PrivacyLegal™ Privacy Policy  

This Privacy Notice outlines PrivacyLegal™ ("we", "our" or "the Company") practices with respect to information collected from users who access our website at www.privacylegal.ca ("Site"), or otherwise share personal information with us (collectively: "Users").

PrivacyLegal™ collects, uses and discloses personal information:

(a) Through this website (more on that below); and,

(b) in the course of providing legal and consulting services. 

Because we operate in Ontario, Canada, PrivacyLegal is generally subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). In the context of providing legal services, we are also subject to the Law Society of Ontario Rules of Professional Conduct, which include strict confidentiality requirements. Finally, any information provided to us in the context of a legal retainer is protected by solicitor-client privilege.

Personal information is typically collected directly from clients. However, we may also need to collect personal information from non-clients. In most circumstances, the individuals will know about the collection, use and disclosure of their personal information and will have the opportunity to withdraw their consent. In situations where there is no consent or no opportunity to withdraw consent, we will only continue its collection, use or disclosure of the information where permitted or required by law.

The types of personal information collected, used and disclosed will vary depending on the circumstances; however, we only collect, use and disclose personal information that is necessary to provide services. In every matter we are required to collect certain identification information about clients and, where relevant, opposing parties, to check for conflicts, to comply with the “know-your-client” rules imposed by the Law Society of Ontario, and for billing purposes. Depending on the nature of the matter, we may also require other personal information, including financial information, health information, and other details about your circumstances. 

Sometimes we will engage the services of other organizations to help resolve matters. In other cases, PrivacyLegal will work with another consulting, technology or law firm. These arrangements – and the resulting disclosure of personal information – will only take place with your consent. In limited circumstances we may disclose personal information to other third parties with consent or where otherwise required or permitted by law.

In the interest of providing services that are flexible and efficient, we also may outsource certain administrative functions. The service providers we work with must agree to protect your personal information with at least the same degree of protection as we do.

We only use your personal information for marketing purposes with your consent. We will never share your name, email address, or put you on an email list without asking you first.

Recognizing that no system is completely secure, we exercise great care to keep all confidential information, personal or otherwise, safe from loss, theft, and unauthorized access or disclosure. We use an online, cloud-based service provider for file management and storage. 

Please note that PrivacyLegal is located outside the EEA. In such cases, where data is collected from residents within the EEA, we will transfer your data only to such countries as approved by the European Commission as providing adequate level of data protection (such as Canada), enter into legal agreements ensuring an adequate level of data protection, or do so on the basis of consent. Some or all of this information may reside on servers located in the United States, meaning there is a very remote possibility that it could be accessed by law enforcement agencies in Canada or the U.S.

Most personal information is retained for at least 6 years as required by the Law Society of Ontario. 

If you have any questions about this policy, or access your information, please contact us privacy@privacylegal.ca.

We may collect two types of User data from the website. First, collection will include information that is un-identified and non-identifiable information pertaining to a User(s), which may be made available or gathered via your use of the Site (“Non-personal Information”). We are not aware of the identity of a User from which the Non-personal Information was collected. Non-personal Information which is being collected may include your aggregated usage information and technical information transmitted by your device, including certain software and hardware information (e.g. the type of browser and operating system your device uses, language preference, access time, etc.) in order to enhance the functionality of our Site. We may also collect information on your activity on the Site (e.g. pages viewed, online browsing, clicks, actions, etc.).

The second type of information Personal Information which is individually identifiable information, namely information that identifies an individual or may with reasonable effort identify an individual.

We receive your Personal Information from various sources:

• When you voluntarily provide us your personal details in order to register on our Site;
• When you use or access our Site in connection with your use of our services;
• From third party providers, services and public registers (for example, traffic analytics vendors).

How is the information used? With whom do we share the information?

We do not rent, sell, or share Users’ information with third parties except as described in this Privacy Notice.

