muniSERV connects Canadian municipalities with the solution providers who serve them. To do that we hold some information about the people who use the site. This page says, in plain language, what we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it, who can see it, and what you can ask us to do about it. It covers the muniSERV website and the email we send.
Personal information is anything that identifies you or would let someone contact you: your name, email address, phone number, and the information attached to those. We collect only what we need to run the site and do what you have asked us to do, and we never sell or rent it.
What we collect, and why
Your account. Your name, your email address, the organisation you belong to, and the kind of account you registered for. Your password is stored scrambled; nobody at muniSERV can read it. When you accept our Terms we record which version you accepted, when, and the IP address and browser you accepted it from, because that record is what an agreement rests on.
Your profile and your listing. Everything you put on it: your company, the services you offer, the provinces you serve, your biography, your photo and logo, your website and the contact details you choose to publish, with your case studies and the testimonials people give you. A listing is meant to be found, so this part is public while your listing is switched on. You decide what goes in it, and you can switch the listing off or edit it at any time.
What you post. RFPs, job postings, muniBLOG articles, events and surplus listings are published with your organisation’s name on them, because that is what they are for.
Payments. Payments are taken by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. We keep the record of what was bought, what it cost, the tax, and the receipt or credit note, because we are required to and because you need a copy.
Email we send you. Which message we sent, when, and whether it was delivered, bounced or was held back, with a copy of the message as it was sent, kept for 90 days. Our emails carry no tracking pixels: we know a message was sent, not whether you opened it. If your address bounces or you mark a message as spam, we record that so we stop sending to it.
Sign-ins and security. The IP address and browser of each successful sign-in, of each sign-in we refused, and of requests that look like abuse, such as repeated failed sign-ins. These are kept for 90 days, so that unusual access can be recognised and the site can be protected.
How you use the site while you are signed in. We keep a small, coarse record of use, so that we can see which parts of muniSERV are worth improving and so that the people who post can see whether anyone is interested:
- the last time your account was used, as a single date and time that replaces the one before it, so we can tell which accounts are still in use;
- which parts of the site you use — RFPs and tenders, jobs, the directory, muniBLOG, events, news, your dashboard, and everything else as one group — as counts only. We do not record which pages you opened, what you searched for, or the order you went in. These counts are kept for 90 days and then deleted, we can switch the counting off for everyone at any time, and they are not kept for administrators or test accounts;
- the Apply button on a job posting, and the documents and tender pages you open from an RFP, so the municipality that posted can see the interest its posting drew;
- the jobs you save, the enquiries you send through the site, and how you rated a tender we matched to your practice.
Visitors who are not signed in. Our analytics (Plausible) count page visits and where visitors arrived from, without cookies and without building a profile of anyone. Nothing in that record identifies you. We also count how many people have seen a job posting or a profile, as a number, never as a list of names.
Your own website, whatever plan you are on. Our reader, MuniSERV ProfileBot, visits the public pages of the website on your listing and reads what is there, so that we can write a short summary of your practice: it is what we match open tenders against, and it is what we use to prepare a draft profile for you. We do this whether or not you asked us to, because a listing with nothing on it helps nobody; a draft is held for you to read and is never public until you publish it. It reads only what is already public, it identifies itself as MuniSERV-ProfileDraft or MuniSERV ProfileBot, it obeys your robots.txt, and how to stop it is a page of its own.
How long we keep what we read. The stripped text of your pages is kept for up to 30 days so that colleagues at your firm are not read twice in a month; a draft profile we prepared for you is held for 60 days, and is deleted if you do not publish it. Neither is shown to anybody but you and muniSERV’s administrators.
What you send us. Messages you send through the contact form or by email, so that we can answer them.
Who can see it
Your listing and what you post are public, because that is their purpose. Everything else is seen only by you and by muniSERV’s administrators, who need it to run the site, to answer your questions and to keep accounts secure. Other members never see it. We do not sell it, rent it, or share it for anyone else’s marketing.
