CalcNorth

Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 15, 2026

1. Introduction

CalcNorth (calcnorth.com) is a Canadian personal-finance calculator and information website. References to the “Operator,” “we,” or “us” in this Policy mean CalcNorth. This Privacy Policy describes the personal information we and our service providers collect when you visit the site, why we collect it, how we use it, and the rights you have over it.

This Policy is governed by Canadian federal privacy law, specifically the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), and where applicable the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Quebec, “Law 25”), the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia), and the Personal Information Protection Act (Alberta).

2. Person responsible for privacy

Under PIPEDA Principle 1 (Accountability) and Quebec Law 25 s. 3.1, we have designated a person responsible for the protection of personal information. To exercise any of the rights described in this Policy, or to submit a privacy complaint, contact:

Privacy Officer / Person Responsible for Personal Information
[email protected]

You may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (1-800-282-1376, www.priv.gc.ca) or, for Quebec residents, the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (1-888-528-7741, www.cai.gouv.qc.ca).

3. What we collect (and what we don’t)

What we don’t collect

CalcNorth’s calculators run entirely in your browser. The numbers you type in (home price, down payment, income, mortgage balance, and so on) are not transmitted to any CalcNorth server. They are not stored, logged, or seen by us. You can verify this directly: open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and use a calculator. No request goes to calcnorth.com when you change inputs.

Separately, to prevent capture of input values in the third-party session-replay tool we use (Microsoft Clarity, see section 3 below), the calculator’s input fields and computed result values are wrapped in a container element bearing the data-clarity-mask attribute. This instructs Clarity to redact the affected DOM content from session recordings. Verification of this masking is done by playing back a session in the Clarity administrative dashboard, not in the browser network tab; the masking configuration is honoured server-side by the Clarity service and is not directly observable in client-side network traffic.

We do not maintain user accounts. There is no login, no email collection, no payment processing, and no contact form on the site. To reach us, use the email addresses listed in this Policy and in our Terms of Service.

What is collected indirectly via third parties

When you visit the site, the following third-party services may collect technical information about your visit. These services act as our service providers under contract:

  • Umami Cloud. Operated by Umami Software, Inc. A cookieless web analytics service used to count page views and measure basic traffic patterns. Does not set cookies and does not persist identifiers across visits (visitor IDs are derived from a daily-rotated hash of IP and user-agent and are not stored beyond aggregation). Collects: page URL, referrer, country (derived from IP, which is not retained), browser type, operating system, screen size, and device class. We use Umami Cloud to understand traffic volume and which pages visitors read. Because no cookie or persistent identifier is used, Umami Cloud runs for all visitors regardless of cookie-banner choice. Default retention: 6 months. For details see the Umami Privacy Statement.
  • Google Analytics 4.Operated by Google LLC. Collects: IP address (truncated to a partial subnet before long-term storage in line with Google’s default IP-anonymization behaviour), browser and device type, language, screen resolution, page-view events, scroll depth, time on page, and referring URL. We use Google Analytics 4 to understand which pages visitors read, how long they stay, and which calculators they find useful. Default retention: 14 months.
  • Microsoft Clarity.Operated by Microsoft Corporation. Collects technical metadata equivalent to Google Analytics 4, plus behavioural metrics, heatmap aggregation, and session-replay data (mouse movement, scroll, clicks, keyboard interactions, and a recorded view of the page). Data is captured using first-party and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies. The calculators’ input fields and computed results are masked, so the financial values you enter and see are not captured in recordings. We use Clarity to find usability issues and broken interactions. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, see the Microsoft Privacy Statement. Default retention: 13 months.
  • Vercel Inc. Hosts the site. Receives standard server access metadata (IP address, request URL, timestamp, user agent, response status) for security, abuse-prevention, and operational purposes.
  • Cloudflare, Inc. Provides DNS resolution and edge-CDN services for calcnorth.com. Receives request-level metadata equivalent to Vercel.

Public data we read from the Bank of Canada

CalcNorth reads public Canadian rate data from the Bank of Canada’s Valet API (overnight rate, prime rate, 5-year Government of Canada bond yield) to display in the sidebar. No information about you is sent to the Bank of Canada. This is a one-way, server-to-server fetch initiated by our infrastructure, not by your browser, and contains no user-specific data.

4. Why we collect this information

We collect technical and usage data exclusively to:

  • understand site traffic patterns and which content visitors find most useful;
  • detect, investigate, and prevent fraud, abuse, or malicious activity;
  • maintain operational reliability of the site;
  • improve the calculators and editorial content based on aggregate usage patterns.

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal information. We do not engage in behavioural advertising. We do not build identified profiles of individual users.

5. Use of artificial intelligence

CalcNorth does not currently use generative artificial intelligence (large language models, image generators, or similar tools) in any user-facing feature. Calculator outputs are produced by deterministic mathematical formulas; editorial content is written by humans.

If we add an AI-driven feature in the future, we will:

  • update this Policy to disclose the AI service provider (such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or another vendor);
  • state explicitly what data, if any, is sent to the provider;
  • describe whether the provider may retain or use the data to train its models, and how that affects your privacy under PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25.

Until that disclosure appears in this Policy, you can assume no input you provide to CalcNorth is sent to any third-party AI service.

