Privacy policy | True North Cables

1. Who we are and what this covers

True North Cables Inc. ("True North Cables", "we", "us") runs truenorthcables.ca and is responsible for the personal information we collect through it, by email, and while we fulfil your orders. This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have.

It applies to shoppers, account holders, visitors and anyone who contacts us. It does not cover other websites we link to, such as a carrier's tracking page; their own policies apply there.

We handle personal information in line with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, for residents of Quebec, the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector.

2. Our Privacy Officer

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for how we handle personal information and for answering your questions and requests. Write to the Privacy Officer at info@truenorthcables.ca, or through our contact page with "Privacy" in your message.

3. What we collect

Information you give us:

Orders: your name, email address, phone number, shipping address, the items you buy, the delivery method, any promo code, and the amounts charged and refunded. Carriers require the phone number to deliver.
Payment: your card or wallet details go directly to our payment processor, Stripe, and never reach our servers. We receive the card brand, the last four digits and, for saved cards, the expiry date.
Account: your email address, name, saved addresses, saved cards (held by Stripe), wishlist, saved-for-later items, cart and your email marketing choice.
Tax exemptions: if you declare delivery to a First Nations reserve, your status card registry number or band number, which we store encrypted. If you file a reseller exemption, your provincial tax number and province.
Messages: what you send through the contact form or by email, including your name, email, phone number (optional) and order number.
Stock alerts: your email address and the product you asked about.

Information collected automatically:

Your IP address, used to protect the site against abuse. Before we count or store it for rate limiting or sign-in security, we turn it into a keyed one-way code. Our hosting provider also keeps short-term server logs that include it.
Usage statistics through Vercel Web Analytics: pages viewed, the referring site, approximate country, and device, browser and operating system type. It uses no cookies and does not follow you across other websites.
Shopping events such as a search term, adding to cart, applying a promo code or starting checkout, recorded without your name or email address.

Information from others:

Stripe: whether a payment succeeded, fraud risk signals, and any dispute or chargeback.
Carriers: tracking scans and delivery status for your shipment.
Cloudflare: whether the sign-in or contact form was likely completed by a person or by an automated program.

4. How we use it

To process, ship, track and support your orders, including returns, refunds, warranty claims and cancellations.
To send the emails an order needs: confirmation and receipt, tracking, refund and cancellation notices, payment reminders for an unfinished order, and sign-in codes.
To run your account, if you create one, and remember your cart, addresses and saved cards.
To calculate and apply the correct taxes, including exemptions you declare, and to keep the records tax authorities require.
To answer your messages and questions.
To prevent fraud, abuse and automated attacks, and to keep the site secure.
To understand, in aggregate, how the site is used so we can improve it.
To send marketing email, only if you have opted in.
To keep our books and meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising.

5. Consent and your choices

We ask for your consent when we collect personal information, and we use it only for the purposes described here or for purposes you would reasonably expect. Placing an order means we need your name, contact details and address to fulfil it; without them we cannot ship.

You can withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits, such as tax records we must keep. We will tell you what withdrawing means for any order in progress.

Creating an account is optional. The box to create one at checkout, and the box to receive marketing email, are unticked unless you tick them.

6. Email

Order emails (confirmations, receipts, tracking, refunds and account security) are part of the service and are sent whether or not you subscribe to marketing.

Marketing email is sent only with your express consent. Every marketing message identifies us and includes a way to unsubscribe. You can also turn marketing off at any time in your account settings or by contacting us.

A stock alert sends one email when the product is back in stock.

7. Who we share it with

We share personal information only with the service providers who help us run the store, and only what each needs:

Stripe (payments, saved cards, fraud screening, and Link if you use it). Stripe also acts under its own privacy policy for fraud prevention and for Link.
Shippo (shipping rates and labels) and the carrier delivering your order (Canada Post, Purolator, UPS or FedEx): your name, address, phone number, email address and parcel details.
Calm Air International, for air cargo orders: your name, phone number and community, so the shipment can be booked and you can be called when it lands.
Resend, which sends our email: your email address and the content of the message.
Vercel, which hosts the site, provides the usage statistics and stores product photos; Neon, which hosts our database; and Upstash, which holds short-lived rate-limit counters keyed by one-way codes.
Cloudflare Turnstile, on the sign-in and contact forms: device and browser signals and your IP address, to tell people from automated programs.
Google, for address suggestions: the characters you type into an address field. Checkout address suggestions are provided through Stripe.
Intuit QuickBooks, our accounting system: daily sales, tax and fee totals, without customer names or contact details.
Our professional advisers, such as our accountant and lawyer, under a duty of confidentiality.

