Privacy Policy

1. Language of the Consent

This is the English version of the contract. The French version of this contract must be examined by the parties first. If you choose to then enter into the contract in English exclusively, then it is understood that the parties hereto have expressly required that this Agreement be drafted in English.

2. Who We Are and What This Policy Covers

Hi! We are the team behind www.Cultiville.com. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. If you have any questions, you can email us at sophie@cultiville.com.

This Privacy Policy applies to information that we collect about you when you use:

• Our website (Cultiville.com);
• Our other Cultiville products, services, and features that are available on or through our website (for example, Cultiville services, Cultiville.com).

This Privacy Policy also applies to information we collect when you apply for a job at Cultiville or send us an email.

Throughout this Privacy Policy we’ll refer to our websites, web applications, and other products and services collectively as “Services.”

Please note that our site contains links to third parties. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any of those companies’ web sites, and they have separate privacy policies that should be referred to in order to obtain more information.

Below we explain how we collect, use, and share information about you, along with the choices that you have with respect to that information.

3. Creative Commons Sharealike License

This Privacy Policy was adapted from Automattic’s Privacy Policy which was made available under a Creative Commons Sharealike licence.

4. Information We Collect

We only collect information about you if we have a reason to do so — for example, to provide our Services, to communicate with you, or to make our Services better.

We collect this information from three sources: if and when you provide information to us, automatically through operating our Services, and from outside sources. Let’s go over the information that we collect.

5. Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us directly. Here are some examples:

• Basic account information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your account. For example, we require individuals who sign up for a Cultiville.com account to provide an email address and password, along with a username or name — and that’s it. You may provide us with more information — like your address and other information you want to share — but we don’t require that information to register for a Cultiville.com account.
• Public profile information: If you have an account with us, we collect the information that you provide for your public profile. For example, if you have a Cultiville.com account, your username is part of that public profile, along with any other information you put into your public profile, like a photo or an “About Me” description. Your public profile information is just that — public — so please keep that in mind when deciding what information you would like to include.
• Payment and contact information: There are various ways in which you may provide us payment information and associated contact information. For example, if you buy something from us or earn revenue through your Veggie Patch, we’ll collect information to process those payments and contact you. If you pay Service Fees to us — or if you buy something from a Homeowner through our site, you’ll provide additional personal and payment information like your name, credit card information, and contact information. We also keep a record of the purchases you’ve made. You may also provide us with financial details to set up a payments integration, like the email address for your Stripe or PayPal account or your bank account information. And if you are a Homeowner with a registered GST/HST number, you’ll provide a tax ID so we can properly process payments to you.
• Content information: You might provide us with information about you in published content (a blog post or comment that includes biographic information about you, or any media or files you upload).
• Communications with us (hi there!): You may also provide us with information when you respond to surveys, communicate with us about a support question, post a question in our comments section, or sign up for a newsletter. When you communicate with us via form, email, phone, Cultiville.com comment, or otherwise, we store a copy of our communications (including any call recordings as permitted by applicable law).
• Job applicant information: If you apply for a job with us — awesome! You may provide us with information like your name, contact information, resume or CV, professional or personal references, similar professional and employment-related data, and work authorization verification as part of the application process. You may also provide us with demographic information when required by law or to support our diverse workplace initiatives, such as your gender, racial or ethnic origin, veteran status, and disability status if you voluntarily submit such information as part of your application. We collect demographic information in accordance with applicable law, and do not request demographic information in jurisdictions where it may be prohibited. We will only use this sensitive information to accommodate a disability or illness, comply with legal obligations, protect the health and safety of our employees, and facilitate our internal programs relating to diversity, inclusion, and anti-discrimination.

6. Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

• Log information: Like most online service providers, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, including the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our Services — for example, when you create or make changes to your profile of Cultiville.com.
• Transactional information: When you make a purchase through our Services, we collect information about the transaction, such as product details, purchase price, and the date and location of the transaction. This includes when you purchase something using our Services or are charged a Service Fee when you use our Services to buy something from a third party.

• Usage information: We collect information about your usage of our Services. We also collect information about what happens when you use our Services (e.g., page views, searches, and other parts of our Services) along with information about your device (e.g., screen size). We use this information to, for example, provide our Services to you, get insights on how people use our Services so we can make our Services better, and understand and make predictions about user retention.
• Location information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and use this information to, for example, calculate how many people visit our Services from certain geographic regions.
• Information from cookies & other technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Cultiville uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our Services, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads.

7. Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information about you from other sources. For example:

• Financial Account Info: If you use buy or earn money through our site, we’ll receive information relating to your Stripe account, such as your email address and phone number.

