Privacy Policy

Last updated on July 1, 2021

The privacy of your data — and it is your data, not ours! — is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.

This policy applies to all products built and maintained by Code Bards including Calendarium and Vegan Realm.

What we collect and why

Our guiding principle is to collect only what we need. Here’s what that means in practice:

Identity & access

When you sign up for a Code Bards product, we typically ask for identifying information such as your name and email address. That’s just so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you invoices, updates, or other essential information. We’ll never sell your personal info to third parties, and we won’t use your name in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

When you pay for a Code Bards product, we ask for your credit card and postal code. That’s so we can charge you for service, calculate taxes due, and send you invoices. Your credit card is passed directly to our payment processor and doesn’t ever go through our servers. Your postal code is also passed directly to our payment processor to calculate any sales tax due in Canada, to detect fraudulent credit card transactions, and to print on your invoices.

Geolocation data

Web analytics data — described further in the Website Interactions section — are tied temporarily to IP addresses to assist with troubleshooting cases. Web analytics data is erased when the log files are full and new data starts overwriting old data.

Website interactions

When you browse our main website or applications, your browser automatically shares certain information such as which operating system and browser version you are using. We don't track that information, neither by ourselves nor with the help of a third-party web analytics software.

Local storage and Do Not Track

We use a persistent first-party local storage space to make it easier for you to use our applications. This lets you signed in your account even when you close your browser and device, until you manually sign out.

Local storage is a space in your browser where a website can store information, very similar to cookies, to remember your login information, site preferences, and more. You can adjust cookie retention settings in your own browser and these settings also applies to local storage handling. To learn more about cookies, including how to view which cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please visit: www.allaboutcookies.org.

At this time, our sites and applications do not respond to Do Not Track beacons sent by browser plugins. But we do not track, so it's all the same.

Voluntary correspondence

When you write Code Bards with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including the email address, so that we have a history of past correspondences to reference if you reach out in the future.

Information we do not collect

We don’t collect any characteristics of protected classifications including age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or physical and mental abilities or disabilities. You may provide these data voluntarily, such as if you include a pronoun preference in your email signature when writing into our Support team.

When we access or share your information

Our default practice is to not access your information. The only times we’ll ever access or share your info are:

To provide products or services you’ve requested. We do use some third-party services to run our applications and only to the extent necessary process some or all of your personal information via these third parties. You can view the list of third-party services we use: subprocessors. Having subprocessors means we are using technology to access your data. No Code Bards human looks at your data for these purposes unless an error occurs that stops an automated process from working and requires manual intervention to fix. These are rare cases and when they happen, we look for root cause solutions as much as possible to avoid them from reoccurring.

To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your account to help you with a Support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.

To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a customer’s account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We have an obligation to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us. We do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we do discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will report the incident to the appropriate authorities.

When required under applicable law.

Code Bards is a Canadian company and all data infrastructure are located in Canada. We operates in the province of Quebec.

• If Canada law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring we share data, we have to comply. Otherwise, we flat-out reject requests from local and federal law enforcement when they seek data. And unless we’re legally prevented from it, we’ll always inform you when such requests are made. In the event a government authority outside Canada approaches Code Bards with a request, our default stance is to refuse unless the Canadian government compels us to comply through procedures outlined in a mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement.
• Similarly, if Code Bards receives a request to preserve data, we refuse unless compelled by either the Canadian law, or a properly served Canadian subpoena for civil matters. In both of these situations, we have to comply. In these situations, we notify affected customers as soon as possible unless we are legally prohibited from doing so. We do not share preserved data unless absolutely required under the law or compelled by a court order that we choose not to appeal. Furthermore, unless we receive a proper warrant, court order, or subpoena before the required preservation period expires, we destroy any preserved copies we made of customer data once the preservation period lapses.
• If we get an informal request from any person, organization, or entity, we do not assist.
• If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to share billing-related information. If that happens, we only share the bare minimum needed such as postal codes.

