Privacy

The short version

Tidal Salt is a small business in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. We collect very little. This website sets no cookies, runs no analytics and has no advertising trackers. We learn who you are only when you email us or place an order, and we use what you give us only to answer you and to get your salt to you. We do not sell or rent personal information.

Who is responsible

Colin Duggan is the person responsible for privacy at Tidal Salt. For any question about this page or about your information, email salty@tidalsalt.ca.

We follow Canada's federal private-sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

What we collect and why

When you visit this site

Our web server keeps standard logs. A log entry can include your IP address, the date and time, the page you asked for, the page that sent you here and the type of browser you use. We use the logs to keep the site working and secure, and to turn away abusive traffic. We do not use them to identify you or to build a profile of you.

The site sets no cookies and uses no analytics service. Fonts and images load from our own server, so your browser does not contact another company when you read a page here. There are no accounts, no sign-up forms and no newsletter.

When you email us

The Contact page gives our email address. It has no form. When you write to us, we receive your email address and whatever you put in your message. We use it to answer you and to follow up on your question or order.

When you buy salt

The Shop buttons take you to a checkout page run by Square, our payment processor. Square collects the details needed to take payment and ship your order. We never see or store your full card number.

We see your order in our Square account: your name, your contact details, your shipping address and what you bought. We use that to pack and ship your order, to answer questions about it and to keep the sales records the law requires.

Who else handles your information

• Square processes payments and holds order records. Its own privacy notice applies on its checkout page.
• Web Hosting Canada (WHC) provides the server this site runs on, where the logs are kept. The server is in Montréal, Quebec.
• Proton Mail provides our email.
• Shippo provides our shipping labels and Canada Post delivers your order. Both receive your name and shipping address so your order can reach you.

Some of these companies store or process information outside Canada. Proton Mail is based in Switzerland, and Square and Shippo may process information in the United States. Information held in another country is subject to that country's laws.

We share personal information with no one else, unless the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• Server logs: our server deletes them automatically after about two weeks.
• Email: we keep your messages so we can follow up on questions and orders. Ask us and we will delete them, unless we need a message as part of an order record.
• Orders: order and sales records stay in Square for as long as tax and business law requires us to keep them.

Social media tools

We use a scheduling tool that we host ourselves to publish our own posts to our own Facebook Page and our Instagram, Threads and Bluesky accounts. It connects to Facebook, Instagram and Threads through a Meta app called Tidal Salt Social.

• Only Colin signs in to it. Customers, followers and site visitors never do.
• We use it to publish our posts and to read summary figures for them, such as reach and link clicks. Those figures are totals. They do not tell us who you are.
• We do not use it to read or send private messages, to manage comments or to collect contact details.
• It stores no personal information about customers, followers or site visitors.

When you follow, like or comment on one of our social accounts, that platform holds the information under its own privacy policy. You can manage or delete it with the platform's own tools.

If you appear in a photo we have posted and want it taken down, email salty@tidalsalt.ca and we will remove it.

Seeing and correcting your information

You can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for a copy of it and ask us to correct it. Email salty@tidalsalt.ca. We will answer within 30 days, at no cost. We may ask a question or two to confirm that the request comes from you.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca.

Data deletion requests

You can ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you. This covers the website, our email, our order records and the Tidal Salt Social app.

1. Email salty@tidalsalt.ca with the subject line "Data deletion request".
2. Tell us the name and the email address you used with us, so we can find your information.
3. We will confirm that we have your request within two business days.
4. We will delete your information within 30 days and email you when it is done.

Two limits apply. We must keep some records by law, such as sales records needed for taxes. If that applies to you, we will tell you what we kept and why. And we cannot delete what a social media platform holds about you. For that, use the platform's own settings.

The Tidal Salt Social app holds no personal information about anyone except its one operator, so in most cases there will be nothing in it to delete. We will still check and confirm.

Changes to this page

If what we collect changes, we will update this page and its effective date before the change takes effect.