The information we receive depends on which services you use or authorise and what options are available.

8. How and Why We Use Information

We use information about you for the purposes listed below:

• To provide our Services. For example, to set up and maintain your account, list your Veggie Patch, provide customer service, process payments and orders, and verify user information.
• To ensure quality, maintain safety, and improve our Services. For example, by providing automatic upgrades and new versions of our Services. Or, for example, by monitoring and analysing how users interact with our Services so we can create new features that we think our users will enjoy and that will help them create and manage websites more efficiently or make our Services easier to use.
• To market our Services and measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing. For example, by targeting our marketing messages to groups of our users (like those who have been users for a certain length of time), advertising our Services, analysing the results of our marketing campaigns (like how many people purchased a Veggie Patch after receiving a marketing message), and understanding and forecasting user retention.
• To protect our Services, our users, and the public. For example, by detecting security incidents; detecting and protecting against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity; fighting spam; complying with our legal obligations; and protecting the rights and property of Cultiville and others, which may result in us, for example, declining a transaction or terminating Services.
• To fix problems with our Services. For example, by monitoring, debugging, repairing, and preventing issues.
• To customise the user experience. For example, to personalise your experience by serving you relevant notifications for our Services.
• To communicate with you. For example, by emailing you to ask for your feedback, share tips for getting the most out of our products, or keep you up to date on Cultiville; texting you to verify your payment; or calling you to share offers and promotions that we think will be of interest to you. If you don’t want to hear from us, you can opt out of marketing communications at any time. (If you opt out, we’ll still send you important updates relating to your account.)

9. Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

Our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

1. The use is necessary in order to fulfil our commitments to you under the applicable terms of service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account — for example, in order to enable access to our website on your device or charge you for a paid plan; or
2. The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
3. The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
4. We have a legitimate interest in using your information — for example, to provide and update our Services; to improve our Services so that we can offer you an even better user experience; to safeguard our Services; to communicate with you; to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising; and to understand our user retention and attrition; to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services; and to personalise your experience; or
5. You have given us your consent — for example before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyse them later on.

10. How We Share Information

We share information about you in limited circumstances, and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy. These are spelled out below:

• Subsidiaries and independent contractors: We may disclose information about you to our independent contractors, who need the information to help us provide our Services or process the information on our behalf. We require our independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for any personal information that we share with them.
• Third-party vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need the information in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like Stripe, fraud prevention services that allow us to analyse fraudulent payment transactions, cloud storage services, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you); those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g., by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns, and by placing ads to market our services); those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers); those that make tools to help us run our operations (like programs that help us with task management, scheduling, word processing, email and other communications, and collaboration among our teams); other third-party tools that help us manage operations.
• Legal and regulatory requirements: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.

• To protect rights, property, and others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Cultiville, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
• Business transfers: In the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
• With your consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties when you authorise us to do so.
• Aggregated or de-identified information: We may share information that has been aggregated or de-identified, so that it can no longer reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services, or share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customised ad campaigns on other platforms.

11. Information Shared Publicly

Information that you choose to make public is — you guessed it — disclosed publicly. That means information like your public profile, posts, other content that you make public on your profile, and your comments on our website are all available to others — and we hope they get a lot of views!

Please keep all of this in mind when deciding what you would like to share publicly.

12. How Long We Keep Information

We generally discard information about you when it’s no longer needed for the purposes for which we collect and use it — described in the section above on How and Why We Use Information — and we’re not legally required to keep it.

For example, we keep web server logs that record information about a visitor to our site, like the visitor’s IP address, browser type, and operating system, for approximately 30 days. We retain the logs for this period of time in order to, among other things, analyse traffic to Cultiville’s websites and investigate issues if something goes wrong on one of our websites.

If you are a job applicant, we will keep your personal data during the application process, and for a certain period thereafter. To determine that period, we take into account a number of factors, like our legal and regulatory obligations (such as equal opportunity obligations) and whether we may need to retain personal data for internal business purposes like analysing our applicant pool.

13. Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorised access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so. We monitor our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

14. Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

• Limit the information that you provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our Services may not be accessible. If you are a job applicant, and you choose not to provide certain data elements to us, we may not be able to proceed with the recruitment process.
• Opt out of marketing communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional communications from us (we will always ask for your opt-in consent when you create a profile with us). Just send us an email at sophie@cultiville.com to let us know. If you opt out of promotional communications, we may still send you other communications, like those about your account and legal notices.
• Close your account: While we’d be very sad to see you go, you can close your account at any time if you no longer want to use our Services by sending us an email at sophie@cultiville.com. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, as described in How Long We Keep Information above — for example, when that information is reasonably needed to comply with (or demonstrate our compliance with) legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

15. Your Rights

If you are located in certain parts of the world, including some US states and countries that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, like the right to request access to or deletion of your data.