We may use the information for the following:

• Communicating with you – sending you notices regarding our services, providing you with technical information and responding to any customer service issue you may have;
• To communicate with you and to keep you informed of our latest updates and services;
• To serve you advertisements when you use our Site (see more under "Advertisements"); 
• To market our websites and products (see more under "Marketing"); 
• Conducting statistical and analytical purposes, intended to improve the Site.

In addition to the purposes listed in this Privacy Notice, we may share Personal Information with our trusted third party providers, who may be located in different jurisdictions across the world, for any of the following purposes: 

• Hosting and operating our Site;
• Storing and processing such information on our behalf; 
• Serving you with advertisements and assist us in evaluating the success of our advertising campaigns and help us retarget any of our users;
• Providing you with marketing offers and promotional materials related to our Site and services; 
• Performing research, technical diagnostics or analytics;

We may also disclose information if we have good faith to believe that disclosure of such information is helpful or reasonably necessary to: (i) comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request; (ii) enforce our policies (including our Agreement), including investigations of potential violations thereof; (iii) investigate, detect, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities or other wrongdoing, suspected fraud or security issues; (iv) to establish or exercise our rights to defend against legal claims; (v) prevent harm to the rights, property or safety of us, our users, yourself or any third party; or (vi) for the purpose of collaborating with law enforcement agencies and/or in case we find it necessary in order to enforce intellectual property or other legal rights.

Cookies

We and our trusted partners use cookies and other technologies in our related services, including when you visit our Site or access our services. 

A "cookie" is a small piece of information that a website assign to your device while you are viewing a website. Cookies are very helpful and can be used for various different purposes. These purposes include allowing you to navigate between pages efficiently, enable automatic activation of certain features, remembering your preferences and making the interaction between you and our Services quicker and easier. Cookies are also used to help ensure that the advertisements you see are relevant to you and your interests and to compile statistical data on your use of our Services. 

The Site uses the following types of cookies:

• a. 'session cookies' which are stored only temporarily during a browsing session in order to allow normal use of the system and are deleted from your device when the browser is closed; 
  
  
• b. 'persistent cookies' which are read only by the Site, saved on your computer for a fixed period and are not deleted when the browser is closed. Such cookies are used where we need to know who you are for repeat visits, for example to allow us to store your preferences for the next sign-in; 
  
  
• c. 'third party cookies' which are set by other online services who run content on the page you are viewing, for example by third party analytics companies who monitor and analyze our web access.

Cookies do not contain any information that personally identifies you, but Personal Information that we store about you may be linked, by us, to the information stored in and obtained from cookies. You may remove the cookies by following the instructions of your device preferences; however, if you choose to disable cookies, some features of our Site may not operate properly and your online experience may be limited.

We use a tool which is based on the Snowplow Analytics technology to collect information about your use of the Site. The tool collects information such as how often users access the Site, what pages they visit when they do so, etc. the tool does not collect any Personal Information and is only used by our Site hosting and operating service provider to improve their Site and services.

Use of script libraries (Google Web Fonts)

In order to present our contents correctly and graphically appealing across all browsers, we use script libraries and font libraries such as Google Web Fonts (https://www.google.com/webfonts) on this website. Google Web Fonts are transferred to your browser's cache to avoid multiple loading. If your browser does not support Google Web Fonts or does not allow access, content will be displayed in a default font. 

• Calling script libraries or font libraries automatically triggers a connection to the library operator. In theory, it is possible - but currently also unclear whether and, if so, for what purposes - that operators of corresponding libraries collect data.
  
  
• The privacy policy of the library operator Google can be found here: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy.

We use Google Analytics to analyze traffic on our website. We only collect aggregated, anonymous statistics. We never know when or from where a specific individual or subscriber is accessing the site.

You may request to know whether we have information about you, request rectification or erasure of your data, or exercise the individual rights accorded to you under relevant privacy legislation; however, note that very limited information is collected through this website. 

