Privacy Policy
How Great North Painting collects, uses and protects your contact details and home photos, who handles them for us, and your rights.
Last updated
Who we are
Great North Painting is a residential and commercial painting company based in North York, Toronto, Ontario. This policy explains how we handle personal information on greatnorthpainting.com, in our estimate and contact forms, and in the calls, texts and emails you send us.
We follow Canada's privacy law for businesses, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). We are responsible for the personal information we collect, including what our service providers handle for us.
Our Privacy Officer is accountable for how we handle personal information. Write to them at info@greatnorthpainting.com, and we will tell you who they are if you ask. This policy does not cover other sites we link to.
What we collect
We collect only what we need to reply, quote, do the work and keep this site running safely.
- Estimate and contact forms: your name, email address, phone number and postal code, and how you like to be reached. Also your answers about the job, your timing, and any notes or message you add. The forms don't take photos.
- Your email choice: whether you ticked the box for marketing email, when you ticked it, and the exact words the form showed you.
- Where your request came from: the page you sent it from and the link that brought you there, with any campaign tags. Also your IP address and browser details.
- Calls, texts and emails: your phone number or email address, and anything you send us, such as photos or plans.
- Page speed: anonymous load times, with your browser, device type and country. Vercel, which measures them, says this data cannot identify you.
- Customer records: if we work for you, the job address, your quote, contract, invoices, a record of payments, any warranty requests, and the notes and photos our crew take of the work.
- Job applications: anything you send us when you apply to work with us.
Some form fields are optional. A range sent by email needs only your name and email address, and a written quote also needs your phone number and postal code.
This site is for adults arranging painting work, and we do not knowingly collect information about children.
How we use it
We use your information to:
- Reply to you and prepare your price range and written quote.
- Book any visit to see the job, do the work and handle warranty requests.
- Send the emails you ask for, such as your range, your quote and your booking details.
- Send painting tips and seasonal offers by email, only if you ticked the box.
- Stop spam, bots and repeated form requests.
- Learn which pages, links and ads bring us requests.
- Keep the business records the law requires, such as tax records.
- Check how fast our pages load, using anonymous data.
We use your details only for these purposes. Unless the law requires a new use, we will ask for your consent before using them for anything else. We never sell your personal information.
Photos and reviews
Photos are optional, and they let a crew lead quote your job, often without a visit. We use them only to prepare your quote. We never publish them without your written consent.
Our website doesn't take photos. You text them to our business line or email them to info@greatnorthpainting.com, and they arrive exactly as you send them. Many phones save the place a photo was taken inside the file, so check your phone's location setting first. Frame your photos on the walls, trim or cabinets to be painted, and leave out people and papers.
While we work on your home, our crew may photograph the work, to record the job and to settle any warranty request. Those photos are kept in our office system with your customer record, and we publish none of them without your written consent.
If you review us publicly, for example on Google or HomeStars, we may show that review on our reviews page. It appears as written, with your first name and last initial, your city and where you posted it. If you'd like it taken off our page, tell us and we will remove it.
Marketing email and your consent
Our forms have an unticked box for painting tips and seasonal offers by email. We send those emails only if you tick it.
When you tick it, we record the date and time and the exact words the form showed you, with your request. We also add your name and email address to our mailing list at Brevo. Canada's anti-spam law (CASL) puts the burden of proving consent on the sender, so we keep that record.
Emails about your own request, such as your range, quote and booking, don't need that box. We send them because you asked for them.
Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link. You can also reply "unsubscribe" to any email from us, or write to info@greatnorthpainting.com. We stop within 10 business days at the latest, as CASL requires.
Who handles it for us
A few service providers run our website and email for us. Each one handles your information on our instructions, under its own data processing terms.
| Provider | What it does for us | Based in |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Hosts this website and runs its forms. Its Speed Insights tool measures page speed anonymously. | United States |
| Cloudflare | Runs the Turnstile spam check on our forms, and forwards email sent to our address on to our inbox. | United States |
| Upstash | Counts form requests from each address over 10 minutes, so a single source can't flood our forms. It sees only a scrambled (hashed) form of your IP address. | United States |
| Brevo | Sends our emails: your request to our inbox, your range to you and, if you agreed, our tips and offers. Keeps our mailing list. | France |
| MongoDB | Hosts the database of our office system (MongoDB Atlas): requests sent through our forms, and the records and photos of jobs we do. | United States |
Turnstile checks signals such as your IP address, browser and connection to tell people from bots. It loads only when you start the contact form or reach the estimator's last step. Cloudflare also uses those signals to improve Turnstile. For the email we receive, Cloudflare says it does not look into, queue or store the messages it forwards.
