At PORCH INC. (“PORCH”, “we”, us” or “our”), the privacy of its users and other individuals (“you, “your”) is a top priority. Your privacy is at the core of the way we design and build the services (the “PORCH Service” or the “Service”) and products we provide to you. We appreciate that you put your trust in us when you provide us with your personal information and we do not take this lightly.

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We do not compromise with your privacy. We design all of our products and services with your privacy in mind. We strive to be transparent in the way we process your data. We work hard to keep your information secure. We have teams dedicated to keeping your data safe and secure. We constantly update our security practices and invest in our security efforts to enhance the safety of your personal information. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, any and all references to “website” mean https://www.porchcommunity.ca.

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Users can access the PORCH Service via on Devices. A “Device” is any device used to access the PORCH Service, including without limitation a computer, mobile phone, tablet, or other electronic devices. By using our Service, you are consenting to the Processing (collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure, and other uses) described in this Privacy Policy. The use of information collected through our service shall be limited to the purpose of providing the Service for which the PORCH consumer (“Consumer” or “you”) has engaged PORCH to connect with the PORCH community of international immigrant entrepreneurs and professionals

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We may collect and store the following information when running the PORCH Service.

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This policy applies where we are acting as a data controller with respect to the personal data of our service users; in other words, where we determine the purposes and means of the processing of that personal data.

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“Personal Data” is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable living individual. Different pieces of information, which collected together can lead to the identification of a particular person, also constitute personal data. Personally identifiable information includes limited to email addresses, names, personal addresses or mobile numbers.

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“Platform” or “Website” is defined as mobile applications, application programming interfaces (APIs), websites (https://www.porchcommunity.ca) or other digital services provides by Porch Inc. (“PORCH”).

“Services” are the service offerings provided by PORCH which includes but is not limited to a online community for newcomers to Canada.

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Privacy Statement

When you register to apply to become a member of PORCH or otherwise interact with our company, we collect some personal information, such as your name, phone number, email address, company and home and/or business postal addresses. You may also ask us to import your contacts and email history by giving us access to your third-party services such as using your social networking information if you give us access to your account on social network connection services.

 

We use the data you provide to create and update versions of your profile with PORCH to display your identity and the information you choose to share. When you invite others to join PORCH by using the Service, we send them an email for that invitation at the email addresses assigned to them in your address book.

Your Data and Other Information About You

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With your permission (which you grant when you sign up for or begin using our Service), PORCH collects and stores the information you provide or that we collect in order to administer our Services and/or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or our Terms of Service. If you or another user uploads a file to PORCH that has been previously uploaded by you or another user, we may associate all or a portion of the previous file with the applicable accounts rather than storing duplicates. 

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User Data Supplementation

We may receive additional demographic information about you from other sources, including publicly available databases or third parties from whom we have purchased data, and combine this data with information we already have about you. This helps us to update, expand and analyze our records, identify new users, and provide products and services that may be of interest to you. If you provide us with personal information about others, or if others give us your information, we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us.

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PORCH may obtain this business contact and company information from third-party sources, such as business intelligence platforms. The information obtained by these third-party sources is from publicly available sources such as news articles. This information is used to support PORCH marketing and sales efforts. The PORCH team may contact you based on this information to gauge your interest in PORCH’s Services and offerings. You may opt out of these communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link provided in the email.

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Log Data

When you use the Service, we automatically collect certain information from your Device, its software, and your activity using the Services. This may include, for example (but without limitation), the Device’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, the web page visited before or after you came to our website, the information you search for on our website, locale preferences, identification numbers associated with your Devices, your mobile carrier, date and time stamps associated with transactions, system configuration information, metadata, and interactions with the Service, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site.

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Additionally, when you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through PORCH, we collect certain information from you, including your name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers email address, and phone number.  We refer to this information as “Order Information.”

 

When we talk about “Personal Information,” we are talking about both Device Information and Order Information.

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Cookies

“Cookies” are data files that are placed on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. For more information about cookies, and how to disable cookies, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org. PORCH and its partners use cookies or similar technologies to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or service.

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We partner with third parties to either display advertising on our website or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third-party partners may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this website and other sites in order to provide you with advertising based on your browsing activities and interests. If you wish not to have this information used for the purpose of serving you interest-based ads, you may opt-out. Please note this does not opt you out of being served ads. You will continue to receive generic ads. Disabling cookies may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or service.