However, please note that these rights are not absolute, and may be subject to our own legitimate interests and regulatory requirements. 

If you wish to exercise any of the aforementioned rights, or receive more information, please contact our Privacy Officer using our contact link privacy@privacylegal.ca.

Advertisements

We may use a third-party advertising technology to serve advertisements when you access the Site. This technology uses your information with regards to your use of the Services to serve advertisements to you (e.g., by placing third-party cookies on your web browser). 

You may opt-out of many third-party ad networks, including those operated by members of the Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI") and the Digital Advertising Alliance ("DAA"). For more information about this practice by NAI and DAA members, and your choices regarding having this information used by these companies, including how to opt-out of third-party ad networks operated by NAI and DAA members, please visit their respective websites: http://optout.networkadvertising.org/#!/ and http://optout.aboutads.info/#!/.

Retention

We will retain your personal information for as long as necessary to provide our services, and as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our policies. Retention periods will be determined taking into account the type of information that is collected and the purpose for which it is collected, bearing in mind the requirements applicable to the situation and the need to destroy outdated, unused information at the earliest reasonable time. Under applicable regulations, we will keep records containing client personal data, account opening documents, communications and anything else as required by applicable laws and regulations. 

We may rectify, replenish or remove incomplete or inaccurate information, at any time and at our own discretion.

Third party collection of information

Our policy only addresses the use and disclosure of information we collect from you. To the extent you disclose your information to other parties or sites throughout the internet, different rules may apply to their use or disclosure of the information you disclose to them. Accordingly, we encourage you to read the terms and conditions and privacy policy of each third party that you choose to disclose information to. 

This Privacy Notice does not apply to the practices of companies that we do not own or control, or to individuals whom we do not employ or manage, including any of the third parties which we may disclose information as set forth in this Privacy Notice. 

How do we safeguard your information?

We take care in implementing and maintaining the security of the Site and your information. Although we take reasonable steps to safeguard information, we cannot be responsible for the acts of those who gain unauthorized access or abuse our Site, and we make no warranty, express, implied or otherwise, that we will prevent such access.

Marketing

We may use your Personal Information, such as your name, email address, telephone number, etc. ourselves or by using our third party subcontractors for the purpose of providing you with promotional materials, concerning our services, which we believe may interest you. 

Out of respect to your right to privacy we provide you within such marketing materials with means to decline receiving further marketing offers from us. If you unsubscribe we will remove your email address or telephone number from our marketing distribution lists. 

Please note that even if you have unsubscribed from receiving marketing emails from us, we may send you other types of important e-mail communications without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them. These may include customer service announcements or administrative notices.

Corporate transaction

We may share information in the event of a corporate transaction (e.g. sale of a substantial part of our business, merger, consolidation or asset sale). In the event of the above, the transferee or acquiring company will assume the rights and obligations as described in this Privacy Notice.

Minors

We understand the importance of protecting children’s privacy, especially in an online environment. The Site is not designed for or directed at children. Under no circumstances shall we allow use of our services by minors without prior consent or authorization by a parent or legal guardian. We do not knowingly collect Personal Information from minors. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that his or her child has provided us with Personal Information without their consent, he or she should contact us at privacy@privacylegal.ca.

Updates or amendments to this Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to periodically amend or revise the Privacy Notice; material changes will be effective immediately upon the display of the revised Privacy policy. The last revision will be reflected in the "Last modified" section. Your continued use of the Platform, following the notification of such amendments on our website, constitutes your acknowledgment and consent of such amendments to the Privacy Notice and your agreement to be bound by the terms of such amendments.

How to contact us

If you have any general questions about the Site or the information we collect about you and how we use it, you can contact us at privacy@privacylegal.ca.

Constantine Karbaliotis, Barrister & Solicitor, Professional Corporation

Operating as PrivacyLegal™

Last Modified: October 11, 2022