European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

If you are located in a country that falls under the scope of the GDPR, data protection laws give you certain rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

• Request access to your personal data;
• Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
• Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
• Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
• Request portability of your personal data.
• You also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

Canada and Quebec Privacy Laws:

Laws in Canada, including the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and provincial privacy laws such as the Quebec Privacy Act, require us to provide individuals with certain information about the personal information we collect, use, and disclose. This may include details about the categories of personal information we collect, how we obtain that personal information, and the purposes for which we use it.

In the last 12 months, we collected the following categories of personal information, depending on the Services used:

• Identifiers (such as name, contact information, and online identifiers);
• Financial information (such as payment transaction details);
• Personal characteristics protected by law (such as age);
• Internet or electronic network activity information (such as interactions with our website or applications);
• Geolocation data (such as your IP address or GPS location);
• Audio, visual, or similar information (such as photographs or videos uploaded to our services);

If you are a job applicant, we may have also collected:

• Education information, such as the education you disclose in your job application.

The Quebec Privacy Act provides additional rights to individuals that are not available under PIPEDA. Some of these additional rights include:

• Request access and rectify personal information: individuals have the right to access their personal information held by an organisation and request that any inaccuracies be corrected.
• Request to withdraw consent: individuals have the right to withdraw their consent for the collection, use, or disclosure of their personal information at any time.
• Request to be forgotten: In certain circumstances, the Quebec Privacy Act provides individuals with the right to request that their personal information be erased or destroyed.
• Object to automated decision-making: individuals reserve the right to object to automated decision-making processes that significantly affect them.

Right to Opt Out:

We never directly sell your personal information in the conventional sense (i.e., for money). With your consent, we may share your information as necessary with our third-party service providers to provide our services to you.

We do not collect or process your sensitive (and potentially sensitive) personal information except where it is strictly necessary to provide you with our Services, where the processing is not for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you, or for other purposes that do not require an option to limit. We don’t knowingly sell or share personal information of those under 18.

16. Contacting Us About These Rights

You can usually access, correct, or delete your personal data using your account settings, but if you aren’t able to or you’d like to contact us about one of the other rights, you can email us at sophie@cultiville.com.

When you contact us about one of your rights under this section, we’ll need to verify that you are the right person before we disclose or delete anything. For example, if you are a user, we will need you to contact us from the email address associated with your account. You can also designate an authorised agent to make a request on your behalf by giving us written authorization. We may still require you to verify your identity with us.

17. Appeals Process for Rights Requests Denials

In some circumstances we may deny your request to exercise one of these rights. For example, if we cannot verify that you are the account owner we may deny your request to access the personal information associated with your account. As another example, if we are legally required to maintain a copy of your personal information we may deny your request to delete your personal information.

In the event that we deny your request, we will communicate this fact to you in writing. You may appeal our decision by responding in writing to our denial email and stating that you would like to appeal. All appeals will be reviewed by an internal expert who was not involved in your original request. In the event that your appeal is also denied this information will be communicated to you in writing. Please note that the appeal process does not apply to job applicants.

If your appeal is denied, you may refer the denied appeal to the Privacy Commissioner if you believe the denial is in conflict with your legal rights. The process for how to do this will be communicated to you in writing at the same time we send you our decision about your appeal.

18. Controllers and Responsible Companies

Cultiville’s Services are located in Quebec, Canada. Cultiville Inc. (“Cultiville”) acts as the “controller” of your personal data.

19. How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned above, please contact us through our “Contact Us” page or via email at sophie@cultiville.com. These are the fastest ways to get a response to your inquiry. You can also reach us by mail at: 296-365 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montreal, QC H2X 3X2.

20. Third-Party Software and Services

When using third-party services through our site, please keep in mind that interacting with them may mean providing information about yourself to those third parties. For example, some third-party services may request or require access to your data via a pixel or cookie. Please note that if you use the third-party service or grant access, your data will be handled in accordance with the third party’s privacy policy and practices. We don’t own or control these third parties, and they have their own rules about information collection, use, and sharing, which you should review before using the software or services.

21. Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Cultiville may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Cultiville encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (like adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the Services after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

That’s it! Thanks for reading.

Change Log

25/05/2023 – Removed translation clause

06/02/2024 – Reformatted Privacy Policy

06/02/2024 – Added “(we will always ask for your opt-in consent when you create a profile with us)”