complaints are made through their online forms. You can also call 1300 363 992 (Monday to Thursday, 10am–4pm) or write to GPO Box 5288, Sydney NSW 2001.

Security

What we store sits in tables that only our own server can read or write. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service changes. We'll update the date at the top when we do.