Privacy policy

The short version. Pseudo GMC is a web application at app.pseudogmc.com. It reads your shop's public product list and your Google Ads account, and it writes campaigns into that account when you tell it to. Your Google sign-in and your shop's figures are kept on one server we run, protected as described under How we protect your data, and are sent to nobody but Google. We never see or store your customers' personal details, and we never sell or share anything.

Who we are

Pseudo GMC is made and operated by Wiysanyuy Macdesmond, an independent software developer based in Yaoundé, Cameroon ("we", "us"). There is no company behind it and no third party involved. You can reach a person at hello@pseudogmc.com about anything on this page, and a postal address is available on request.

Accounts, and who can see your data

Pseudo GMC is by invitation. Each person has their own account and password, and sees only their own shops. Nobody else who uses Pseudo GMC can see them.

The operator named above can see every account's shops, campaigns and the figures read from Google Ads, to run the service and to help you with it. You agree to this when you accept your invitation, before your account is created. The operator never changes your shops or your campaigns: only you can, and the application refuses changes from anyone else. Nobody else has this access.

What the application accesses

Google user data

When you connect the application to Google Ads, you sign in with your own Google account and grant it access to the Google Ads API. With that permission it reads and writes the following, in your own Google Ads account:

• The Google Ads accounts your Google account can reach, and each one's name, currency and time zone, so you can choose the one this shop advertises from.
• Campaigns, budgets, bidding settings, ad groups, keywords, ads, negative keywords, locations, page feeds and labels. It creates these, updates the ones it created, and reads them back to keep them in step with your shop.
• Performance figures for the account's campaigns: impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, conversion value, the pages people landed on and the search terms that triggered your ads. It reads the whole account's figures so that no spending is missed, but it changes only campaigns it created.
• Keyword Planner estimates: how often people search each keyword, what advertisers pay to appear at the top of the page, and a forecast of clicks and cost. This only reads Google's estimates and changes nothing in your account.
• Conversion actions, their tags and your account's conversion goals, so that orders on your website are counted in Google Ads and bidding aims at purchases.

It removes a campaign only when you press Remove campaign on a campaign it created, and it never removes anything on its own. Every campaign is created paused, and none starts spending until you press Turn on.

If you switch on Autopilot for a shop (it is off unless you do), the application makes the same kinds of changes once a night, only to campaigns it created and within a fixed limit: it blocks searches that waste money, pauses keywords and sold-out products, and adjusts keyword bids. Autopilot never raises a budget, turns a campaign on or removes anything.

It also receives the email address of the Google account you sign in with, so the app can show which account each shop is connected through.

Your shop

It reads the public product list your website already publishes: names, prices, stock, categories, links and photographs. If you install the Search Ads Connector plugin, it also reads the number of orders and the total value per product. It does not read customer names, email addresses, delivery addresses, payment details or any other personal information about the people who buy from you.

Why it needs each thing

What	Why
Google Ads campaign management	To build and maintain the campaigns, keywords, ads and bids the application creates for you, and to pause them when you ask.
Google Ads reporting	To show what your ads cost and earned, and to find searches that waste money so they can be blocked.
Keyword Planner	To choose keywords people actually search, and to bid the least that still reaches the top of the page.
Conversion actions	To count your orders in Google Ads, so bidding can aim at sales instead of clicks.
Your product list	To write keywords and ads from your real products, and to work out what each one can afford to pay for a click.

How we protect your data

The most sensitive data the application holds is your Google sign-in: an OAuth refresh token that lets it act in your Google Ads account. Next come the figures read from Google Ads, and the password you sign in to Pseudo GMC with. They are protected as follows.

Your Google sign-in

• You sign in on Google's own page, using OAuth 2.0 with PKCE. The application never sees or stores your Google password.
• The refresh token is stored in a single file that only the application's dedicated system account can read or write (file permission 0600). It is never shown in any page, never written to any log, and never sent anywhere except Google's own servers.
• Signing a shop out of Google in the application deletes its token at once. Withdrawing access at myaccount.google.com/permissions makes it useless immediately.

Encryption in transit

• Every connection to pseudogmc.com and app.pseudogmc.com is encrypted with TLS (HTTPS). Browsers are told never to connect without it (HTTP Strict Transport Security).
• Every request the application makes to Google's APIs is also encrypted with TLS.

Who can reach it

• The application accepts connections only from the server itself. The one way in from the internet is an HTTPS gateway, and every page and action requires signing in first.
• Your Pseudo GMC password is never stored. Only a salted scrypt hash of it is kept. After five wrong attempts, signing in is blocked for 15 minutes.
• The sign-in cookie cannot be read by scripts (HttpOnly), is sent only over HTTPS (Secure) and is not sent by other websites (SameSite). The server keeps only a hash of it, so the stored sessions cannot be used to sign in.
• A request that changes anything is refused unless it comes from one of the application's own pages, which protects against cross-site request forgery.

The server

• A firewall allows only web traffic and administrative access.
• Administrative access requires a cryptographic key. Password logins are switched off, and addresses that keep trying are blocked automatically.
• Security updates are installed automatically.
• The application runs under its own unprivileged system account, in a sandbox that stops it changing the rest of the system. Its data folder can be read by that account only.
• The only person with administrative access is the operator named above. There are no employees or contractors.

Collecting as little as possible

• The application never reads your customers' names, email addresses, delivery addresses or payment details.
• Google user data is used only to provide the features on this page, and is never used for advertising, sold or shared.

If something goes wrong

If we learn that data we hold may have been accessed without permission, we will revoke and replace the affected credentials, and tell every affected user by email promptly, saying what happened and what we have done about it.

Where it is kept

On a single virtual server we rent from DediRock, located in Los Angeles, United States. Your shop's settings, its product list, your Google sign-in, and the campaign figures and search terms read from Google Ads are all kept there, and nowhere else.

A backup is made every night on the same server. It can be read only by the server's administrator account and is kept for 14 days.

DediRock provides the machine. It does not access or process what is stored on it.

Who it is shared with

Nobody. The application communicates with Google's APIs and with your own website, and with nothing else. We do not sell, rent or share your data, and we do not use Google user data to train any generalised artificial intelligence or machine learning model.

Our use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

How long it is kept

For as long as you use Pseudo GMC. Signing a shop out of Google in the application deletes its stored Google sign-in at once. Write to hello@pseudogmc.com and we will erase everything we hold about your shop within 30 days; the nightly backups that still contain it expire 14 days after that.

Taking it back

You can withdraw the application's access at any time from your Google account at myaccount.google.com/permissions. It stops working immediately. The campaigns it built remain in your Google Ads account, under your control — pause or change them there as you wish.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or erase personal data we hold about you. The personal data we hold is small: your name and the email address you sign in to Pseudo GMC with, the email address of the Google account each shop is connected through, and anything you send us when you write. Write to hello@pseudogmc.com and we will act on it within 30 days.

This website

pseudogmc.com sets no cookies, runs no advertising trackers and profiles nobody. The application at app.pseudogmc.com sets one cookie, which does nothing but keep you signed in, for up to 14 days. The server keeps standard logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting, and discards them on a rolling basis.

Children

The application is a business tool and is not directed at anyone under 18.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and, where we have your address, tell you before the change takes effect.

Contact

hello@pseudogmc.com — or the postal address above.