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We use cookies for the following purposes:

• Authentication - We use cookies to identify You when You visit our platform and as You navigate our website;

• Status - We use cookies to help us to determine if You are logged into our website;

• Personalization - We use cookies to store information about Your preferences and to personalize our website for You;

• Security - We use cookies as an element of the security measures used to protect user accounts, including preventing fraudulent use of login credentials, and to protect our website and services generally;

• Analysis - We use cookies to help us to analyze the use and performance of our website and services; and,

• Cookie Consent - We use cookies to store Your preferences in relation to the use of cookies more generally.

 

Social Media Widgets/Buttons

Our website may include social media features, such as the Facebook Like button and widgets, such as the “Share This” button for Twitter and LinkedIn. These features may collect your IP address and the page you are visiting on our site, and they may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

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Purpose and Legal Basis for Using Personal Information

In the course of using the Service, we may collect or otherwise obtain information that can be used to contact or identify you (“Personal Information”). Under one or more of the following GDPR lawful bases:

• Data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes.

• Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract.

• Processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.

• Processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person.

• Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

• Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where data subject is a child

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Personal Information is or may be used for the following purposes:

• To provide and improve our Service.

• To administer your use of the Service

• To ensure our legal compliance obligations.

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If you no longer wish to receive communications from us that are not required for the Service, please follow the “unsubscribe” instructions provided in any of those communications.

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We do not sell Personal Information to third parties.

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Service Providers, Business Partners and Others

We may use certain trusted third-party companies and individuals to help us provide, analyze, and improve the Service (including but not limited to data storage, maintenance services, database management, web analytics, payment processing, and improvement of the Service’s features). These third parties may have access to your information for purposes of performing these tasks on our behalf and under obligations similar to those in this Privacy Policy. As of the date this policy went into effect, we use Slack and Google Drive storage service to store some of your information (for example, your files).

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Third-Party Applications

Our website includes links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from those of PORCH. If you submit personal information to any of those websites, your information is governed by their privacy policies.

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We share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above.  For example, we use Google Analytics to help us understand how our users use the Site--you can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here:  https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/.  You can also opt out of Google Analytics here:  https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

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We are not responsible for what those parties do with your information, so you should make sure you trust the application and that it has a privacy policy that is acceptable to you.

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Do Not Track

Please note that we do not alter our Site’s data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.

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Compliance with Laws and Law Enforcement Requests; Protection of PORCHs’ Rights

We may disclose to third parties data stored in your PORCH account and information about you that we collect only in the ways that are described in this privacy policy and when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation, or compulsory legal request, such as to comply with a subpoena; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of PORCH or its users; or (d) to protect PORCH’ rights. If we provide any data stored in your PORCH account to a law enforcement agency, we will remove PORCH’ encryption from the information before providing it to law enforcement.

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Business Transfers

If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction, but we will notify you (for example, via email, sign in notification, and/or a prominent notice on our website) if that happens or if your information otherwise becomes subject to a different privacy policy in lieu of this one. We will also notify you of choices you may have regarding the information.

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Changing or Deleting Your Information

Upon request, PORCH will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information. If you are a registered user, you may review, update, correct, or delete certain Personal Information provided in your registration or account profile by changing your account settings. If your personal information changes, or if you no longer desire our Service, you may update or delete it by making the change in your account settings, although (in some cases) we may retain copies of your information if required by law, to protect our rights, or if it is not technically reasonably feasible to remove it. You may at any time withdraw any consent that you have provided to us to process your information, or exercise any of the following rights by contacting us as provided below. Please note that we may ask you to verify your identity before taking further action on your request, for security purposes.

• Right of Access – the right to be informed of and request access to the personal data we process about you.

• Right to Rectification – the right to request that we amend or update your personal data where it is inaccurate or incomplete.

• Right to Erasure – the right to request that we delete your personal data.

• Right to Restrict – the right to request that we temporarily or permanently stop processing all or some of your personal data.

• Right to Object – the right, at any time, to object to us processing your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation.

• the right to object to your personal data being processed for direct marketing purposes.

• Right to Data Portability – the right to request a copy of your personal data in electronic format and the right to transmit that personal data for use in another party’s service; and

• Right not to be subject to Automated Decision-making.

