OAS Guides

Privacy policy

Last updated:

Who we are

OAS Guides (oasguide.ca) is run by TilyD Enterprises Ltd., 250 - 997 Seymour St., Vancouver, BC V6B 3M1, Canada.

This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who else handles it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do with it. It applies to this website, our paid guides, your customer account and the emails we send you.

We follow Canada's federal privacy law (the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA), British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act, and, for people who live in Quebec, Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector.

The person responsible for your information

Robert Kidd is our Privacy Officer. He is responsible for how we handle personal information and for answering your questions and requests.

The short version

What we collect when you visit the site

Like every website, our server and our network provider, Cloudflare, receive some technical information each time a page is loaded: your internet (IP) address, the type of browser and device, the page you asked for, the page that linked to it, and the date and time. We use it to send you the page, to protect the site from attacks and to find and fix errors. Our server keeps this record for 30 days and then deletes it.

We count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It does not use cookies, does not follow you from site to site, and does not build a profile of you. It tells us only totals, such as how many people read a page.

Our site search and our eligibility checks run inside your own web browser. What you type into them is not sent to us or to anyone else, and we cannot see it.

What we collect when you buy a guide

When you buy a guide, you pay on a secure page run by Stripe, our payment company. Stripe collects your card details, your name, your email address and, where tax applies, your billing address. Stripe does not give us your card number.

Stripe tells us:

We use this to give you your guide, to email your receipt and download links, to create your customer account, to give refunds and to keep the business and tax records the law requires.

What we keep in your customer account

Your account is created when you first buy a guide. It holds:

To let you sign in without a password, we email you a one-time sign-in link. While you are signed in, we keep a record of your sign-in with a short description of your browser (for example, "Firefox on Windows") so that you stay signed in for up to 90 days.

To stop people guessing passwords or flooding someone's inbox with sign-in emails, we record failed sign-in attempts and sign-in email requests, with the email address and internet address used. We delete these records after 2 days.

What we collect when you write to us

If you email us, we receive your email address, your name if you give it, and whatever you write. We use it only to answer you. Please do not send us your Social Insurance Number, health records or copies of government letters unless we ask for them. We do not need them to answer general questions, and we cannot advise you on your own case.

Why we use your information

We use personal information only to:

We do not use your information for any other purpose unless you agree first or the law requires it. We do not use it to make automated decisions about you, and we do not build profiles of our readers.

Your consent

You can use the free parts of the site without giving us any personal information.

When you buy a guide or write to us, you agree that we may use your information for the purposes listed above that relate to what you asked for. We will ask for your clear consent before we use your information for anything else. For example, we will never add you to a newsletter or send you offers unless you ask us to.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by writing to our Privacy Officer. If you do, we will tell you what that means for you. For example, we cannot keep your guides in your account if you ask us to delete the account, and we must keep some purchase records for tax purposes.

Who else handles your information

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. We share it only with the companies that run parts of our service for us, and only what each one needs to do its job:

Each of these companies must protect your information and may use it only to provide its service, except where its own policy says otherwise (for Stripe, fraud prevention).

We may also give out personal information if the law requires it, for example under a court order. If that happens, we give out only what the law requires.

Where your information is stored

Our server is in a Hetzner data centre in Hillsboro, Oregon, in the United States. Stripe and Cloudflare also store and process information in the United States and in other countries.

This means your information may be accessed by courts, police and government agencies of those countries under their laws. We chose these companies because they protect information to a standard we consider equal to what Canadian law requires, and our agreements with them require it.

How we protect your information

No system is perfectly secure. If a privacy breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will tell you and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as soon as we can. For residents of Quebec, we also notify the Commission d'accès à l'information when a breach creates a risk of serious injury. We keep a record of every privacy breach.

How long we keep your information

When we delete information, we delete it from our server. Backups are overwritten within 30 days.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file that a website stores in your web browser.

We do not use advertising cookies, social media buttons that track you, or any cookie that follows you to other websites. Because the cookies we use are needed for the site to work, we do not show a cookie banner.

Your rights

You can ask us:

If you live in Quebec, you can also ask for a copy of the information you gave us in a common format that another business can use (such as a spreadsheet file).

To make a request, email [email protected] with "Privacy" in the subject line, or write to us at the address above. So that we give your information only to you, we will reply to the email address on your account and may ask you to confirm the request from that address.

We answer within 30 days, and there is no charge. If we cannot do what you ask, we will tell you why in writing, and tell you how to complain.

You can change your email address, and set or remove a password, yourself on the "Email and password" page of your account.

How to complain

Please contact our Privacy Officer first. We will look into every complaint and tell you what we found and what we did about it.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to:

How we manage personal information

We keep written rules for handling personal information. Under them:

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new date. If a change affects how we use information we already hold, we will email account holders before it takes effect and ask for consent where the law requires it.