Surfshark Privacy Policy

We use this information to create your account so that you can use our Services.

Please note that to handle your payments and refunds, our trusted payment partners collect necessary details like the transaction date, payer’s IP address, credit card number, and the cardholder's full name. Depending on your location, our payment partners may also need additional details like a personal ID, passport, or your address.To learn what personal data these payment providers collect and store, please refer to their individual terms of service and privacy policies.

We use this information to provide you with the specific Surfshark Services you have requested.

What you search for stays private. We don't collect such information. 

Alternative persona

Alternative email

To be able to use Alternative email service, you will have to verify your email address to which emails are forwarded. The Emails you receive via the Alternative Email service along with sender and recipient email server IP address, sender email address and timestamps are deleted as soon as they are forwarded to your email address. We use a trusted email service provider to facilitate this service.

Alternative number

In addition, to facilitate the Alternative Number service, we use trusted VoIP service providers. We respect your privacy and we do not access your private content.

To use our Alert service for detecting personal data leaks, you can submit your email address, personal identity number (or a social security number), or credit card number for monitoring. We'll  securely retain this information, encrypting personal identity and credit card numbers. When you enter your email, you authorize us to find and provide you with additional leaks-related details, for example, usernames, passwords, full names, country, physical address, IP addresses. For credit card or social security number leaks, we'll only show you data categories (e.g., credit card details, name, address, password, nationality) for security reasons, rather than the specific compromised data.

Data Leak Checker allows you to check if your personal data has been compromised in a data leak. By voluntarily entering your email address, you can find out if your personal information has been exposed. Please note that we do not store your email address or information related to data leaks.

If you opt for our Dedicated IP service, certain online activities could be linked back to your account.

In order for you to be able to use our AI powered email scam checker, which scans your emails for potential scam threats, we need to collect specific data from the emails you choose to scan. This data includes the sender's email address, the email subject, and the content of the email, including any website address it contains. Your consent will be required to collect this information, as you will actively select which emails from your inbox to scan. The collected data (except sender’s email address) will only be stored for the brief period necessary to perform the scan and provide you with the results. Please note that in order to improve our email scam checker, we will use your personal data in a completely anonymized format, based on our legitimate interest in enhancing our services.

Please note that we respect your privacy and do not access any of your private content or use any of your data to train our AI models.

You can find information about how your personal data is processed for email scam checker diagnostics in paragraph 2.3.9 of this privacy policy.

To enhance the security of your account, when you log in to the Surfshark app, we collect the information indicated above. This helps us recognize your trusted devices and allows us to provide better security for your account. As part of this, we'll notify you by email if you log in from a new device that differs from your last-used devices.

This email will provide you with the login details. If you did not log in from this new device, it is crucial to change your password immediately to secure your account. We also strongly encourage you to enable two-factor authentication for enhanced protection. By promptly notifying you of logins from unfamiliar devices, we enable you to take swift action if anything appears suspicious, thereby helping to ensure your account's safety.

To ensure the security and privacy of your account, Surfshark requires identity verification before we can assist with your customer support inquiry. This process helps us protect your data and provide you with the most accurate and personalized support.

We may contact you via email for this purpose, but we also encourage you to contact us via our online contact form to get the best VPN offer for you.

Also, to help you with your order, we might send an email letting you know if a purchase wasn't completed (unfinished order). This is based on our legitimate interest in improving your experience with us and assisting you with any issues related to your orders.

If you do not wish to receive emails from us, you can opt out by contacting support@surfshark.com or by clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of any correspondence. If you have multiple email addresses, you will need to opt out for each address to be removed from our active database. However, we will continue to communicate with you for essential service delivery, to address your inquiries, and to provide transactional product or service-related updates.

Also, please note that you may still receive information about our Services from other parties who use their own mailing lists.

Please note that when you share information on social network accounts, e.g., Facebook, X, we don't control how they use or store that data. These companies collect and process your information for their own reasons, including their own marketing efforts. For full details on how these platforms handle your personal data, please check each social media privacy policies directly.

We may use an automated decision-making, including profiling, process to evaluate whether to apply a discount to the price of the subscription a user purchases. This will not increase the price of the subscription you want to purchase.

Profiling means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person. Automated decision-making is the process of deciding by automated means without any human involvement. Our system may automatically generate decisions using a very limited amount of your personal data (for example, information related to your subscription). For instance, we may use an automated decision-making process, including profiling, to evaluate whether to apply a discount to the price of the subscription you purchase.

In instances where a decision based solely on automated processing produces legal consequences for you, or otherwise significantly affects you, you retain the right to challenge the decision, express your viewpoint, and request human involvement. You can achieve this by contacting us at support@surfshark.com. We will assess your request and provide a human examination of the decision, ensuring that your rights are fully honored.

To fulfil this goal, we collect diagnostics information and monitor crash reports on our apps and extensions. Please note that diagnostics information does not contain uniquely identifiable information (except as provided below regarding email scam checker service). However, if you face some problems when using our apps, we may require your device information to solve these problems. We will access this information only if you provide a separate consent for that.

In the case of email scam checker diagnostics, we will collect a minimal amount of necessary personal data. This includes the email sender's name and email address, the receiver's email address, the email subject, the content of the email, and metadata of any attachments.

Upon your permission, we collect your Wi-Fi network name (Service Set Identifier) exclusively to enable the auto-connect and trusted Wi-Fi features. This allows our app to automatically connect to a server without you having to worry about it. Crucially, this information is stored solely on your device. We do not store or share it with any third party.

When you use our Website, we automatically collect information about your activity through technologies like cookies if you've given us permission. We may receive information about you from certain advertisers and advertising partners for analytical and advertising purposes. Our advertising partners help us attribute sales, deliver more relevant ads and promotional messages to you, which may include interest-based advertising and account-based advertising.

You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level on your device. More information about cookies and how to disable them can be found in Section 7 of this Privacy Policy.

We create aggregated statistical data and conduct market research and analysis to understand customer needs, analyze sales, and identify other business trends. This helps us to improve our services and operate our business more effectively, using aggregated and/or inferred non-personal information.

We are subject to tax and other statutory requirements. We may have to protect our legitimate interests and legal rights. In these cases, we may be required to collect and store a limited amount of your personal data indicated above: email address, subscription information, payment-related information, other necessary information and / or legal documents.

To calculate applicable VAT/sales tax, we collect your country and, where applicable, state of residence. Should you opt to receive an invoice for the services rendered, we may also retain the necessary data to generate and issue that invoice.