Privacy notice

The short version

Verifying a product requires no account and does not identify you. We record enough about each check to detect duplicated labels, and deliberately not enough to identify a person. If you send us a message, we keep it until the matter is dealt with. We do not sell data, run advertising trackers, or profile visitors.

Who is responsible

Vitella is the controller of the personal information described here. Vitella is based in China. You can reach us at info@vitella.net for anything in this notice, including a request about your own data.

Verifying a product

When you scan or enter an authenticity code, we record the following against that code:

• The code itself, and the date and time it was checked.
• An approximate country, derived from the network your request arrived on. We do not record a city or precise location.
• A salted one-way hash of your IP address. This lets us tell whether two checks came from the same source without ever storing the address itself. The hash cannot be reversed to recover your IP.
• A coarse device family — for example “ios” or “android” — rather than your full browser identifier.

Why we need it. Counterfeiters copy genuine labels onto multiple units. The only way to detect that is to notice one code being checked far more often, and from far more places, than a single item could be. Processing is limited to what that purpose requires, which is why we hash the IP rather than keep it.

We do not use this data for advertising, we do not sell or rent it, and we do not attempt to build a profile of you from it.

Messages you send us

If you use a contact, distribution or counterfeit-report form we store the name, email address and details you provide, so we can reply and follow up. Counterfeit reports may be shared with the marketplace or platform concerned as part of a brand-protection complaint — we will not include your personal details in such a complaint without asking you first.

Where your data is stored

The site and its database are hosted with infrastructure providers in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany) and served through a global content network. Vitella staff in China administer the system, which means personal information may be accessed from China — a cross-border transfer you should be aware of when you use the verification service or contact us.

We keep such transfers to the minimum the purpose requires. Verification records contain no direct identifier, and messages contain only what you chose to send us.

Cookies and analytics

This site sets no advertising or tracking cookies and embeds no third-party advertising or social tracking scripts. Nothing here follows you across other websites. The only cookie we set is a session cookie in the private administration area, which ordinary visitors never receive.

How long we keep things

• Scan records: retained while the product line is in circulation, because the value of the record is in the long-term pattern. Aggregated after that.
• Messages and reports: kept while we deal with the matter and for a reasonable period afterwards, then deleted.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask us to confirm what personal information we hold about you, to provide a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, or to withdraw consent you previously gave. You may also ask us to explain how the verification service handles your information.

One honest limitation: because verification records contain no identifier that points to a person — only a one-way hash — we are often unable to locate records relating to a specific individual. That is a deliberate consequence of designing the system not to identify you, rather than a way of avoiding requests.

To make a request, email info@vitella.net. We will respond within the period required by the law that applies to you, and within 30 days at the latest. If you are not satisfied with our response you may complain to your local data-protection authority.

Children

This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has sent us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice. The date at the top of the page shows when it last changed. Material changes will be summarised here.

Contacting us

For anything about this notice, write to info@vitella.net or use the contact page.