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Food Banks Canada

Privacy Statement

Our Commitment

Food Banks Canada is a national charitable organization dedicated to helping Canadians living with hunger. We have a network of affiliated food banks and partners across Canada, which includes 10 Provincial Associations and more than 5,500 food related organizations.

Food Banks Canada is committed to protecting the privacy and personal information of its network, donors and other stakeholders and users of our Sites. Food Banks Canada values the trust of those we deal with, and of the public, and recognizes that maintaining this trust requires that we be transparent and accountable in how we treat the personal information that you may choose to share with us. 

This Food Banks Canada Privacy Statement (the “Privacy Statement”) is intended to assist stakeholders and users in understanding the purposes for which Food Banks Canada collects, uses and discloses personal information and how personal information is stored and protected by Food Banks Canada, its employees, agents, partners and service providers.

More particularly, this Statement describes:

By using our Sites, participating in one of our advocacy initiatives, corresponding or communicating with us, or by otherwise choosing to submit personal information to us, you signify your consent to all of the terms of this Privacy Statement and our website terms of use, as applicable. If you do not agree with any terms of this Privacy Statement, please do not use the Sites or submit any personal information to us.

Food Banks Canada has implemented practices and procedures designed to comply with Canadian privacy laws respecting the private sector, including the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), as well as applicable provincial privacy laws, as laid out in this Privacy Statement.

Updating of Privacy Statement

Food Banks Canada may revise this Privacy Statement from time to time, such as when our activities and programs evolve, in response to legal developments, as new technologies become available, or as we introduce new services, activities or partnerships.

When we make such changes, we will revise the “last updated” date at the top of the Privacy Statement. Please check the Sites on an on-going basis for information on our most up-to-date practices. We will indicate at the bottom of this document the date this Privacy Statement was last revised.  If we make material changes we will, as appropriate, prominently post these changes to our website or notify directly affected stakeholders and users for whom we have current contact details. 

If you disagree with any change to the Privacy Statement, you may refrain from accessing or using our Sites, or in some cases, may out of the use or disclosure of your personal information for certain purposes.  Your continued access or use of the Sites after we post or communicate a change signifies your acceptance of the revised Privacy Statement and consent to its terms.

Personal Information

Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual, including any information that, alone or in combination with other information, could be used to identify an individual.  For example, personal information may include an individual’s name, address, email, telephone number, age, Internet Protocol (IP) address, financial information, etc.   For the purpose of this Privacy Statement, personal information does not include most business contact information such as the name, position, title, business address, or business telephone or fax number of an individual.

Collection

Food Banks Canada collects personal information about you that you directly provide, as well as certain personal information that is automatically collected through your interactions with our Sites.  Food Banks Canada limits the collection of personal information to that which is reasonably necessary for the identified purpose.

Personal information that you provide. Food Banks Canada may collect certain personal information directly from individuals who interact with us, including the following:

Automatic data collection.  We, our service providers and our business partners may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile device, and your interaction over time with us.  This information may include the following:

In general, you can visit our Sites without telling us who you are or submitting any personal information. However, our Sites use various technologies to track various interactions and activities that are tied to a user’s IP (Internet protocol) address and/or device identifier.

This information is aggregated into statistical data that allows Food Banks Canada to better serve donors and its network of affiliated food banks and partners. None of these statistics reveal any information that identifies you as an individual, and Food Banks Canada generally does not use any of the information collected by our automated tools to identify individuals, except where IP addresses are collected and used for the purposes of fraud detection and mitigation, in order to protect Food Banks Canada against possible illegal activities.

For a further description of the automated collection technologies that we use, and the purposes for which we use them, see Cookies and similar technologies below.

Purposes

Food Banks Canada generally collects, uses and discloses personal information to fulfill its mission of countering food insecurity and its root causes and to operate and administer its programs, including for the following purposes:

We do not collect, use or disclose personal information for purposes other than those identified in the Privacy Statement, unless further consent is obtained, or where otherwise required or permitted by law.

Sharing and disclosure

From time to time, Food Banks Canada may share personal information with third parties that we engage to assist us in providing our services (such as payment processors or email distributors), or who may have incidental access to personal information in the course of providing such services (such as web hosting providers or IT support firms). Such third parties are contractually bound to process this information solely to provide the services for which they were engaged, and to protect it using appropriate physical, technological and organizational measures.

In no case does Food Banks Canada sell or otherwise provide personal information to third parties for their own promotional or marketing purposes.

In limited cases, Food Banks Canada may be required or permitted by law to disclose personal information to satisfy a law, regulation or government request; to satisfy a subpoena, search warrant or legitimate court order; or to protect its interests and those of its users and stakeholders.

Food Banks Canada may also disclose and/or transfer personal information to a third party to the extent necessary in the event of a proposed or actual purchase, sale, lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, transfer or conveyance of all or any portion of Food Banks Canada in order for you to continue to receive the same services from the third party.  