We use a small number of service providers, each contracted to use your information only for the work we engaged them for: Stripe (payments and card details, which we never see), Resend (sending our email), Cloudflare (storing uploaded files and our backups), Plausible (cookie-free analytics), Google reCAPTCHA (checking that our public forms are used by a person rather than a bot), Google Search Console (how the site appears in search results, in aggregate), and Anthropic, whose AI service we use to draft replies for a person on our team to review, to summarise job postings and tenders, to draft a profile from a provider’s own website, to match open tenders to a practice summary, and to check that an uploaded image is what it claims to be. A drafted reply is always a starting point for a person; nothing is sent to you automatically by an AI, and no AI decision closes an account or refuses a payment.
We may disclose personal information to courts, law enforcement or other relevant third parties where that is necessary to conduct an investigation, to respond to a subpoena or court order, or to protect our legal rights. If we are ever involved in a merger, an acquisition or a sale of a substantial part of our assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction, and we will tell you by email or by a prominent notice on the site.
How long we keep it
- Your account, your profile and your listing: for as long as your account exists.
- Sign-in and security records, the email we sent you, and the counts of which parts of the site you use: 90 days, then deleted.
- Receipts, credit notes and the record of what was paid: as long as the law requires us to keep financial records.
- What you published — RFPs, job postings, articles, events, testimonials you gave — stays on the site when you close your account, because other people rely on it.
Your choices
Your profile. You can edit it, switch your listing off, or change your sign-in email address yourself, from your dashboard.
Email. Our anti-spam policy allows only permission-based email. You choose which topics you want when you register and can change them at any time on your email preferences page. Every marketing email carries an unsubscribe link: open it, confirm, and the change applies immediately, for every address we hold for you. Account and billing messages are transactional: they go to everyone with an account, whatever your marketing choices are, and they stop when the account is closed.
Cookies. We use cookies to keep you signed in and to remember choices you make while you are using the site. We use no advertising cookies and we do not track you across other websites. You can accept or decline cookies in your browser; if you decline them you can still browse muniSERV, but you cannot sign in.
Closing your account. You can close your own account: open your profile page in your dashboard, scroll to the bottom and choose Close my account. You will be asked to type the word close, so it cannot happen by accident. You are signed out and cannot sign in again; your listing leaves the directory and search; marketing and transactional email stop, after one last message confirming the closure; and a paid subscription is cancelled so you are not billed again, with the period you have already paid for left to run and not refunded. The account is deactivated rather than erased, so an administrator can reopen it with your profile and history intact if you change your mind.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. Deletion is a separate request from closing an account and we handle it by hand: email us and we will tell you what can be removed and what we are required to keep. We answer requests within 30 days. There is no charge.
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information or your request, you can complain to us first, and then to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
How we protect it
We use reasonable technical, administrative and physical safeguards to keep your information confidential and secure, and we review them. We do not collect card numbers ourselves; payment security is handled by our payment processor. Despite that, no site can guarantee absolute protection given the open nature of the Internet, and we make no representation or warranty as to the effectiveness of our security.
We keep a documented process for handling a privacy breach and a register of incidents. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the appropriate privacy regulator. If you suspect a breach involving your information, email us at info@muniserv.ca and we will investigate.
Other websites
muniSERV links to other websites — a municipality’s careers page, a tender document, a member’s own site. We do not control how they handle information and we are not responsible for their practices; read their privacy policies to see what they do.
Changes to this policy
We may change this policy. If we change it in a material way we will say so here, by email, or by a notice on the site, and the date at the top of this page moves. Continuing to use muniSERV after a change means you accept it.
Questions?
Our privacy officer, the person in charge of personal information at muniSERV, is Steve Desrocher, Privacy Officer, reachable at info@muniserv.ca.
If you have a question about this policy or about your own information, please contact us.