We may also disclose personal information when the law requires it, for example to the Canada Revenue Agency or in answer to a court order, to protect against fraud, or to a buyer or successor if our business is sold or reorganised, under the same protections as this policy.

8. Information stored outside Canada

Several of our service providers (including Stripe, Shippo, Resend, Vercel, Neon, Upstash, Cloudflare, Google and Intuit) store or process personal information in the United States. While it is there, it is subject to the laws of that country and may be accessed by its courts, law enforcement and national security authorities. We choose providers that protect personal information with safeguards comparable to our own.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

We use only the cookies the site needs to work. We use no advertising cookies and nothing that tracks you across other websites.

tnc_cart: remembers your cart. Kept for 90 days.
Sign-in session cookies: keep you signed in and protect sign-in forms. Kept until you sign out, or for up to 30 days.
Stripe cookies on checkout (such as __stripe_mid and __stripe_sid): help prevent payment fraud. Set by Stripe.
Cloudflare Turnstile, on the sign-in and contact forms: may read or store data in your browser to tell people from automated programs.

You can block cookies in your browser settings, but the cart, sign-in and checkout will not work without them.

10. How long we keep it

Orders, receipts, refunds and tax exemption declarations: at least six years from the end of the tax year they relate to, as Canadian tax law requires. They stay on file even if you delete your account; the link to the account is removed.
Your account: until you delete it. Deleting it removes your profile, saved addresses, saved cards, wishlist, cart, reseller exemptions, marketing subscription and sign-in records straight away.
Messages: as long as we need them to handle your request and any follow-up, such as a return or warranty claim.
Marketing consent: until you unsubscribe.
Stock alerts: until you ask us to remove them.
Rate-limit counters: minutes to hours.
QuickBooks access tokens: until the connection is disconnected. The record of each day posted to QuickBooks is kept with our accounting records.

When we no longer need personal information, we delete it or make it anonymous.

11. How we protect it

Every connection to the site is encrypted (HTTPS).
Card details are handled by Stripe, a PCI DSS Level 1 certified processor, and never touch our servers.
Reserve exemption numbers are encrypted in our database and shown only in masked form; revealing one is logged.
Sign-in uses one-time codes sent by email, stored only as keyed one-way codes, with limits on attempts. There are no passwords to steal.
Access to customer information is limited to the people who need it to serve you.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach of security involving your personal information creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and, where it applies, Quebec's Commission d'accès à l'information, as the law requires.

12. Your rights

You have the right to:

ask what personal information we hold about you, how we use it and who we have shared it with, and get a copy;
have inaccurate or incomplete information corrected;
withdraw your consent, as described above;
have your account deleted, which you can do yourself under My account, Settings;
if you live in Quebec, receive personal information you gave us in a structured, commonly used technological format, and ask to have it transferred to another organisation;
be told about, and ask a person to review, any decision made about you solely by automated means.

To make a request, email info@truenorthcables.ca. We may ask you to confirm your identity first. We will answer within 30 days, and there is no charge.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca, 1-800-282-1376) or, if you live in Quebec, to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

13. Fraud screening

Stripe screens every payment automatically for signs of fraud. A payment it flags may be held while we review it; a person on our team makes the final decision to release or cancel the order. If your order is held or cancelled after review, you can ask us why and ask for the decision to be reconsidered.

14. Children

The site is meant for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 14. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the store or the law changes. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make a significant change to how we use personal information you have already given us, we will tell you by email or with a notice on the site before it takes effect.

16. Contact us

Questions, requests or complaints about privacy go to our Privacy Officer:

True North Cables Inc., Manitoba, Canada
Email: info@truenorthcables.ca
Online: the contact page at truenorthcables.ca/contact
Hours: Monday to Friday, 8am to 4pm CST.