Third party platform advertising

From time to time, we may engage third-party platforms (such as social networking platforms, search engines and other third-party websites) to serve users of those platforms with more individually targeted advertising, which is based both on the platform’s user data and your interactions with Food Banks Canada outside of that third-party platform.  To do this, we may provide the platform operator with limited personal information, such as an email address, that could be matched to an account that you may have with that platform, if any.  Such matching allows the platform to target Food Banks Canada’s stakeholder and users – who are also users of that platform – with relevant advertising, based on demographic factors selected by us.  It also allows the platform to target other “lookalike” users of that platform with traits similar to those of the Food Banks Canada stakeholders and users on that platform.

Further information about this process may be provided by the social media and search platforms with whom you may have an account, and you may exercise the preferences provided by those platforms with respect to your viewing of advertising on those platforms.  To opt-out of Food Banks Canada’s use of your personal information for such purposes, you may contact us using one of the methods set out below in the “Contact Us” section of this Privacy Statement.

Cookies and similar technologies

As noted above, we may use certain technologies to automatically log information about you and your devices when you visit our Sites.  We do this in order to provide you with a more personalized browsing experience, better understand your needs, provide you with content that is most relevant to you, monitor trends respecting the usage of our Sites and enhance functionality and navigation for our visitors.

Such automatic collection is facilitated by technologies like the following:

Cookies, which are small text files stored on your device that identifies your browser/device/IP address – but not you as an individual – to our computers each time you visit one of our websites.  Cookies allow web servers to record users’ web browsing activities and remember their submissions, preferences, and login status as they navigate a site.  They also enable us to compile aggregated information about the way that users interact with our Sites, assisting us in improving our Sites and products and in identifying opportunities for new services and features

Logs are automatically generated records of website interactions and server activity that capture data points generated and exchanged during the normal operation of the web.  Logs record all interactions with our Sites, including viewing a page, triggering a pop-up, downloading a document or communicating with us using our web form.  They also record information such as time stamps and the type and version of operating system and browser that a visitor is using.  Logs generally help us understand how visitors interact with our Sites, including which pages are popular and peak visit times.  They also allow us to detect and troubleshoot potential technical issues, as well as to spot suspicious activity and take actions to block malicious actors.

Web beacons, also known as pixel tags or clear GIFs, which are small transparent graphic images that are automatically loaded to your browser/device when you visit a website or open an html format email message.  A request from a user’s device to a sever to load the image signifies that a webpage or email was accessed or opened, or that certain content was viewed or clicked, allowing us to record simple user actions related to our websites and to email communications received from us, helping us determine the usage and effectiveness of our Sites and communications in order to optimize such Sites and communications and verify system and server integrity.

Cookies and web beacons may also be placed on our Sites by third parties to provide us with analytics services or to enable interest-based advertising.  These technologies may be used by analytics companies to help us gather and analyze information about the areas visited on the websites (such as the pages most read, time spent, search terms and other engagement data) in order to evaluate and improve the user experience and the convenience of the websites. 

We may also work with third parties such as ad networks and other advertising companies that use their own tracking technologies (including cookies and beacons) on our websites and other websites and apps in order to provide you with tailored advertisements on our behalf on third party websites across the Internet.  These companies may collect information about your activity across your different devices on our websites and on third-party websites and apps (such as web pages you visit and your interaction with our advertising and other communications) and use this information to make predictions about your preferences, develop personalized content and deliver ads that are more relevant to you on third party websites and apps. This information may also be used to evaluate the effectiveness of our online advertising campaigns. 

For information about how to manage the collection and use of your personal information by cookies and similar technologies, including to opt-out of receiving online advertising based on data collected during your use of our Sites, see Your Choices, below.

Your Choices

Food Banks Canada provides you with a number of options through which you may obtain access to the personal information that we hold about you, request revisions to or deletion of that information or otherwise exercise control over some uses of your personal information.   There are also a number of options available through your browser or third-party platforms that allow you to control the collection and use of your personal information.

Further information.  Should you have any questions about this Privacy Statement or the manner in which we collect, use, share, disclose and protect your personal Information, including seeking more information about our policies and practices with respect to the use of personal information by third party service providers, you may contact us using one of the methods set out below in the “Contact Us” section of this Privacy Statement.

Individual rights.  As required by Canadian privacy laws, you have certain rights to access and manage the personal information that we hold about you.

You may have the ability to directly view and change the personal information in an online profile, which would include much of the information that we hold about you.

In addition, upon request, you may examine the personal information we hold about you, except as required or permitted by law. Where we are unable to provide access to all the personal information about you that we may hold, we will provide the reasons why we are unable to do so.

You may request access to your personal information by making a request, in writing, using the email or postal address set out below in the “Contact Us” section of this Privacy Statement.  Note that, in an effort to prevent fraudulent or unauthorized requests for access, we may request identification or additional details for authentication purposes.

You may also make a subsequent request to us to correct any personal information that you feel is inaccurate or incomplete.  You may also request the deletion of your personal information, subject to legal and contractual restrictions; however, please note that deletion of some information may impact our ability to provide you with certain services.

Residents of the Province of Quebec also have the right to request that their personal information be provided in a readable format to another organization, unless doing so raises serious practical difficulties.

