Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

Hey, Loonie (“we”, “us”) is the personal budgeting service described in this policy. We are accountable for personal information under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and under provincial privacy law that applies to us, which may include the private-sector laws of Alberta, British Columbia, or Quebec.

Privacy questions, access requests, correction requests, and complaints go to [email protected]. That address is our privacy contact.

2. Who the service is for

Hey, Loonie is offered only to individuals who are ordinarily resident in Canada and located in Canada, and who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory. At registration you must confirm that residency in your own words by accepting the statement we show you. We store the date of that confirmation and the version of the wording you accepted.

The service is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of majority.

3. Information we collect, and why

We collect only what we need to run the budgeting service, keep accounts secure, and meet legal duties. Financial information is sensitive. We ask for express consent at registration, in a separate checkbox from the Canadian residency confirmation. We do not bundle consent for advertising or for selling information into that checkbox.

• Account. Name, email address, and a password hash. Used to create and protect your login, send account messages, and decide whether an administrator approves the account.
• Canadian residency confirmation. The fact that you accepted the statement, the date, and the wording version. Used to limit the service to people in Canada and to keep a record of that confirmation.
• Budgeting data you enter or import. Account labels you choose (such as “Chequing” or “Visa”), institution names, transaction dates, amounts, payees, memos, categories, budgets, and similar fields. Used only to show your budgets, categories, and reports to you.
• Uploaded CSV files. The file you upload so we can parse it. Used only to create the transactions you approve. The original file is deleted after a successful import.
• Security and authenticator data. Every account must confirm an authenticator app before the budget opens. We store the encrypted secret and recovery codes needed to sign you in.
• Security logs. Event type, user id, time, IP address, and browser type for events such as login, failed login, logout, password or email change, authenticator changes, CSV import counts, data export, and account deletion. These logs do not contain your transaction list, passwords, authenticator codes, or the contents of a CSV.

We do not ask for online banking usernames or passwords. We do not connect to your bank. We do not collect full account numbers on purpose. If a CSV includes one, you should remove it before upload. We do not use your information to assess credit, insurance, or employment.

4. What we do not do with it

• We do not sell personal information.
• We do not use transaction descriptions, amounts, account names, or balances for advertising.
• We do not send that financial detail to analytics or advertising tools.
• We do not send balances or transaction lists by email. Account emails say that something is ready, and you sign in to see the figures.
• We do not hold your money, move your money, or initiate payments.
• We are not a bank, we are not accredited by the Bank of Canada, and we are not an open-banking or government-certified service.

5. Cookies

We use cookies that are needed to sign you in, remember a device when you ask us to, and protect forms against cross-site requests. Session cookies are encrypted. We do not use advertising cookies, analytics cookies, or session-replay tools.

6. Service providers and transfers outside your province

We use service providers to host the application and its database, and to send email. Those providers may process personal information outside your province and outside Canada. They may use it only to perform the service we hired them for, under confidentiality terms. They may not use it for their own marketing.

Email is sent through Postmark. Postmark receives the email address and the text of messages such as email verification, password reset, and signup approval. It does not receive your transaction ledger.

If you live in Quebec, Quebec’s private-sector privacy law may apply to you as well, including rights described by the Commission d’accès à l’information. Information may be processed outside Quebec by the providers above.

7. How we protect it

• Sensitive budgeting fields are encrypted in the database before they are stored.
• Passwords are hashed. We cannot read your password back to you, and we do not email it.
• Production traffic uses HTTPS. Session cookies are marked so browsers do not share them loosely.
• Each account’s records are limited to that account. Guessing another person’s record number does not reveal their data.
• Uploaded files are stored outside the public website and deleted after a successful import.
• An authenticator app is required for every account.

No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. We protect information in a way that fits how sensitive financial data is.

8. How long we keep it

• Original CSV. Deleted after a successful import.
• Budgeting records and profile. Kept while your account is open and those records are needed to provide the service.
• After you delete the account. We delete or anonymize the account, transactions, budgets, categories, and uploaded files from the live application. Copies in backups, if our host keeps backups, remain until that backup expires on the host’s schedule. We do not claim those backup copies disappear the moment you click delete.
• Security logs. Kept for up to 24 months so we can investigate abuse and account for security events, unless a longer period is required to deal with an incident or by law. Logs are not a second copy of your transactions.

9. Your choices and requests

• Access. Use Profile, then “Download my data”, after you confirm your password. You can also email our privacy contact. We respond within 30 days, unless the law allows a longer period, in which case we will tell you.
• Correction. You can edit your name, email, account labels, categories, and transaction details in the application. Email us if you cannot correct something yourself.
• Deletion and withdrawal of consent. Delete the account from Profile. That withdraws consent for us to keep providing the service. We may still keep a security log, or a record the law requires, as described above.
• Authenticator. You confirm an authenticator app from Profile before the budget opens. You can generate new recovery codes there.

We may ask you to confirm your identity before we release or change personal information, so that we do not disclose it to the wrong person.

10. If something goes wrong

If we believe personal information under our control was lost, stolen, or accessed without authority, we will contain the incident, find out what happened, and notify affected people and the relevant privacy commissioner when Canadian law requires that notice. We keep a record of incidents. The application does not send regulatory notices by itself. A person responsible for privacy reviews whether notice is required.

11. Complaints

Write to [email protected] first and we will respond. You may also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. If a provincial law applies, you may complain to the commissioner for that province, including the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, or Quebec’s Commission d’accès à l’information.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change how we use personal information, we will update this page and the date above. If the change uses information for a new purpose that the law says needs consent, we will ask you. We will not treat silence as consent for a new use of your financial information.