• Right to Non-Discrimination – You have a right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your privacy rights as identified in this section of the privacy notice as conferred by the CCPA, GDPR and PIPEDA.

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For questions about your Personal Information on our Service, please contact hello@porchcommunity.ca. We will respond to your inquiry within 30 days.

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Data Retention

PORCH will retain personal data we process on behalf of our Consumers for as long as needed to provide services to our Consumer. Our intention is to retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you with the Services. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide you Services, you may delete your account. We may retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, enforce our agreements and rights, or if it is not technically reasonably feasible to remove it. Consistent with these requirements, we will try to delete your information quickly upon request. Please note, that PORCH may retain your personal data for longer where there is a legal obligation, contractual, or legitimate interest, unless these interests are overridden by the individual’s fundamental rights; in those cases data will be removed once it is no longer needed for those purposes. In addition, we do not provide access, transfer, change, or delete information from our servers’ files where that right adversely affects the rights of others.

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Choice/Opt-Out

If you wish to subscribe to our newsletter(s), we will use your name and email address to send the newsletter to you. You may choose to stop receiving our newsletter or marketing emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails.

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Blogs

Our website offers publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personal information from our blog or community forum, contact us at hello@porchcommunity.ca. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information.

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Security

PORCH stresses its privacy and security standards. Although no one can guarantee absolute security, we regularly re-evaluate our privacy and security policies in order to adapt to new challenges. We follow generally accepted standards to protect the information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. We encrypt the most sensitive data that you store on PORCH using the standard encryption methods.

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Children

Our Services are not directed to persons under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with Personal Information without the parent’s consent, he or she should contact us at hello@porchcommunity.ca. If we become aware that a child under 18 has provided us with Personal Information, we will take steps to delete such information from our files.

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Changes

We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.

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Choice

PORCH acknowledges that you have the right to access your personal information. We collect information for our clients. If you are a user of one of our services and would no longer like to be contacted by one of our users that use our service, please contact the user that you interact with directly.

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Your Rights

If you do not want your personal information collected, used, maintained, transferred, disclosed or retained by us as provided in this Privacy Policy, you should not use the website and you should refrain from: (a) registering for any specific tool or application that collects personal information; and (b) purchasing any product or service from us. Further, you may uninstall the website from your device using the standard uninstall process for your device. If you uninstall the website from your device, the unique identifier associated with your device will continue to be stored by us. If you re-install the website on the same device, we will be able to re-associate this identifier to your previous transactions and activities. You may also use tools and account settings that help you to access, rectify or delete information that you provided to us and that’s associated with your account directly within the website. Lastly, devices have permission systems for specific types of device data and notifications, such as address book and location services as well as push notifications. You can change your settings on your device to either consent or oppose the collection of the corresponding information or the display of the corresponding notifications. Please note that changing such device settings may result in your loss of full functionality of the website.

 

You may request a copy of the personal information which you have provided to us by advising PORCH’s Privacy Officer at the address provided below. If you have any questions or enquiries relating to our privacy practices or procedures, or if you believe that the personal information that PORCH holds about you is not accurate, complete or up-to-date, you may write to PORCH’s Privacy Officer at the address provided below. If you are able to establish that the information is not accurate, complete or up to date, we will take reasonable steps to correct the information so that it is accurate, complete and up to date. We may ask you to provide proof of identity before we can answer the above requests.

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Service Provider, Sub-Processors/Onward Transfer

PORCH may transfer personal information to companies that help us provide our service. Transfers to subsequent third parties are covered by the provisions in this Policy regarding notice and choice, as well as the service agreements with our users. A list of Sub-Processors can be made available upon request.

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Non-Canadian Users

If you are located outside of Canada, please note that the information you provide to us will be used, maintained, retained, transferred and disclosed in Canada, where laws regarding use of personal information may be less stringent than the laws in your country. By using our Platform, you consent to such use, maintenance, retention, transfer and disclosure. You also consent to the adjudication of any disputes arising in connection with the Platform, this Privacy Policy and the Terms and Conditions in the Federal Court of Canada and the courts of the Province of Ontario.

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Questions or Comments

We welcome questions and comments about this Privacy Policy. If you wish to access, verify and/or amend your personal information or make a complaint under this Privacy Policy, please contact the Company’s Privacy Officer at: hello@porchcommunity.ca.