Privacy Policy - MoneySense

MoneySense, Inc. (“MoneySense” / “we” / “us“) is committed to protecting your privacy. We make the MoneySense website, www.moneysense.ca (the “Website”) available together with our services as further described in our Terms of Use (the “Services”). This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, store, use and distribute information about our users through the Website and Services.

Consent: By using the Website or our Services you consent to the use of your Personal Information as described in this Privacy Policy

Collection of Information

We aim to collect, use and disclose only such information as is required to enable us to manage your account, to provide the Services, to maintain our customer/visitor lists, to respond to your inquiries or provide feedback, and for service improvement. We will maintain the confidentiality of any contact information you provide to us when you sign up for our marketing communications or contact us with questions or for further information and we will use it only for the purposes for which we have collected it (subject to the exclusions and disclosures we have listed below), unless you agree that we may disclose it to other third parties.

Two types of information may be collected through the Website and our Services: Personal Information and Website Information.

“Personal Information” is personally identifiable information, such as your name, address, e-mail address, credit card information, address, birth date and gender. At the time of collection, we will clearly identify the information being collected and the purposes for which it will be used. It is always your choice whether or not to provide Personal Information but if you choose not to provide certain requested Personal Information, in some instances you may not be able to access and use all of the features of the Website and Services. In other instances, your choice not to provide certain other Personal Information may mean that you will not be able to use certain features of the Website. We may collect Personal Information in respect of the Website through communications with you; user support; online tools; and expert advice services.

“ Website Information is information we collect when you visit our Website, such as an Internet Protocol Address (IP Address), the domain used to access the Website, and the type and version of browser or operating system being used by visitors to the Website.

We also collect aggregate information, such as demographic statistics of our users (e.g. average age or geographical allocation of our users), number of visitors, what pages users access or visit, and average time spent on the Website. Similarly, business contact information such as the name, title, business address, or telephone number of a business or professional person or an employee of an organization is not considered Personal Information when such information is used for the purposes of contacting the individual in their business/professional capacity.

Use of Information: We collect information for the following purposes:

Request Forms If you request more information about a certain Financial Product listed on our Website you may be required to input certain further Personal Information, such as name, contact information, address, and certain other information depending on the nature of the Financial Product you are interested in. If you submit such a request form, we will send the information contained in the form to the applicable Vendor of the Financial Product, and you hereby consent to us sharing your Personal Information with such Vendors. Any Personal Information that we provide to third party Vendors will be treated in accordance with the terms of such Vendor’s own Privacy Policy, which you should read. Ratehub.ca will not be responsible in any way for how any Vendor treats your Personal Information.
Online Tools: We may offer tools such as a mortgage calculator, Canada child benefit calculator, RESP calculator, TFSA Room calculator, and credit card finder. If you use these tools, we collect information you provide (such as your income, RESP balance, credit score, etc.) in order to provide you with the features and functions of the tools. We do not store the Personal Information you provide when you use these tools.
Ask MoneySense: If you decide to ask one of our experts a question such our Retirement, Auto, Real Estate or Tax experts, we will collect your email address and any other Personal Information you provide in your correspondence with the expert in order to respond to your question.
Location Information: Certain Financial Products are only available in certain areas, and therefore we may ask for your location, either by requesting your postal code, city, and/or address
Transactional Notifications: We provide notifications for certain activities relating to your use of our Services despite your indicated e-mail preferences, for example we may send you notices of any updates to our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy.
Marketing Communications: If you opt-in to receive marketing communications from us, we collect your name and email address to send you the newsletter you requested. You may withdraw your consent to receiving marketing communications from us at any time by following the opt-out instructions in each communication, or by contacting our marketing department at [email protected].
Statistics: We also collect statistics about your use of products/services [referred to you]through the Website. This information will be kept confidential, however, aggregate statistics that do not personally identify an individual will be kept by us and such aggregate statistics may be made available to other members or third parties.
System Logs & Cookies: Cookies are used by us to track content usage and traffic on the Website. A cookie is a feature of your web browser that consists of a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a web server. The Website uses cookies to help it compile aggregate statistics about usage of this Website, such as how many users visit the Website, how long users spend viewing the Website, and what pages are viewed most often, and what pages Users may visit directly after leaving the Website. This information is used to improve the content of the Website and to provide and improve the Services. You can set your browser to notify you when you are sent a cookie. This gives you the chance to decide whether or not to accept it. If you disable cookies, you may not be able to take advantage of all the features of the Website. We do not link any of the information we use in cookies to any personally identifiable information submitted by you when you are on the Website.

Your IP address is reported by your web browser whenever you visit a page on the Website. This information is recorded together with your registration information on our databases.

