Privacy Policy

This policy explains what PriceBack collects, why, where it goes, and how you control it. We wrote it in plain language; the legalese is at the bottom. It applies to PriceBack Canada (the “App”), operated by PriceBack Canada (the “Operator”).

Privacy Officer. Under Quebec Law 25 §3.1 and analogous Alberta / British Columbia PIPA provisions, the person responsible for the protection of personal information at PriceBack Canada is Maxim Lucas, Privacy Officer, reachable at support@priceback.ca. Quebec residents may also file complaints with the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec.

1What we collect

Information you provide

• Account details — when you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your name, email address, and a stable user identifier. We never receive your password.
• Postal code and province — captured during onboarding so we can fetch region-accurate Costco pricing.
• Receipt and price-tag photos and parsed text — you capture or upload photos to have prices extracted. Photos are processed by our text-extraction service providers, and the structured data (store, items, prices, dates) is stored in your account so we can track price drops and keep your history across devices.
• Optional flags — preferred Costco warehouse, language, notification preferences, opt-in for crowdsourced price sharing.

Information collected automatically

• Device fingerprint — a SHA-256 hash of an internal device identifier. Used for anti-abuse (rate limits, free-trial enforcement) and to attribute optional crowdsourced contributions. We never store the raw identifier.
• Push token — issued by your device platform's notification service. Lets us send price-drop and expiry-window notifications. You can revoke notification permission in your device settings any time.
• App activity — screen views, scans completed, claims filed, language changes. Used for product improvement.
• Crash data — uncaught exceptions and a short stack trace, sent to our crash-reporting provider.

What we do NOT collect

• Precise location (GPS / lat-long).
• Contacts, calendar, microphone, or any health data.
• Photos other than the receipts you choose to scan or upload.
• Any data from third-party email accounts unless you explicitly connect them in the Email Sync feature.

2How we use it

• Operate the core service: detect price drops, send notifications, render your scan history.
• Calculate refund opportunities and present them in the Claim Assistant.
• Enforce free-trial limits and prevent abuse via the hashed device fingerprint.
• Improve the app — bug fixes, performance tuning, OCR accuracy.
• Comply with legal obligations (e.g. responding to a valid subpoena).

We do not sell your data, use it for cross-context behavioural advertising, or share it with data brokers.

3Third parties we share with

The following categories of service providers process data on our behalf, under contracts that restrict them to the purposes listed below. A current list of the specific providers is available from the Privacy Officer on request:

• Sign-in providers (Google or Apple, your choice) — used only to verify your identity during sign-in.
• Text-extraction (OCR / AI) services — process the photos you scan and, where needed, the extracted text to turn your scans into structured price data. You can disable the AI second pass in Profile → AI receipt cleanup.
• Cloud hosting, database, and storage providers — run our backend and store your account data.
• Push-notification delivery — your device platform's notification service (Apple / Google).
• Crash reporting — stack traces and a session ID; no PII unless it appears in an exception message.
• Subscription and payment processing — purchases are handled by the Apple App Store / Google Play and our subscription-management provider, which receives your user ID and purchase events. We never see your payment card details.
• Retailer websites — we make read-only requests to fetch current prices for items on your receipts.

4Crowdsourced price contributions (opt-in only)

If you toggle Share Costco prices in your profile, each new Costco receipt contributes anonymised observations to our pricing database: (warehouse ID, SKU, unit price, date, hashed device ID). No receipt photo, no item name beyond the master product name on the receipt, no link back to your identity. You can revoke at any time — toggling off triggers a server-side delete of every observation tied to your device hash.

In-warehouse price-tag scans contribute the same kind of anonymised observation and may earn you credits once the savings is verified (see the Terms). To attribute a deferred reward to your account we keep, separately from the anonymous price pool, a hashed-device → account link and a small per-tag scan counter (hashed device, item number, attempt count). The counter exists purely for anti-abuse — it lets us cap rewards and detect the same tag being submitted repeatedly — and carries no identity in the price pool itself. It is deleted with the device record under the retention schedule below, or immediately when you toggle sharing off.

5Data retention schedule

We retain each category of personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected, subject to the limits below. Triggers for deletion include account closure, withdrawal of consent, and the lapse of the listed maximum period.

• Receipts and items — stored in your account until you delete the receipt in-app, use Profile → Delete my account (server-side hard delete within 30 days), or Profile → Reset all data.
• Account profile (name, email, postal code, province, push token) — retained until you delete your account. Hard-deleted within 30 days of an account-deletion request.
• Crowdsourced observations — retained until you toggle Share Costco prices off (immediate delete) or up to 24 months from the latest observation, whichever is sooner.
• Watched-item registrations (push tracking) — deleted once the receipt’s price-adjustment window closes, or on account deletion.
• Device fingerprint — 24 months from last seen, then auto-evicted.
• Backend operational logs — 30 days.
• Crash data — 90 days on our crash-reporting provider’s servers.
• Analytics events — 90 days on our servers (date-stamped log file rotation).
• Backups — deleted entries persist in encrypted operational backups for up to 90 days, then permanently overwritten.