We share information without your consent only where the law allows or requires it, such as to comply with a court order. If Great North Painting is sold or merged, your information may pass to the new owner, who must protect it as this policy says.
Requests, emails and the photos you email us are kept in our business email inbox, with our email provider. Requests sent through our forms are also kept in our office system, along with the quote and records of any job we do for you. Calls, texts and the photos you text us reach us through our phone provider.
We don't give your details to other businesses for their own marketing, unless you ask us to pass them on.
Information stored outside Canada
Our service providers store and process information in the United States, the European Union and other countries. While it is there, the laws of those countries apply to it. Their law enforcement and national security authorities may be able to access it.
We stay responsible for your information while a provider handles it for us, and we rely on each provider's contract terms to protect it.
Tools we have not switched on
We plan to add the tools below, but none of them runs today. We will update this policy before we switch any of them on.
- Google Analytics 4, to count visits and see which pages help people. It would run only if you agree, through a consent banner that uses Google Consent Mode. See Google's privacy policy.
- Microsoft Clarity, to see how people use our pages. It would also run only if you agree.
- CallRail call tracking, to show which page or ad led to a call. It can record calls. We do not record calls today, and a recorded call would start with a notice.
- Sentry, to report website errors so we can fix them.
How long we keep it
We keep personal information only as long as we need it. Then we delete it or make it anonymous.
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| The estimator's draft of your answers and contact details, kept in your browser | Until you send the form or close the tab |
| Your reference number, first name and range, kept in your browser for the thank-you page | Until you close the tab |
| Requests, messages and photos that don't lead to a job | 2 years after our last contact |
| Customer records, including job photos, quotes, contracts, invoices and warranty requests | 6 years after the end of the tax year the job finished in |
| Your marketing email consent record | While we email you, then 3 years after you unsubscribe |
| Rate-limit counts, kept under a scrambled form of your IP address | Counted over 10 minutes, then left to expire on their own |
| A copy of your request in our server log, made only if our email fails to send | Deleted automatically by Vercel within a day |
Six years follows the Canada Revenue Agency's rule for business records. If you unsubscribe, we keep your email address on a do-not-email list so we don't write to you again. If you ask for your information, we keep it until you have had every chance to use your rights, even past these periods. Our cookie policy lists everything this site keeps in your browser.
How we protect it
- Every page and form on this site is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
- Spam checks and rate limits guard our forms.
- Only the people who need your information to quote, schedule or do your job can see it.
- Our office system needs each staff member's own sign-in, shows our crews only the jobs they work on, and keeps a record of who changed what.
No website or inbox is completely secure. Please leave out anything we don't need, such as door codes or payment card numbers.
If a breach of our safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will tell you. We will also report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, as PIPEDA requires. We keep a record of every breach for two years.
Your rights and choices
- See a range first. Our estimate page shows a price range before it asks for any contact details.
- Access. Ask what personal information we hold about you, how we use it and who we have shared it with. We reply within 30 days. If we need more time, which the law allows in some cases, we will tell you why within those 30 days.
- Correction. If something we hold is wrong or incomplete, tell us and we will fix it.
- Withdraw consent. You can stop marketing email at any time. You can also withdraw consent for other uses, subject to legal or contract limits and reasonable notice. We will explain what that means for your quote or job.
To make a request, email info@greatnorthpainting.com. Requests are free. We may ask you to confirm who you are, so we don't give your information to someone else. If you need help putting a request into words, ask us.
Questions and complaints
Write to info@greatnorthpainting.com with any question or concern about your information, and we will try to put it right. If we can't, you can take it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The Commissioner's office asks people to raise a concern with the business first.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we will post the new version here with a new date. If a change affects how we use information you have already given us, we will ask for your consent where the law requires it.