Privacy Policy

This policy explains how FILTERATY Ltd. ("Filteraty", "we", "us"), based in Toronto, Ontario, collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information when you use the Filteraty website, mobile apps, emails, and notifications (the "Service"). We handle personal information under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable Ontario law.

Up front, because it matters: we use service providers that may store or process personal information outside Canada, including in the United States. Information processed outside Canada may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement, and national-security authorities of that country under its laws. Section 7 lists the providers. We remain accountable for your information wherever it is processed, and we use contracts and safeguards with each provider — but no contract can override another country’s laws.

Filteraty’s Privacy Officer is accountable for this policy and for our handling of personal information: Privacy Officer, FILTERATY Ltd., Toronto, Ontario — info@filteraty.com. Contact the Privacy Officer for access requests, corrections, complaints, or any privacy question. We respond within 30 days.

We collect only what the Service needs to work. From everyone:

• Account information — name, email address, password (stored only as a hash), role (homeowner or contractor), preferred language. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name and email from Google instead of a password.
• Messages — what you send through the platform’s messaging, including site-visit arrangements.
• Support and contact — what you send us through the contact and support forms.
• Technical information — session tokens to keep you signed in, security and rate-limit counters, and an audit log of administrative actions on your records. We also keep first-party, pseudonymous usage records: the event (for example, a page viewed or a button clicked), the page path, a coarse role (visitor, homeowner, or contractor), a random per-browser-session identifier, and a timestamp — never your name, email, account, IP address, or device details, and never shared with any third-party analytics service. We do not run advertising or third-party tracking cookies (see Section 11).

From homeowners:

• Project information — trade category, project description, answers to intake questions, photos you upload, postal code or general area, timing preference, and budget indications.
• AI assessment inputs — if you choose the AI assessment: the photos, video, and voice recordings you capture and the description you submit for analysis (see Section 6). On mobile, captured media and, where you grant OS permission, location are stored to your account.
• Hires and reviews — the hires you choose to report, and the reviews you write.
• Home documents — files you store in the private "My Home" area. These are private to you; they are not shared with contractors or shown publicly.

From contractors:

• Application and business information — name, phone, company name, trades, service area, municipality, business entity type, whether you have employees, licence and insurance and WSIB details, evidence documents you upload, portfolio photos, and optional hourly rates.
• Verification records — the results of checking your credentials against public registries and the documents you provided, and the consent records for each check (which consent, which wording version, when).
• Contractors, photo ID: with your separate consent, a photo of one government photo ID (for example a driver's licence or passport; never a health card) that you upload with your application. Filteraty verification staff review it only to confirm that you are who you say you are. We record the fact that your identity was confirmed and the date; we never record the ID number, its expiry or your date of birth, and we never publish the image. The photo is stored privately and is deleted when you delete your account (Section 12).
• Identity and background checks (not yet active) through a third-party provider: if we introduce identity or criminal-record checks through a provider, we will run them only with your separate, explicit, prior consent, and we will store only the outcome summary (check type, completed, date), never the report contents. The provider holds the report. See Section 8 for what is and is not published.

From mobile app users:

• Push notification token — if you allow notifications at the OS prompt, a device push token so we can deliver them. You can turn categories off in Settings, or revoke the OS permission, at any time.

We do not collect payment information from anyone — Filteraty handles no payments. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

• To create and secure your account and keep you signed in.
• To assess a described project and match it to contractors whose trade, credentials, and service area fit. Matching is rule-based; it is not an AI/ML decision system.
• To let homeowners and contractors message each other and arrange the work between themselves.
• To verify contractor credentials and publish the verification record the contractor consented to (Section 8).
• To send transactional messages the Service requires: welcome and activation emails, application status, and notifications about your projects, matches, and messages. These are kept strictly non-promotional.
• To send marketing communications only if you separately opted in — you can withdraw that consent at any time (Section 10).
• To measure, in aggregate, how the Service is used — pages viewed and features used — so we can improve it. These usage records are pseudonymous (Section 3), are never used for advertising or profiling, and are deleted after 90 days (Section 12).
• To review applications, investigate misuse or fraud, keep the Service reliable and secure, and meet legal obligations.

We do not sell personal information. We do not use your project photos, video, voice recordings, or descriptions to train AI models, and we require our AI providers to process them only to deliver the assessment.