6. Cookies and tracking technologies

Among the third-party services described in section 3, Google Analytics 4 and Microsoft Clarity use cookies and persistent identifiers. Umami Cloud is cookieless and does not persist identifiers across visits. CalcNorth itself does not set first-party cookies on your initial visit.

CalcNorth uses an opt-in cookie banner for tracking technology. On your first visit, the banner appears at the bottom of every page and presents three choices: Accept all, Reject all, or Customise. Google Analytics 4 and Microsoft Clarity will not loaduntil you have explicitly accepted them (either through Accept all or by toggling the Analytics category on in Customise). Your choice is saved locally in your browser and persists across visits. This satisfies Quebec Law 25 s. 8.1, which requires that tracking technology be deactivated by default, and exceeds PIPEDA’s passive-consent baseline.

Umami Cloud runs for all visitors regardless of cookie-banner choice. It sets no cookies, persists no identifier across visits, and collects only aggregate traffic data. We rely on this layer to count anonymous page views even when a visitor declines cookie-based analytics. If you wish to opt out of Umami specifically, you can block the request to cloud.umami.is using a tracker-blocking browser extension or send the Global Privacy Control header from your browser.

To change your choice at any time, click “Cookie preferences” in the site footer. This re-opens the banner so you can update your selection. Note: if you accepted analytics in a previous session, existing analytics cookies set by Google or Microsoft remain in your browser until they expire or you clear them; switching to Reject all stops new events from being sent but does not retroactively delete data already collected.

You also have these provider-side controls:

  • Google Analytics: install the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
  • Microsoft Clarity:use Microsoft’s privacy dashboard at privacy.microsoft.com.
  • Browser-level controls: enable third-party cookie blocking, or install a tracker-blocking extension such as uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger. Sending the Global Privacy Control header from your browser is also honoured by both providers.

7. Where your data is processed (cross-border transfers)

Our service providers (Google LLC, Microsoft Corporation, Vercel Inc., Cloudflare Inc.) are headquartered in the United States and process data on US-based or globally distributed infrastructure. As a result, technical metadata about your visit may be subject to access requests under US laws including the USA PATRIOT Act and the CLOUD Act. By using CalcNorth, you acknowledge this transfer-for-processing.

For Quebec residents specifically: under Law 25 s. 17, we have evaluated each provider and rely on their published privacy commitments and Standard Contractual Clauses where available. Documentation of this Privacy Impact Assessment is available on request to our Privacy Officer.

8. How long we keep data

CalcNorth itself does not retain personal information on its own systems. Retention is governed by our service providers:

  • Google Analytics 4: 14 months from collection
  • Microsoft Clarity: 13 months from collection
  • Vercel access logs: typically 30 days
  • Cloudflare logs: typically 7 days

After these retention periods, data is purged or de-identified by the respective provider. Aggregate, de-identified statistics may be retained indefinitely.

9. Security and breach notification

The site is served exclusively over HTTPS. We rely on the security infrastructure of our service providers, which use industry-standard encryption in transit and at rest. We do not collect contact information, so we will not contact you about security matters unless you have written to us first.

Notwithstanding our safeguards, no system is fully secure. If we ever experience a breach involving personal information that creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and any affected individuals as required by PIPEDA s. 10.1, and the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec where Quebec residents are affected.

10. Links to other websites

CalcNorth links to a number of third-party websites in our editorial content, source citations, opt-out instructions, and references to government and regulatory authorities (Bank of Canada, CMHC, OSFI, the OPC, the Commission d’accès à l’information, and others). When you click a link that takes you off calcnorth.com, you are subject to the destination site’s own privacy practices, which may differ from ours.

We have no control over the privacy policies, content, or data practices of third-party sites. We strongly recommend reviewing the privacy policy of any external site before providing information to it. We assume no responsibility for the practices of those sites.

11. Your rights

Under PIPEDA and applicable provincial privacy law, you have the following rights:

  • Access. Request a copy of any personal information we hold about you. Because CalcNorth does not collect or store personal information directly, we typically have nothing to provide. We will guide you to the appropriate third-party service to exercise the right with the actual data holder.
  • Correction. Request correction of inaccurate personal information held about you, with the same caveat as above.
  • Withdraw consent.Withdraw your consent to the practices described in this Policy at any time by exiting the site and using your browser’s privacy controls or the opt-outs in section 5. Continued use of the site is treated as renewed consent.
  • Portability and de-indexing (Quebec only, under Law 25). Request a copy of your data in a structured technological format, or request that information be de-indexed where applicable. Same caveat as access: most calculator data never reaches us.
  • Complain. If you believe your privacy rights have been violated, you may complain first to our Privacy Officer (above), and if not satisfied, to:
    • Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada: 1-800-282-1376, www.priv.gc.ca
    • Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (Quebec residents): 1-888-528-7741, www.cai.gouv.qc.ca
    • Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia: 1-800-663-7867, www.oipc.bc.ca
    • Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta: 1-888-878-4044, www.oipc.ab.ca

12. Children

CalcNorth is intended for an adult audience. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has used the site in a way that resulted in collection of personal information, contact our Privacy Officer.

13. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent version. Material changes will be flagged by a notice on the home page and on the calculator pages for at least 30 days before taking effect. Continued use of the site after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Policy.

14. Contact

For privacy questions, requests, or complaints:

[email protected]
Privacy Officer / Person Responsible for Personal Information