Opting out.  You may generally withdraw your consent to our use or disclosure of your personal information at any time, subject to legal and contractual restrictions; however, without such consent, we may be unable to provide you with certain services or benefits. 

If you would like to withdraw your consent for any use or disclosure of your personal information by Food Banks Canada, please make your request in writing using one of the methods set out below in the “Contact Us” section of this Privacy Statement.  Please be specific as to the uses or disclosures for which you wish to withdraw consent. 

Browser controls.  You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Sites.

Through the program that you use to receive email messages, you can enable the setting that blocks automatic image display, which will prevent the use of web beacons with respect to the email messages that you receive; however, these settings will generally block all images contained in the email (such as photos, logos and signature blocks).  When image blocking is activated, most email programs display a “show images” button that can be clicked to load any particular images that you want to view.  Some browsers and security products may allow for more fine-tuned image blocking.

Interest-based advertising.  To opt-out of receiving online behavioural advertising from third party advertising companies who collect data on our websites, you may click on the AdChoices icon on any ads that you see or by visiting www.youradchoices.ca.  On the AdChoices site you will also find general information about interest-based advertising and the options available to you, including how you can opt-out of receiving behavioural ads from third-party advertising companies participating in the DAAC.  To learn more about interest-based advertising in mobile apps and to opt out of this type of advertising by third-party advertising companies that participate in the DAAC’s AppChoices tool, please download the version of AppChoices for your device at https://youradchoices.ca/appchoices/.

You may opt-out of our use of your personal information by Food Banks Canada for the purpose of targeting you or lookalike audiences with ads on third party platforms (like social media and search platforms) by contacting us directly using one of the methods set out below in the “Contact Us” section of this Privacy Statement. 

Please note that even if you opt-out of interest-based or third-party platform advertising using personal information collected by Food Banks Canada or from our website, you may still see ads on the Internet sites and platforms that you visit; however, these ads will not be targeted based on your perceived interests and tastes, and may therefore be less relevant to you.  You may also continue to see ads from Food Banks Canada, however such ads will be displayed based on the perceived interests and preferences for all users of the site or platform on which the ad is displayed rather than on any of your personal information.

Contact us

If you would like to opt-out of any uses of your personal information, obtain access, request correction or deletion, make a complaint, or generally have any questions or concerns about our Privacy Statement, you may contact our Privacy Officer at the following address:  

                                Privacy Officer
                                Address: 77 City Centre Drive, Suite 501, Mississauga, ON, L5B 1M5
                               Email: privacyofficer@foodbankscanada.ca

Security

Food Banks Canada uses advanced security to help protect your personal information. Our electronic donation service is secured with SSL encryption. All sensitive online information collected is secured via SSL encryption, and protected by a firewall. Whenever sensitive information is transmitted, such as a credit card number, our server provides 128-bit encryption of the information as it travels across the Internet.

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we are committed to protecting your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you provide to us.

Food Banks Canada restricts internal access to personal information to selected members of Food Banks Canada’s employees, who require access to such information to fulfil their job function. Safeguards are in place that are designed to ensure that the information is not disclosed or shared more widely than is necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was gathered or those permitted under this Privacy Statement. We also use physical, electronic and administrative measures to help ensure the integrity of this information is maintained and to prevent personal information from accidental loss and from unauthorized access, use, alteration and disclosure. All Food Banks Canada’s staff members are made aware of the need to maintain strict confidentiality of all personal information.

Retention

We generally retain personal information to fulfill the purposes for which we collected it, or as required by law, which may continue after termination of our relationship with you or your withdrawal of consent, such as where we are required by tax laws to retain certain donation and receipting records.  The purposes for which personal information may be retained include the satisfaction of any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements; to establishment or defense of legal claims; or for fraud prevention purposes.

Food Banks Canada neither collects nor retains full credit card information; rather credit card information is provided directly to the third-party payment processor(s) that we use for credit card transactions.  We receive and retain only the last 4 digits of the credit card and a secure tokenized value of the card (a secure alphanumeric identifier generated from the card details using one-way cryptography, which is meaningless to anyone other than the relevant bank/payment processor) that allows us to process future transactions without the donor re-inputting their credit card details. 

When we no longer require the personal information, we have collected about you, we will securely destroy it, permanently erase it, or anonymize it such that it can no longer be associate with you as an identifiable person.

International data transfers

Some or all of the personal information we collect may be stored or processed on servers located outside your jurisdiction of residence, including in the United States, whose data protection laws may differ from the jurisdiction in which you live. As a result, this information may be subject to access requests from governments, courts, or law enforcement in those jurisdictions according to laws in those jurisdictions. Subject to applicable laws in such other jurisdictions, we will use reasonable efforts to ensure that appropriate protections are in place to require the data processor in those countries to maintain protections on the personal information that are equivalent to those that apply in Canada.

Our Sites may offer links to other third-party websites, plug-ins, services, social networks or applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow the third party to collect and share data about you. Food Banks Canada is not responsible for how such third parties collect, use or disclose your personal information. It is important to familiarize yourself with their privacy policies before providing them with your personal information.