Privacy Policy

The general pages of For The Record do not require an account. We do not collect your name, email address, or phone number.

• Exception — Councillor Responses: If you are a councillor (or authorized office) submitting a response via our verified links, we collect the response content and the identity of the councillor it is attributed to for publication purposes.

We measure activity to understand which records and topics are most relevant to our users.

• PolicyShift Anonymous Counter: Our custom in-house system counts page views, searches, and clicks without using cookies or identifying you.
• Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to track general traffic trends (e.g., visitor counts and general locations). Google Analytics uses cookies, which you can manage or disable in your browser settings.

We do not store your IP address in an identifiable format. Upon your visit, your IP address is immediately processed through a one-way scrambler (SHA-256 hash) combined with a "salt" (a secret code).

• The salt changes every 24 hours, making it impossible to link activity across different days.
• Once the daily salt is deleted (after 90 days), past activity cannot be linked back to a specific connection.

• Search / Chat Text: Erased after 30 days.
• Scrambling Codes (Salts): Deleted after 90 days.
• Internal Activity Logs: Held for 365 days for year-over-year trend reporting.
• Google Analytics Data: Detailed event data is kept for 14 months.
• Councillor Responses: Retained as public accountability records until corrected or removed on request.

We use Google's infrastructure (Analytics and data visualization tools) to organize internal reports. Anonymous usage data is processed by Google on servers located in the United States. By using the Service, you acknowledge this cross-border transfer.

We do not sell, rent, or trade individual user data.

• Aggregate Reporting: We may share aggregate, non-identifiable impact reports (e.g., "5,000 people viewed the Environment section this month") with sponsors, partners, or the public to demonstrate the utility of the Service.
• Legal Requirements: We may disclose information if required to do so by law or in response to a valid request by a law enforcement or government authority.

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have rights regarding your personal information. Since we do not maintain user accounts or collect identifying information for general users, we typically do not have records to provide upon request. However, councillors who have submitted responses may contact us to request corrections or updates to their published statements.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. The "Last Updated" date at the top of this policy indicates when the most recent changes were made.

For questions regarding this Privacy Policy or our data handling practices, please contact:

PolicyShift.ca Inc.
Attn: Jason Silvert, Director
[email protected]
Edmonton, Alberta