1. Information We Collect
In accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy legislation, we collect only the information necessary to route service requests and maintain marketplace trust across Canada. This includes:
- Customer request data — name, email address, phone number, and postal code. Customers do not create an account.
- Pro account and business data — business name, contact name, email address, phone number, postal code, service radius, business description, and an encrypted password.
- Location data — when you enter a postal code or address, we convert it into approximate geographic coordinates so that requests can be routed to Pros within their service radius, and we store these coordinates. If you allow location access in your device or browser settings, we also use your device's location while you are using our website or mobile application — for example, to show Pros near you when you open the Platform — and use it in the same way. Your device's position is reduced to an approximate area of a few square kilometres on your device before it is sent to us, so we never receive your device's precise location. We access location only while you are using the Platform, never in the background, and we do not build a location history. You can turn off location access at any time in your device or browser settings and enter an address instead, without losing access to the Platform.
- Verification numbers — for Pros, a trade licence number (regulated trades) or a business registration number (non-regulated trades). These numbers are reviewed by our team to award a trust badge.
- Job and message data — details a Customer provides about a job, including any photos they choose to attach, and messages routed through the Platform.
- Content Pros publish — profile images, portfolio images, service listings and promotional campaign images.
- Payment data — billing information necessary to process payments. Card details are handled by our payment processor; we do not store full card numbers on our infrastructure.
- Device data — where a Pro installs our mobile application and enables notifications, a push notification token.
- Technical data — IP address and basic device and technical information collected automatically, used for security, fraud and abuse prevention (including rate limiting), and legal compliance.
- Reports — if you report a profile or review, we keep the report, any details and email address you choose to give, your account if you are signed in, and a one-way coded version of your IP address (never the address itself), used to handle the report and to prevent duplicate or abusive reports.
- Blocks — when a Pro blocks a Customer, we keep the phone number and email address from that request so the block can be enforced. The Pro cannot see them through their list of blocked customers.
- Consent records — when you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, or opt in to marketing, we record the fact of your agreement together with the date and time, your IP address at that moment, and the version of each document you agreed to. This is kept as evidence of consent under Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, which places the burden of proving consent on the sender. See §5.
The Platform is not directed to children. You must have reached the age of majority in your province or territory to use it.
2. How We Use Information
We use personal information to operate the marketplace: creating and securing accounts, routing leads to nearby Pros, enabling contact after a lead is claimed, processing payments, reviewing verification numbers, sending transactional messages, preventing fraud and abuse, and meeting legal obligations.
We automatically check reviews and Pro profile text for contact details and offensive language. A flagged review is held for a person to review; flagged profile text cannot be saved.
3. Communications and CASL Compliance
In compliance with Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), we send promotional or marketing email only to users who have opted in. Transactional email — lead notifications, password resets, account and security alerts, billing notices — is exempt from opt-in and is necessary to operate your account. You may opt out of marketing at any time via the unsubscribe link or your account settings.
Where you withdraw consent to marketing, or where your account is deleted, we retain an irreversible one-way cryptographic hash of your email address so that our systems can continue to honour that opt-out. This hash cannot be reversed to recover your email address. Its only function is to prevent us from contacting you again. See §5.
4. Data Sharing and Masking
When a Customer submits a request, their contact information (email and phone) is masked. It is revealed to a Pro only after that Pro uses platform credits to claim the lead.
Once a Pro has claimed a lead, that Customer's contact details are in the Pro's possession. From that point the Pro holds the information independently of the Platform, and we cannot retrieve, recall, or compel the deletion of information a Pro has already received. Pros are contractually required to handle Customer information lawfully and only for the purpose of responding to the request, but we cannot guarantee their compliance and do not control their systems. Please consider this before submitting a request.
We do not sell your personal information to third-party data brokers. We may disclose information to Canadian law enforcement or regulators where legally compelled by a valid subpoena, court order, or applicable law.
5. Data Retention and Security
We use security controls including Row-Level Security, access restrictions, and encryption in transit to protect personal data. Payment processing is handled by a third-party provider (Stripe); we do not store full credit-card numbers on our infrastructure.
Blocks are kept until the Pro removes them or their account is deleted. Reports are kept while needed to resolve them and to detect repeated abuse.
We retain personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, or as required by law. When an account is deleted, the following categories are retained on the stated legal basis:
| What is retained | Why | For how long |
|---|---|---|
| Financial and transaction records, including credit purchases, credit spending, and payment processor event records | Required under the Income Tax Act (Canada), s. 230 | Six years from the end of the tax year to which the records relate |
| Reviews written about a Pro by Customers | A review is the Customer's own statement about their experience, not the Pro's information to erase. Removing them on request would allow a Pro to reset their reputation record | Indefinitely, with the reviewer's display name removed at the time of deletion |
| An irreversible hash of the email address | Required to honour a CASL opt-out after the underlying record is gone | Indefinitely |
| Consent records — date and time of agreement, IP address, and the version of each document agreed to | CASL places the burden of proving consent on the sender; the record is the proof | Indefinitely, or as long as we may need to answer a complaint |
| A minimal, de-identified account record with all personal fields removed | Preserves the integrity of financial and review records that reference the account | Indefinitely |
Backup copies are retained on our provider's normal rotation cycle and are not individually edited. Personal information deleted from live systems may therefore persist in encrypted backups until those backups age out of that cycle. Backups are used only for disaster recovery.