Analytics: We may use a third party such as Google Analytics to help us gather and analyze information about the areas visited on the Website (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 Website. For more information or to opt-out using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, see “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps” and “Google Analytics and Privacy”.
Advertisements: Advertisements appearing on the Website may be delivered by us or one or more third-party web advertisers. These third party web advertisers may set cookies. These cookies allow the advertisement server operated by that third party to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement. Accordingly, advertisement servers may compile information about where or whether you viewed their advertisements and which advertisements you clicked on. This information allows web advertisers to deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (which does not include your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

If we plan to use your Personal Information in future for any other purposes not identified above, we will only do so after informing you by updating this Privacy Policy. See further the section of this Privacy Policy entitled ‘Amendment of this Policy’.

Disclosures & Transfers: We have put in place contractual and other organizational safeguards with our agents and service providers (see further below) to ensure a proper level of protection of your Personal Information (see further Security below). In addition to those measures, we will not disclose or transfer your Personal Information to third parties without your permission, except as specified in this Privacy Policy (see further Important Exceptions below).

As at the date of this Privacy Policy, we share Personal Information about you in respect of the Website only with service providers that provide services on our behalf. We use service providers to improve our Website and provide services such as hosting our Website, providing advertising services, email marketing services, cloud services, and analytics advertising services.

Our servers (and certain service providers) are also located in Canada and the U.S. and accordingly your Personal Information may be available to the Canadian and U.S. government or its agencies under a lawful order, irrespective of the safeguards we have put in place for the protection of your Personal Information.

From time to time we may employ third parties to help us improve the Website and/or the Services. These third parties may have limited access to databases of user information solely for the purpose of helping us to improve the Website and/or the Services and they will be subject to contractual restrictions prohibiting them from using the information about our members for any other purpose.

Important Exceptions: We may disclose your Personal Information to third parties without your consent if we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, other Website members, other users of the Services, or anyone else (including the rights or property of anyone else) that could be harmed by such activities. We may disclose Personal Information when we believe in good faith that such disclosure is required or permitted by and in accordance with applicable law.

We may also disclose your Personal Information in connection with a corporate re-organization, a merger or amalgamation with another entity, a sale of all or a substantial portion of our assets or stock, including any due diligence exercise carried out in relation to the same, provided that the information disclosed continues to be used for the purposes permitted by this Privacy Policy by the entity acquiring the information (or as otherwise consented to).

Security: The security of your Personal Information is important to us. We use commercially reasonable efforts to store and maintain your Personal Information in a secure environment. We take technical, contractual, administrative, and physical security steps designed to protect Personal Information that you provide to us. We have implemented procedures designed to limit the dissemination of your Personal Information to only such designated staff as are reasonably necessary to carry out the stated purposes we have communicated to you.

You are also responsible for helping to protect the security of your Personal Information. For instance, never give out your email account information to third parties.

Retention: We will keep your Personal Information for as long as it remains necessary for the identified purpose or as required by law, which may extend beyond the termination of our relationship with you. We may retain certain data as necessary to prevent fraud or future abuse, or for legitimate business purposes, such as analysis of aggregated, non-personally-identifiable data, account recovery, or if required by law. All retained personal information will remain subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you request that your name be removed from our databases, it may not be possible to completely delete all your Personal Information due to technological and legal constraints.

Amendment of this Policy: We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time. If we decide to change this Privacy Policy in the future, we will post an appropriate notice on the home page at www.moneysense.ca. Any non-material change (such as clarifications) to this Privacy Policy will become effective on the date the change is posted and any material changes will become effective 30 days from their posting on the Website. Unless stated otherwise, our current Privacy Policy applies to all Personal Information that we have about you. The date on which the latest update was made is indicated at the top of this document. We recommend that you print a copy of this Privacy Policy for your reference and revisit this policy from time to time to ensure you are aware of any changes. Your continued use of the Website signifies your acceptance of any changes.

Access and Accuracy: You have the right to access the Personal Information we hold about you in order to verify the Personal Information we have collected in respect to you and to have a general account of our uses of that information. Upon receipt of your written request, we will provide you with a copy of your Personal Information although in certain limited circumstances, we may not be able to make all relevant information available to you such as where that information also pertains to another user. In such circumstances we will provide reasons for the denial to you upon request. We will endeavor to deal with all requests for access and modifications in a timely manner.

We will make every reasonable effort to keep your Personal Information accurate and up-to-date, and we will provide you with mechanisms to update, correct, delete or add to your Personal Information as appropriate. As appropriate, this amended Personal Information will be transmitted to those parties to which we are permitted to disclose your information. Having accurate Personal Information about you enables us to give you the best possible service.

Contact Us: You can help by keeping us informed of any changes such as a change of address or telephone number. If you would like to access your information, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, if you find any errors in our information about you, or for more information on the manner in which we or our service providers use your Personal Information, please contact us here