Privacy policy.

1. Who we are

Family Vantage is a Canadian business operated from British Columbia. Questions about privacy, and requests under the rights set out in section 9, go to our Privacy Officer at hello@familyvantage.ca. We will identify the individual accountable for our privacy practices on request.

2. What we collect, and from whom

Families using the program

Nothing. The program has no accounts and no sign-in. It never asks for a name, an email address, a phone number, a location, or anything about your children. The choices you make — family size, meal track, allergens, which groceries you have ticked off — are stored in your own browser on your own device, and the program is built so that it cannot send them anywhere: a security policy inside the page blocks every outside connection except the two named below, and that policy is checked before every release.

Families who buy a membership

When you buy through a group host, a fundraiser, or directly from us, your payment is taken by Stripe, our payment processor. Stripe collects what a payment needs — your name, card details, email address and, where required, a billing postal code — under its own privacy policy. From Stripe, we receive your name, your email address, the amount paid, the date, and which host’s round you joined. We never see or store your card number.

Families whose organization pays

Nothing, and there is no step at which we could. A union, military family resource centre, library or employer sends its people a link; the people who open it never tell us who they are, never create an account, and never pay us. We do not receive a membership list, a roster, an email list or a headcount of who used it, and we do not want one.

People who write to us

If you email us, we hold your email address and whatever you chose to write, for as long as it takes to help you and as described in section 7.

Hosts, organizations and business partners

We hold the business contact details of the people we work with — a host’s name and email, an organization’s signing contact, the people copied on a quote, and the invoice and payment details needed to bill and be paid — for the purpose of running their round or licence. This is ordinary business contact information about employees acting in their work capacity, not information about the families they serve.

Visitors to this website and the program

Both this website and the program use Umami, a cookieless analytics service. It counts page views, which organization’s door was opened and roughly how long it was open. It sets no cookie, stores no IP address, and holds nothing that could identify a person or a device. Inside the program it counts how often a door is opened — the aggregate reporting we give organizations — never who opened it.

3. Why we use it

• To deliver your membership: the moment your payment succeeds, your welcome email goes out carrying your private link and access word. If you lose them we resend them to the same address.
• To handle refunds, and to answer your questions.
• To count each round, so a host can be paid their share or told how many households joined.
• To run an organization’s licence: to set up and support its door, answer its questions, invoice it, and give it the aggregate reporting described below.
• To keep the accounting and tax records Canadian law requires a business to keep.
• To understand, in aggregate, which parts of the website and program are used.

We do not use your details for marketing. You will hear from us about your own membership — your welcome email, an answer to your question, a note when your year is near its end — and not otherwise, unless you ask.

4. Who we share it with

• Stripe, which processes payments and refunds and holds your card details on our behalf. Stripe is certified to the highest level of the payment-card security standard (PCI DSS Level 1).
• Umami, which receives the anonymous visit counts described above — nothing that identifies you.
• Make (make.com), the automation service that connects Stripe to our email. When your payment succeeds it receives your name and email address, and the round you joined, purely so your welcome email can go out straight away instead of waiting on us. It sends nothing to anyone but you.
• Our email provider, through which welcome emails and replies are sent, like any business mailbox.
• Your host or organization receives counts only: a host is told how many households joined their round, and an organization is told how many times its door was opened and roughly for how long. Neither receives names, email addresses, or anything that could identify a household — and our agreements with them say so.
• Authorities, only if the law requires it — for example, a court order or the tax records a business must produce.

That is the whole list. We do not sell, rent, trade or otherwise give your information to anyone else.

5. If you are an organization licensing the program

This section is the one a privacy officer, a security reviewer or a union’s member-protection committee usually needs, so it is written to answer those questions directly.

What we collect about your people

Nothing. There is no roster, no membership list, no headcount of individuals, no email list, no accounts and no logins. You send your people a link; whoever opens it does so anonymously. We could not produce a list of your users if we were asked, because one has never existed.