6. Where Your Data Is Processed (Cross-Border Transfer)
Our primary database, authentication system and file storage are hosted in Canada, in our provider's Central Canada region. Your account, profile, job and verification information is stored there.
Some of our other service providers operate outside Canada, principally in the United States. These are used for payment processing, email delivery, push notifications, web hosting and address lookup. Where a provider operates outside Canada, your personal information may be transferred to, stored in, or processed in that country and may be subject to its laws, including lawful access requests by foreign courts, law enforcement, or government authorities.
We take reasonable contractual and technical measures to require our providers to protect personal information to a standard comparable to that required under PIPEDA. By using the Platform, you acknowledge that your information may be processed outside Canada as described. You may contact us using the details below with questions about our policies and practices for cross-border handling of personal information.
7. Service Providers (Sub-Processors)
We use trusted third-party service providers to operate the Platform, including for hosting, database and storage, email delivery, push notifications, and address lookup. Each provider processes only the personal information needed for its function and is bound to protect it. Payment processing is handled by Stripe; we do not store full credit-card numbers on our infrastructure.
We maintain an internal record of our service providers and will provide further detail on request. You may contact us using the details below to ask which providers process your personal information. This list may change as our providers evolve; we will update this Policy where required.
8. Your Rights and Account Deletion
Under PIPEDA you have the right to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and to withdraw consent to non-essential processing. We will respond to a written request within thirty (30) days.
8.1 Customers
Customers do not create an account to use the Platform. We hold the contact details and job details you submit with a request, a record of the consent you gave when you submitted it, and any review you have written.
You may ask us to access, correct or delete this information by contacting us using the details in §9. We will respond within thirty (30) days.
Where you ask us to delete your information, we remove your personal details from our records. As explained in §5, some material is not removed with them: the record of a job request is kept without your personal details, because a Pro paid to receive that request and it forms part of our financial records; a review you have written remains visible with your display name replaced by a generic label; and your consent record is kept as proof of the choices you made, including any decision to opt out of marketing. Information already disclosed to a Pro cannot be recalled — see §4.
8.2 Pros — deleting your account
A Pro may delete their own account from account settings. Deletion applies only to the account making the request; it is self-service and cannot be requested on another account's behalf.
Immediately on request:
- Your public listing is hidden and you stop being matched to new leads.
- You cannot unlock leads, accept requests, or submit promotional campaigns.
- Your credit balance is frozen and cannot be spent.
These effects are enforced by our systems, not merely hidden in the interface.
A fourteen (14) day cancellation window. You may cancel deletion at any point during this window from account settings, which restores your account to exactly the status it held before the request — including, where your account was restricted before you asked to delete it, that restriction. Once the window has closed the request can no longer be cancelled, and your account becomes eligible for permanent deletion. Deletion is then carried out by us; it is final and cannot be reversed.
Unspent credits are forfeited. Credits remaining on the account when deletion completes are forfeited and are not refunded or converted to money. This includes any credits returned to you under the refund rule in our Terms of Service while your deletion was pending. Because credits are frozen during the cancellation window, the only way to use them is to cancel the deletion first. The actual number of credits that will be forfeited is shown to you before you confirm.
When deletion actually completes. Deletion completes after the cancellation window has passed and after each of the following is resolved:
- Approved promotional campaigns run to their end date. If you have a campaign that has been approved and is still running, deletion waits until that campaign reaches its end date.
- Any refund already credited to you must be notified first. Where credits have been returned to your account under the refund rule in our Terms of Service and we have not yet sent you the notice of that refund, deletion waits until the notice has gone out, so that no refund is made and then quietly disappears.
Promotional campaigns that were submitted but never approved have not run, and are deleted without refund on the same basis as unspent credits.
What deletion removes. Your profile, business details, contact information, service listings, portfolio and campaign images, published content, uploaded files, and login credentials are deleted or irreversibly de-identified. Your login is destroyed and the account cannot be accessed again. Any active subscription is cancelled.
What deletion does not remove. The categories in §5 are retained on the legal bases stated there. In addition:
- Information already disclosed to a Pro cannot be recalled. Deleting a Pro account does not retrieve Customer contact details that Pro previously obtained. Deleting a Customer account does not retrieve details already disclosed to a Pro who claimed that Customer's lead. See §4.
- Reviews are kept and the reviewer's name is removed. Reviews written about a deleted Pro remain visible, because they are the Customers' statements. The display name of each Customer who wrote one is replaced with a generic label at the time of deletion.
- Your record with our payment processor is kept. Any active subscription is cancelled, but the customer record held by our payment processor — and the invoice and charge history attached to it — is retained on the financial-records basis in §5. Our own copy of the identifiers linking you to it is removed.
Completion across our providers. Some information is held by the service providers described in §7 — file storage and our payment processor. Removal from those systems is carried out as a separate step immediately following deletion from our own database, and is completed within thirty (30) days. Backup copies are handled as described in §5.
9. Contact
For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@pickally.com. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.