Finally, if Code Bards is acquired by or merged with another company — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any info about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Your rights with respect to your information

At Code Bards, we apply the same data rights to all customers, regardless of their location. Currently some of the most privacy-forward regulations in place are the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA") in the US, and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ("PIPEDA") in Canada. Code Bards recognizes all of the rights granted in these regulations, except as limited by applicable law. These rights include:

• Right to Know. You have the right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared or sold. We outline both the categories and specific bits of data we collect, as well as how they are used, in this privacy policy.
• Right of Access. This includes your right to access the personal information we gather about you, and your right to obtain information about the sharing, storage, security and processing of that information.
• Right to Correction. You have the right to request correction of your personal information.
• Right to Erasure / “To be Forgotten”. This is your right to request, subject to certain limitations under applicable law, that your personal information be erased from our possession and, by extension, all of our service providers. Fulfillment of some data deletion requests may prevent you from using Code Bards services because our applications may then no longer work. In such cases, a data deletion request may result in closing your account.
• Right to Complain. You have the right to make a complaint regarding our handling of your personal information with the appropriate supervisory authority. To identify your specific authority or find out more about this right, EU individuals should go to https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.
• Right to Restrict Processing. This is your right to request restriction of how and why your personal information is used or processed, including opting out of sale of personal information. (Again: we never have and never will sell your personal data.)
• Right to Object. You have the right, in certain situations, to object to how or why your personal information is processed.
• Right to Portability. You have the right to receive the personal information we have about you and the right to transmit it to another party.
• Right to not be subject to Automated Decision-Making. You have the right to object and prevent any decision that could have a legal, or similarly significant, effect on you from being made solely based on automated processes. This right is limited, however, if the decision is necessary for performance of any contract between you and us, is allowed by applicable law, or is based on your explicit consent.
• Right to Non-Discrimination. This right stems from the CCPA. We do not and will not charge you a different amount to use our products, offer you different discounts, or give you a lower level of customer service because you have exercised your data privacy rights. However, the exercise of certain rights (such as the right “to be forgotten”) may, by virtue of your exercising those rights, prevent you from using our Services.

Many of these rights can be exercised by signing in and directly updating your account information.

If you have questions about exercising these rights or need assistance, please contact us at grove@codebards.io or at Code Bards, 509 rue Racine, Québec, QC, G2B 1G3, Canada. For requests to delete personal information or know what personal information has been collected, we will first verify your identity using a combination of at least two pieces of information already collected including your user email address. If an authorized agent is corresponding on your behalf, we will first need written consent with a signature from the account holder before proceeding.

If you are in the EU, you can identify your specific authority to file a complaint or find out more about GDPR, at https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/board/members_en.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted.

For products, most data are not encrypted while they live in our database (since it needs to be ready to send to you when you need it), but we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest. For more information about how we keep your information secure, please review our security overview.

What happens when you delete data in your product accounts

In many of our applications, we give you the option to delete data. Anything you delete on your product accounts is deleted immediately from our active server. We also have some backups of our application databases, which are kept for up to 7 days. In total, when you delete things in our applications, they are purged within 8 days from all of our systems and logs. Retrieving data for a single account from a backup is cost-prohibitive and unduly burdensome so if you change your mind you’ll need to do so before you confirm that you want to delete something.

We don't delete your data after an account is cancelled. You can request that your account data be permanently deleted. Please refer to our Cancellation policy for more details.

Location of site and data

Our products and other web properties are operated in Canada. Our payment processor is located in the USA. If you are located in the European Union or elsewhere outside of Canada, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in Canada, and any billing information provided will be transferred to and stored in the USA. By using our Site, participating in any of our services and/or providing us with your information, you consent to this transfer.

When transferring personal data from the EU

The GDPR requires that any data transferred out of the EU must be treated with the same level of protection that the EU privacy laws grant. The privacy laws of Canada generally meet that requirement in the context of private sector companies like ours.

Changes & questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices. You can view a history of the changes to our policies since 2021 on GitHub. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will also announce them by email to our customers.

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at grove@codebards.io and we’ll be happy to answer them!