Sharing project information with contractors is how the Service works, so this section is precise about what flows where:

• When you post or submit a project, matched contractors see your project details, photos, and general area (postal-code level) — enough to decide whether to respond. They do not see your exact address or contact details.
• Your name and messages are visible to a contractor within the conversation once one of you starts it.
• Your exact address, phone number, or anything else you choose to share is shared by you, in messaging, when you decide — typically when arranging a site visit. Filteraty does not hand contractors your contact file.
• Contractors’ business information flows the other way: their public profile and verification record are visible to homeowners (and, being public, to anyone — see Section 8).

If you choose the AI assessment path, what you submit — photos, video, voice recordings, and your description — is sent to one or more third-party AI providers, which process it in the United States, to produce a suggested trade category, urgency, and indicative price range.

• This is optional. The standard posting form does the same job without AI analysis.
• The output is a preliminary, automated suggestion — not a professional inspection or a quote.
• Do not include identity documents in submissions, and avoid photographing other people.
• The provider processes this data outside Canada (see Sections 1 and 7).

We disclose personal information to service providers who process it on our behalf, under contract, only for the purposes in this policy:

• Database, authentication, and file storage (Supabase) — account, project, messaging, and credential data, and the pseudonymous usage records described in Section 3; may be stored or processed outside Canada, including in the United States.
• Transactional email (Resend) — your email address and the message contents we send you; United States.
• AI assessment (one or more third-party AI providers) — photos, video, voice recordings, and descriptions submitted to the AI feature; United States.
• Mobile push delivery (Expo) — push tokens and notification contents; United States.
• Sign-in with Google (optional) — your Google account name and email; United States.
• Website hosting (Vercel): the pages you load and the technical request logs that come with them (IP address, browser, time); United States.
• Online payments (Stripe): when a homeowner pays a contractor online, Stripe processes the card or bank details directly for the contractor, who is the merchant; we receive the payment status and amount, never card or bank numbers; Canada and the United States.
• Maps and store search in the DIY guide (Google Maps Platform): the postal code area (the first three characters) or a rounded location you choose to share, to find nearby stores; United States.
• Crash reports from the mobile app (Sentry): the error, the app version and the device model, with names, email addresses and message contents removed; United States.
• Identity and background checks — not yet active; the provider and data location will be confirmed, and this policy updated, before any such check is offered. Photo ID review is done by Filteraty staff, not a provider.

We also disclose personal information where the law requires it (a valid court order, subpoena, or other legal obligation), to protect the rights and safety of users and the public, or as part of a business sale or reorganization — in which case this policy continues to apply to the transferred information.

A contractor’s public profile — which is server-rendered and indexed by search engines — shows business information and the verification record: credential type and class, the public registry licence number where one exists, status and expiry, insurer name and coverage limit, and the date each item was verified.

• Each verification and the publication itself are covered by separate, versioned consents collected at application. We record which wording version you agreed to and when. Consent is not bundled into Terms acceptance.
• We never publish: insurance policy numbers, identity documents, criminal-record contents, dates of birth, or the contents of any background check. If a criminal-record check feature activates, the profile could state at most that a check was completed and when.
• Public registry licence numbers are published because they let homeowners verify our record against the regulator’s own lookup — that is the point of the product. For sole proprietors, credential facts are also personal information about you, which is why publication rests on your explicit consent.
• You may withdraw any verification or publication consent at any time by contacting us. Withdrawing consent that the listing depends on means the listing is removed — we can only list contractors whose record we can show. Because public pages are indexed, third-party caches of previously published facts may persist after removal; we remove the source page and request re-crawl, but we cannot guarantee third-party caches.