What we collect about your organization

Business contact details for the people we deal with — name, work email, work phone, job title — plus the quote, agreement, invoices and payment records for your licence. We keep these to run and bill the licence and to meet Canadian record-keeping law.

What we give back to you

Aggregate, anonymous usage: how many times your door was opened over a period, and roughly how long it was open. Nothing else exists to give. We cannot tell you who opened it, how many distinct households used it, or anything about any individual — and we will say the same to anyone else who asks, including you.

Children

The program is bought and opened by adults. It collects nothing from anyone, which means it collects nothing from a child. There is no child data to disclose, breach, sell or subpoena.

Where the data lives

The program is a static web page served from our hosting; it has no database of users and no server that receives anything from a family’s device. Payment records sit with Stripe. The welcome email is triggered by Make, which passes a buyer’s name and email address from Stripe to our mailbox and keeps them only in its own run history. Business correspondence sits in our email. Analytics counts sit with Umami and identify nobody. Those are all the systems there are, and none of them holds anything about a family using the program.

Your own review process

We are glad to complete a vendor privacy questionnaire, a security review or an accessibility declaration, and to put this in writing in your agreement. Send the form to hello@familyvantage.ca. If a question expects a per-user answer that our design makes impossible, we will say so plainly rather than guess — that trade is the whole point of building it this way.

6. How it is disclosed and where it goes

Information moves in three ways, and no others: inside Stripe’s own systems (your payment and any refund); through Make, which carries your name and email address from Stripe to our mailbox so the welcome email can be sent; and by email (that welcome email, your reply and ours). We do not export customer lists, we do not load them into marketing or advertising tools, and we do not keep a separate customer database.

Stripe, Make and Umami operate servers that may be outside Canada, including in the United States and the European Union, and are subject to the laws there. Stripe protects payment data under its own safeguards and privacy policy; Make handles only a name and an email address, and only in transit; the Umami data cannot identify anyone.

7. How it is kept safe

• Card numbers never reach us. They are entered on Stripe’s secure checkout page and stay with Stripe.
• Our mailbox and our Stripe and Make accounts are protected by strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication. Access is limited to authorized personnel who need it for their work, and that list is kept as short as running the business allows.
• There is no customer database to breach: what we hold is the record Stripe keeps, the emails in one mailbox, and the short run history Make keeps of the messages it has sent.
• The program itself cannot send data anywhere. Its outbound connections are limited by policy to its own site and the two services named here, and that policy is enforced by an automated check before every release.
• This website and the program are served over HTTPS.

8. How long we keep it

• Welcome and support emails: for the length of your membership and one year after, so we can still resend a lost link, then deleted.
• Payment and refund records: for as long as Canadian tax law requires a business to keep them, currently up to seven years, then deleted.
• Organization agreements, quotes and invoices: for the term and for as long afterwards as tax and limitation law requires, then deleted.
• Make’s run history: kept only as long as its own retention setting allows, then deleted automatically. It holds nothing beyond the name and address that welcome email went to.
• Umami counts: kept in aggregate; they were never about you in the first place.

Ask, and we will delete what we hold about you sooner — everything except the payment records the law requires us to keep.

9. Your rights

Under Canada’s privacy laws (PIPEDA, and British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act) you can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and withdraw your consent to our using it. Email hello@familyvantage.ca and we will answer within thirty days, usually much sooner. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

10. Children

Family Vantage is bought and used by parents and caregivers. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under the age of majority, and the program collects nothing from anyone at all. If you believe a child has sent us something, tell us and we will delete it.

11. Cookies and your device

This website sets no cookies. The program sets no cookies. The program does store your own settings — family size, meal track, allergens, ticked groceries — in your browser’s local storage on your device, so the page remembers you between visits. That storage is yours: it never leaves your device, we cannot read it, and clearing your browser data clears it.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle information, we change this page and the date at the top. A change that would use your information in a new way would need your consent first.

Anything about this policy: hello@familyvantage.ca.