Privacy Policy

Open Housing Canada is a federally registered Canadian non-profit located at 2028 W 11th Ave, Vancouver, BC V6J 2C9. We are responsible for the personal information described in this policy.

Questions, requests and concerns about privacy go to our privacy contact at privacy@openhousingcanada.ca.

This policy covers openhousingcanada.ca, the forms on it, member accounts, and the emails we exchange with you. Other websites we link to, including partner sites, have their own privacy policies.

Information you give us

• Contact form: your name, email address, organization, role and message.
• Hackathon application: the team lead’s name, email address, organization and affiliation; team name and size; preferred workflow; and anything you add in the “other team members” and “anything we should know” fields. If you list teammates, please only include people who have agreed to share their details with us.
• Member accounts: your name, email address, a securely hashed password, and whether you asked to receive our newsletter. Accounts are managed by our central accounts service, which also supports our related sites.
• Emails with our team: when you email our staff, or they email you, we may record the sender, recipients, subject line, a short preview and the date in our contact records, so we can keep track of our conversations with partners.

Information collected automatically

• IP address: used briefly, in memory, to limit repeated form submissions and sign-in attempts. It is not stored for public visitors. When our staff use the admin area, their IP address is kept in a security log.
• Server logs: our hosting provider keeps standard technical logs (such as requested pages and errors) to operate and secure the site.
• Website analytics: to learn which pages and links are useful, our own cookie-free analytics records the page you visit, the site you came from (its name only), the text and destination of links and buttons you click, your device type (mobile, tablet or desktop) and your time zone as an approximate location. We don’t use cookies for this, don’t store your IP address, and don’t record anything you type. To count daily visitors without identifying anyone, we use a one-way code whose key is discarded every day, so visits can’t be linked across days or traced back to you. If your browser sends a “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” signal, nothing is recorded.
• Cookies: a small number of essential cookies, described in section 11. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies.

• To answer your questions and follow up on partnership conversations.
• To review hackathon applications, tell applicants whether they have been accepted, and run the event, including sending the data pack to accepted teams.
• To create and secure your account and let you sign in.
• To send news and updates about our work, as described in section 6.
• To understand how the site is used, so we can improve it (cookie-free analytics, as described above).
• To protect the site against abuse, fraud and security incidents.
• To meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising.

Under Canadian privacy law we rely on your consent, which you give when you submit a form or create an account, and which you can withdraw at any time (see section 10). If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the GDPR requires us to name a legal basis for each use:

• Consent — the newsletter, and any optional information you choose to give.
• Steps at your request / contract — reviewing your hackathon application, running the event, and providing your account.
• Legitimate interests — replying to enquiries, keeping records of our conversations with partners, understanding how the site is used, and keeping the site secure. We only rely on this where it does not override your rights.
• Legal obligation — where the law requires us to keep or disclose information.

We email you about the things you contacted us about or applied for. We also send news and updates about our work and programs. We send these only as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) allows: to people who have agreed to receive them, or where the law implies consent — for example, for a limited time after you contact us or apply to one of our programs.

Every update identifies Open Housing Canada, includes our mailing address, and has an unsubscribe link. We act on unsubscribe requests within 10 business days. You can also ask us to stop at privacy@openhousingcanada.ca.

We share personal information with service providers that help us run the site, under agreements that require them to protect it and use it only on our instructions:

We also share hackathon applications with the organizations that partner with us to run the DASH Configurator Hackathon, including BC Housing and our partner and sponsor, More and Better Housing, so they can help review applications and run the event. We tell applicants this on the application form.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect the safety of any person or the security of our services.

Some of our service providers store or process information outside Canada, including in the United States. When that happens, your information is subject to the laws of that country and may be accessible to its authorities. For people in the EU or UK, we rely on the safeguards our providers offer for international transfers, such as standard contractual clauses.

When information is no longer needed, we delete it or make it anonymous.

You can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your information, where we don’t need to keep it;
• stop sending you newsletters, or withdraw any other consent you have given.

If you are in the EU or UK you can also ask us to restrict or object to how we use your information, and to send it to you or another organization in a portable format.

To make a request, email privacy@openhousingcanada.ca. We may need to confirm your identity. We will respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, or, in the EU or UK, your local data protection authority.

We only use cookies that the site needs to work. Because they are essential, they don’t require consent, and we don’t show a cookie banner. Our website analytics works without cookies (see section 3), and we use no advertising or third-party tracking cookies. Our fonts are served from our own site.

We use encrypted connections (HTTPS) for the whole site, store passwords only as secure hashes, limit access to personal information to staff who need it, require staff to sign in to our admin area, and keep a log of administrative actions. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information and creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify you and the regulators as the law requires.

You must be 18 or older to create an account or apply to the DASH Configurator Hackathon, and every member of a hackathon team must be 18 or older. Our site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe we have, contact us and we will delete it.

We will update this page when our practices change and change the “Last updated” date above. If a change is significant, we will say so on this page and, where appropriate, tell you by email.

Questions or requests about privacy: privacy@openhousingcanada.ca. See also our Terms of Service.