6Your rights & choices

Under PIPEDA (federal), Quebec Law 25, Alberta PIPA, British Columbia PIPA, and analogous legislation, you have the following rights with respect to your personal information:

• Access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction — fix anything inaccurate.
• Deletion / erasure — request removal. Available in-app via Profile → Delete my account (server-side hard delete) and Profile → Reset all data (local wipe). Server-side deletion completes within 30 days.
• Portability — receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format. Available in-app via Profile → Download my data, which returns a JSON bundle of every record we hold tied to your identity.
• Objection / restriction — object to or restrict processing for a specific purpose.
• Withdraw consent — toggle off any opt-in feature (crowdsourced sharing, AI receipt cleanup, camera-roll suggestions, notifications) at any time. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of any processing performed before the withdrawal.
• Lodge a complaint — with your provincial privacy commissioner (Quebec CAI, Alberta OIPC, British Columbia OIPC) or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at the federal level.
• Automated decision-making — PriceBack does not make decisions based solely on automated processing that produce legal effects concerning you. Price-drop detection is purely informational; you decide whether to file any claim.

To exercise any of these rights, use the in-app tools where available, or email support@priceback.ca. We respond to verifiable requests within 30 days (Quebec Law 25 §32: 30 days; PIPEDA Principle 9: 30 days, extendable with notice).

7Children

PriceBack is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has provided data to us, email support@priceback.ca and we will delete it.

8Security

• All API traffic is HTTPS / TLS 1.2+.
• OAuth ID tokens are stored in iOS Keychain / Android Keystore via expo-secure-store, not in plain-text app storage.
• OCR / AI service credentials are held server-side and never ship in the app binary.
• Backend secrets are stored in our hosting provider's environment configuration; no credentials are in source control.
• Backend endpoints are rate-limited per IP and per device to mitigate abuse.
• Crowdsourced contributions are stored under a salted SHA-256 hash of your device identifier — never the raw value.

No system is perfectly secure. If you suspect a security issue, email support@priceback.ca.

9Breach notification

In the event of a privacy breach that creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify affected individuals and the appropriate privacy commissioner without unreasonable delay, as required by PIPEDA § 10.1, Quebec Law 25 § 3.5–3.8, Alberta PIPA § 34.1, and analogous provincial provisions. Notifications include a description of the breach, the personal information involved, what we are doing about it, and what you can do to protect yourself. Our internal target is to notify within 72 hours of confirming a reportable breach.

10International transfers

Our service providers — including cloud hosting, text extraction (OCR / AI), crash reporting, and subscription management — process personal information in the United States. By using PriceBack you consent to your personal information being transferred to and processed in the United States subject to the contractual safeguards we have in place with each provider (standard contractual clauses or successor frameworks).

Quebec residents: in accordance with Law 25 § 17, we have assessed the level of protection afforded to personal information communicated outside Quebec. The transfers above are necessary to deliver the service; safeguards include written contracts with each processor restricting use to the purposes set out in this policy, encryption in transit and at rest, and data-minimisation by design.

11Province-specific and jurisdiction-specific addenda

Quebec (Law 25)

• Privacy Officer. Maxim Lucas, reachable at support@priceback.ca (Law 25 § 3.1).
• Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). We assess the privacy impact of any new technology project involving personal information before deploying it (Law 25 § 3.3).
• Privacy-by-default. All collection points default to the most privacy-protective setting. Crowdsourced sharing, AI receipt cleanup, and camera-roll suggestions are explicitly opt-in.
• Granular consent. Each feature with optional data collection has its own toggle in Profile; consent for one feature does not imply consent for another.
• Service in French. The App and this policy are available in French. To request a French response to any rights request, indicate so in your message.
• Complaints. File with the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca).

Alberta (PIPA)

Alberta residents have the rights set out in § 6 above. Complaints may be filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (oipc.ab.ca).

British Columbia (PIPA)

BC residents have the rights set out in § 6 above. Complaints may be filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (oipc.bc.ca).

Other provinces (PIPEDA)

Residents of Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland & Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and the territories are covered by the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Complaints may be filed with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

California (CCPA / CPRA)

California residents have the rights enumerated in § 6 above. We do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not knowingly process the personal information of California residents under 16 without verifiable parental consent.

European Economic Area / United Kingdom (GDPR / UK-GDPR)

Our legal basis for processing is consent (for opt-in features), contract (for account management and core service delivery), and legitimate interest (for fraud prevention and analytics). The Operator is the data controller. You may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

12Changes to this policy

If we make material changes we will notify you in-app and update the “Last updated” date above. Where required by law (notably Quebec Law 25 § 3.5), we will obtain renewed consent before processing personal information for any purpose materially different from the one disclosed at the time of collection.

13Contact us

Privacy Officer · Questions, complaints, or rights requests: Maxim Lucas, support@priceback.ca. We aim to respond within one business day, and to all verifiable rights requests within 30 days.