What we collect (and what we don't)

When you check out, we collect your name, email, and shipping and billing address so we can process your order, ship it, send you order updates, and handle any return. We store these with our payment processor, Stripe, tied to your customer record — we don't keep a separate marketing database of your order details.

Your card number never touches our servers. Card details go straight into Stripe's secure payment form on our checkout page; Stripe processes the payment and tells us only whether it succeeded. We never see or store your full card number.

If you create an account, we use passwordless sign-in — a one-time link sent to your email — or Google or Apple sign-in. We store your email, and your name if your sign-in provider shares it. Staying signed in uses secure, first-party cookies — a session cookie, a CSRF-protection cookie, and, if you use Google or Apple sign-in, short-lived cookies that complete that secure handshake. We don't set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Your order history and your Trail Rewards balance are stored with Stripe, tied to your customer record, so we can show your orders, ship them, and apply the Trail Credits you've earned.

About a month after an order ships, we may email you once asking you to review the gear you bought. One ask per order, ever. Every one of these emails includes a one-click unsubscribe that stops them permanently, and your order receipts and shipping updates are separate and unaffected.

If you opt into the newsletter, we use your email to send it to you, and every email we send includes a one-click unsubscribe. If you subscribe to trail-condition alerts or back-in-stock alerts, we store your email (and, for trail alerts, a per-subscription token) only to send those alerts — unsubscribe anytime.

Checkout reminders send you one reminder if you step away before finishing checkout. If you have an account, these are on by default (creating an account is the agreement) and you can turn them off anytime in your account settings. If you check out as a guest, they are off unless you tick the optional box at checkout. At most one reminder every 14 days, every reminder includes a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing sticks unless you opt back in later.

Gear picks are a few recommendations that pair with what you ordered: one email about a week after each order. If you have an account, they are on by default and you can turn them off anytime in your account settings; guests can ask for them on the order-confirmation page. Every one includes a one-click unsubscribe, and unsubscribing sticks unless you opt back in later.

Saved-trip notices email you when conditions genuinely change on a trip you saved: at most two emails per trip, only on a real change. If you have an account, these are on by default, your account email is used, and the switch lives in your account settings; every notice includes a one-click unsubscribe.

If you submit a trail-conditions photo, we strip GPS and camera metadata before storing it. Caption and attribution are public; your email is private and used only to notify you about your submission.

If you review a product you bought, your rating, your words, and the display name you chose are published on the product page next to a “Verified purchase” marker. You pick the display name in the form before submitting — we suggest your first name and last initial, and we never publish your account name without showing you exactly what will appear. Your email stays private; we keep a one-way coded link between it and your review so each customer can hold one review per product. If your order is refunded or disputed, the review comes down.

Scout is our AI trail advisor. When you chat with Scout, your message — and, if you're signed in, your first name, Trail Rewards balance, total spend with us, and your past purchases — are sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) to generate a reply. We keep a record of your Scout conversations for about 90 days, and our team can read them to check quality and improve Scout. We don't use your chats to advertise to you.

Your cart and saved items live only in your browser's local storage. They never leave your device — clearing site data or switching browsers empties them.

To keep the site working and secure, we use your IP address to rate-limit abuse and fraud — those counters are short-lived, most resetting within an hour and none lasting beyond about a week. Our hosting provider, Vercel, also keeps standard server logs (things like URL, timestamp, browser type, and IP address) to operate and protect the site. We don't use any of this to advertise to you, and we don't sell it.

We use Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights to understand traffic and page performance. Those two run without cookies and don't track you across other sites. We don't run ad trackers, third-party marketing pixels, or session recorders, and we don't sell your data.

We also measure the store ourselves, using our own first-party counter and two small cookies. The cookies hold random IDs: one remembers your browser for about 13 months, and one keeps track of your current visit and expires after 30 minutes of inactivity. They let us count visits and sessions, tell new visitors from returning ones, and see which pages people arrive on and how they found us, whether that's a search engine, a link from another site, or one of our campaigns. The IDs are random characters, not derived from anything about you. We never connect them to your name, email, or account, and they never follow you to other sites.

Alongside those counts we record your general region, your device type (phone, tablet, or computer), how far pages get scrolled, search terms after screening out anything that looks personal, and whether a visit was signed in. That last one is noted only as a daily count; we check for the presence of a sign-in cookie by name, never read what's inside it, and never tie the count to who you are. Pages are recorded as page types rather than exact addresses. We also keep a fingerprint-based visitor count for all visits; it uses a scrambled fingerprint that resets every 24 hours, cannot be traced back to you, and is the count where cookie-blocking browsers appear. Everything is stored as daily totals, kept for about 13 months, and used only to understand and improve the store. Clearing cookies or browsing privately resets the IDs, and the store works exactly the same without them. None of it is sold or shared for advertising.

Some browsers can send a “Do Not Track” signal. Like most sites, we don't change how the site behaves in response to it; the practices described here apply either way.

When you shop with an account, we keep a small shopping-signals profile: weighted totals showing how much of your buying and browsing lands in each gear department and price range. It's built from your purchases, product-page visits, and add-to-carts on this site, keyed to a scrambled version of your account email. Recent activity counts more than old activity, and a profile untouched for about 13 months deletes itself. We use it for exactly one thing: ranking search results on this site around what fits you.

This profile is separate from the visit counting above by construction. It never contains those random visitor IDs, your search terms, or a play-by-play of what you did. Just the weighted totals. Signed-out browsing adds nothing to it.

You can switch it off any time in your account settings under Personalization. Turning it off stops collection and deletes the stored signals immediately.

With or without an account, your browser keeps a short list of recently viewed products (the same list behind the Recently Viewed section). On this device, that list helps order search suggestions toward the gear departments and price ranges you have been looking at. The ordering happens in your browser: the viewing signals it uses stay on the device, and the list is not stored on our servers.

To stop it, clear the Recently Viewed list or clear this site's data in your browser. If you have an account, turning off Personalization in settings also turns this off on the device where you change it.

A few trusted services handle data on our behalf, each only for what it needs:

• Stripe — payments, plus your customer and order records.
• Resend — our order and account emails.
• Vercel — hosting, the analytics above, and operational storage (the email alerts you've subscribed to, your Scout chat history, speculative trip-builder drafts, and the shopping-signals profile above).
• Anthropic — the Scout AI advisor (see “When you chat with Scout”).

• Clear site data in your browser to empty your cart and saved items.
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter or alerts in one click from any of those emails.
• Turn off personalized search ranking in your account settings; the switch also clears your stored shopping signals on the spot.
• Ask for a copy of the data we hold about you, or ask us to delete it — email info@alpenstock.com or reply to any order email. CA, VA, and CO residents (hi, neighbors) have those rights by law, and we extend them to everyone. We respond to verified requests within 45 days.
• We keep your order and account records as long as we need them to provide the service and meet legal and tax obligations, then delete or anonymize them.

Our site isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has given us personal data, email info@alpenstock.com and we'll delete it.

When our data practices change, we'll update this page before the change takes effect. Last updated: July 12, 2026.

See also: Terms, Accessibility.