Privacy Policy
Last updated: 2026. This policy applies to calgarysignalhill.com and all data collected through this website.
Most real estate site privacy policies are boilerplate copied from a template generator and never read by anyone. We’ve tried to write something different — specific enough to actually tell you what happens to your information, plain enough that you don’t need a lawyer to parse it.
The short version: we collect information you voluntarily submit through our forms, we collect anonymous analytics data about how people use the site, and if you submit a lead inquiry form, that information is routed to our exclusive agent partner so they can respond to you. That’s the commercial arrangement that makes this site possible, and we’re not going to bury it in clause 7(b)(ii). Here’s the full detail.
Who We Are and What Law Applies
calgarysignalhill.com is an editorial data resource focused on Signal Hill real estate and neighbourhood information, operated as a private-sector website. Because we’re based in Alberta and serve Alberta residents, Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) is the primary law governing how we handle your personal information. PIPA sets out rules around consent, purpose limitation (we can only use your data for the purposes we tell you about), and your right to access and correct information we hold about you.
If you’re visiting from the European Union, GDPR rights apply to you as well. Canada’s federal anti-spam law, CASL, governs any commercial electronic messages we send — including newsletter emails and market report emails.
We collect and use personal information only for the purposes described in this policy. If we want to use it for something new, we’ll ask for your consent first.
What Information We Collect and How
There are two categories here: information you give us directly, and information collected automatically when you use the site.
Information You Give Us Directly
When you submit any form on this site — a lead inquiry, a request for the monthly market report, a listing alert signup, or a general contact message — we collect the information you enter. Depending on which form you use, that typically includes:
- Name and email address — required for all form submissions so we (or the agent partner) can respond to you
- Phone number — optional on most forms, required only if you specifically request a callback
- Property interest details — what you’re looking for, your timeline, your current situation (buying, selling, relocating, downsizing) — whatever you tell us in the free-text fields
- Consent records — a timestamp and form identifier recording when and how you gave consent, stored as required under CASL
We don’t collect sensitive personal information — no financial details, no government identification, nothing in that category. We’re a neighbourhood information site, not a mortgage lender.
Information Collected Automatically
Like every website, we collect anonymous data about how visitors use the site. This is handled through Google Analytics, which records things like which pages you viewed, how long you spent on them, what device and browser you used, and your approximate geographic location (city-level, not street address). This data is aggregated and anonymous — it tells us that 340 people read the market stats page last month, not who those 340 people were.
Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser to do this tracking. You can opt out using Google’s Analytics opt-out browser add-on. Google’s data processing terms govern what Google does with this data on their end — their privacy policy is at policies.google.com/privacy.
We also use standard server logs, which record IP addresses and page requests. These are retained for security purposes and routine server administration.
A Note on Our Data Dashboards
Several pages on this site display neighbourhood data pulled from public sources — City of Calgary open data sets, Calgary Police Service crime statistics, CREB market reports. When we fetch this data through public APIs, no personal information is collected or transmitted. We’re pulling aggregate neighbourhood statistics, not anything tied to individual people. The data flows one way: from the City of Calgary’s servers to our display — nothing about you goes back.
How We Use Your Information — and the Agent Partner Disclosure
This is the part that matters most if you’ve submitted a form, so we’re going to be direct about it.
If you submit a lead inquiry form on this site, your name, email address, phone number (if provided), and the details you’ve shared about your property interest will be routed to our exclusive agent partner. The purpose is real estate services and buyer or seller representation — meaning the agent will contact you to help with whatever you’ve told us you’re looking for.
This is the commercial model that funds the site. We’ve chosen one exclusive agent partner who specialises in Signal Hill rather than selling your information to multiple competing agents, and we disclose this arrangement openly rather than obscuring it. Under Alberta PIPA, this third-party disclosure requires your consent, which is captured on the form submission itself through a clear consent statement. We don’t route your data anywhere else.
For email subscriptions — the monthly market report, new listing alerts, or the newsletter — your email address is managed through Mailchimp, our email service provider. Mailchimp acts as a sub-processor under both CASL and PIPA — they store and send emails on our behalf but are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes. Mailchimp’s privacy policy is at mailchimp.com/legal/privacy.
Other than the agent partner and Mailchimp, we don’t sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties. Full stop.
CASL and Email Consent
Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation distinguishes between two types of email, and we handle them differently.
Transactional messages — a direct reply to an inquiry you submitted, a confirmation that your form was received — don’t require separate consent under CASL. They’re responses to something you initiated. These may come from us or directly from the agent partner.
Commercial messages — the monthly market report, listing alert emails, neighbourhood news — require either express or implied consent under CASL. Express consent means you checked a box or clicked a confirmation link specifically for that purpose. Implied consent exists in some situations (for example, if you’ve had a recent business relationship with us), but we prefer express consent because it’s cleaner and clearer for everyone. When you sign up for any email list on this site, we record your consent with a timestamp.
Every commercial email we send includes an unsubscribe link that works immediately. If you unsubscribe, we remove you from that list within 10 business days as required by CASL — usually much faster.
Your Rights Under Alberta PIPA
Alberta’s PIPA gives you specific rights over your personal information. You can:
- Request access to the personal information we hold about you — we’ll tell you what we have, what we’ve used it for, and who we’ve shared it with
- Request corrections if any information we hold is inaccurate or incomplete
- Withdraw consent at any time for uses that depend on your consent — though withdrawing consent may mean we can’t provide the service you requested (we can’t send you market reports if you withdraw email consent, for example)
- Ask us to stop using your information in certain ways, subject to our legal obligations
To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details below. We’ll respond within 30 days.
If you’re an EU resident, you also have rights under GDPR including the right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’) and the right to data portability. Same contact, same 30-day timeline.
Data Retention
We keep lead form data for as long as it remains relevant to the inquiry — typically until the real estate transaction is complete or the person asks us to delete it. Email subscriber records are kept until you unsubscribe. Analytics data is retained according to Google Analytics’ default retention settings (26 months for user-level data). Server logs are retained for 90 days and then deleted.
Cookies
We use cookies for analytics (Google Analytics, described above) and basic site functionality — things like remembering your preferences if you’ve set any. We don’t use advertising cookies or third-party tracking cookies beyond Google Analytics. Most browsers let you control or block cookies through their settings — doing so won’t break core site functionality, though it will prevent analytics tracking.
Security
The site runs on HTTPS (SSL/TLS certificates via Let’s Encrypt), hosted on infrastructure using Cloudflare for security and performance. We take reasonable precautions to protect personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, or loss — but no internet transmission is 100% secure, and we can’t make guarantees we can’t keep.
Changes to This Policy
If we make material changes to how we collect or use personal information, we’ll update this page and revise the ‘Last updated’ date at the top. We won’t retroactively change how we use data we’ve already collected without asking for your consent again.
Contact Us With Privacy Questions
If you have questions about this policy, want to exercise your PIPA rights, or want to know specifically what information we hold about you, contact us directly. We’re not going to make you navigate a form to ask a privacy question.
You can reach us through the contact page — mark your message as ‘Privacy Inquiry’ and we’ll make sure it gets to the right person. Response time is typically within 2-3 business days, and we’ll formally respond within 30 days as required under PIPA.
If you feel we haven’t adequately addressed a privacy concern, you have the right to complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (oipc.ab.ca).