Under PIPEDA you may:

• Ask what we hold about you and get a copy. We respond within 30 days (PIPEDA permits a single extension in limited circumstances; if we need one, we will tell you before the 30 days expire and explain why), at no cost in the normal case; if a request requires extraordinary effort we will tell you the estimated cost before doing anything. If we have to refuse a request, we will give you written reasons and tell you about your right to complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
• Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete. Where we have shared the incorrect information with a third party and it matters, we pass the correction on where appropriate.
• Withdraw consent to processing, subject to legal or contractual limits and reasonable notice. We will tell you the consequences: withdrawing consent for processing the core Service needs means we can no longer provide it; for contractors, withdrawing verification or publication consent means delisting (Section 8).
• Delete your account, from Settings or by contacting us. On deletion we remove or irreversibly anonymize your personal information, except what Section 12 says we retain. Deleting your account also deletes the files you uploaded: profile and portfolio photos, project photos, videos and voice notes, home documents, licence documents and your photo ID.
• Complain — first to our Privacy Officer, and if you are not satisfied, to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca, 1-800-282-1376).

• Transactional messages — activation links, application status, project and message notifications — are part of operating the Service and are kept strictly non-promotional.
• Marketing email is opt-in only. We send it only if you checked a separate, unchecked marketing-consent box (at signup or in Settings). We record when and how you consented. Every marketing email identifies Filteraty, includes our mailing address, and has a working unsubscribe that we honour promptly (and in any event within 10 business days). Withdrawing marketing consent never affects your use of the Service.
• Push notifications are controlled by you: the OS permission prompt, and per-category toggles in Settings. We keep promotional content out of transactional notifications.

We use only what the Service needs to run: a session token that keeps you signed in, and local storage for your language preference and in-progress drafts. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. For the usage measurement described in Section 3 we use a random identifier kept in your browser’s session storage — it is not a cookie, it is not linked to your account, and your browser discards it when you close it. We run no third-party analytics or tracking service. If we ever introduce behavioural-advertising tracking, we will update this policy first, with a clear notice and an accessible opt-out.

We keep personal information only as long as the purpose it was collected for requires, then delete or anonymize it:

• Account and profile — while your account is open.
• Projects, photos, messages — while your account is open; messages already delivered to the other party remain in their thread.
• Contractor credential evidence — while listed, plus a reasonable audit period after, so a verification we published remains auditable. The uploaded licence documents themselves are kept while your account is open and deleted with the account.
• Photo ID image: kept privately while your account is open, seen only by Filteraty verification staff, never shown on your profile, and deleted when you delete your account. The fact that your identity was confirmed, and the date, stay with the verification record.
• Files you uploaded (photos, videos, voice notes, documents): deleted when you delete your account. Two exceptions: a photo or file you sent in a chat stays in the other person's conversation, like the message it belongs to; and invoice evidence files stay with the contractor's invoice records, which the contractor keeps for tax purposes.
• Verification summaries after delisting — kept for a reasonable audit period only.
• Consent and acceptance records — as long as the consent matters, plus a reasonable audit period — a consent record must be able to prove what was agreed.
• Support and contact requests — until resolved, plus a reasonable follow-up period.
• Usage analytics events — deleted after 90 days.
• Breach records — at least 24 months (a legal requirement).
• Security and audit logs — as long as needed to operate the Service securely.
• Deletion records: when you delete your account we keep one internal copy of what the account held for 24 months, readable only by Filteraty staff, so we can answer a legal claim, keep a banned or fraudulent account from returning, and show that the deletion happened. The copy holds your profile (name, email address, phone number), the addresses and postal codes of the homes you added, the identifiers and status of your projects and invoices, the reviews you wrote and, for a contractor, the listing with its verification record, consent records, jobs and reviews received. Messages are not copied. It is then deleted.

We are not part of the payment for your renovation and never hold card or bank numbers. Invoices a contractor issues through FilteratyPay, and the payment status Stripe reports for them, are the contractor's business records; we keep them for as long as the contractor needs them for tax purposes (in Canada, generally six years).

We protect personal information with encryption in transit, row-level access rules in the database (users reach only their own records; credential evidence is never publicly readable), hashed passwords, server-side-only keys for sensitive integrations, and admin access limited and audit-logged.

No system is perfectly secure. We keep a record of every breach of security safeguards, and if a breach creates a real risk of significant harm we will notify affected users and report to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as PIPEDA requires.

The Service is for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18; if you believe a minor has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Material changes are notified to signed-in users (email or in-app) before they take effect, and the version and effective date above are updated. Prior versions are available on request. A change that would use existing personal information for a materially new purpose gets fresh consent, not just notice.

Privacy Officer, FILTERATY Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada — info@filteraty.com. See also our Terms of Use and Reviews & Content Policy.