Privacy policy
This policy explains what personal information Verified Local, a directory of local businesses, collects, why, and what you can do about it. The directory is operated by Perpetual Media Ltd., 1108 - 250 Consumers Road #235, North York, ON M2J 4V6 (“we”). We follow the fair information principles of Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
Accountability
Perpetual Media Ltd. is responsible for the personal information described here. Questions, access requests, and complaints go to mailto:hello@verifiedlocal.ca.
What we collect and why
- Public business information. Listings start from the City of Toronto’s open business licence data, used under the Open Government Licence – Toronto, and other public open-data sources named on each profile. We publish business names, business addresses, and business phone numbers. We do not publish a licence holder’s personal name, and we do not keep a person’s name from that data.
- Your email address. When you sign in, we use your email address to send you a one-time sign-in link. There is no password. If you add a business, we keep the email you give us to follow up on that submission.
- Claim verification. To claim a listing, we send a one-time code either by text message to the phone number already on the listing, or by email to an address at the listing’s website domain. We store only a one-way hash of the code and of where it was sent, not the code itself. A code is texted only when you ask for one, one text per request, and replying STOP opts you out.
- Payments. A claim costs a one-time $49 CAD, paid through Stripe Checkout. Stripe collects and processes your card details; we never see or store them. We keep the Stripe session identifier, the amount, and when it was paid.
- Listing edits. After a paid claim, the details you enter for your business (for example its phone, description, or images) are published on its profile.
- Cookies. Signing in sets cookies that keep you signed in, plus a short-lived one while your sign-in link is pending. We use no advertising or analytics cookies.
Consent and limits on use
We collect only what the purposes above need, and we use it only for those purposes: running the directory, signing you in, verifying and processing claims, and answering you. We do not sell personal information, and we do not send marketing messages. Every text and email we send names Perpetual Media Ltd., our mailing address, and how to contact us.
Service providers
We use service providers to run the site: Supabase (database and sign-in; our database is in Canada), Vercel (hosting), Stripe (payments), Twilio (text messages), Resend (email), and Sentry (error reports, with email addresses, phone numbers, codes, and payment ids removed before they are sent). Some of them may process information outside Canada, where it is subject to the laws of that country. They receive only what they need to provide their service to us.
Retention and safeguards
We keep personal information only as long as we need it for these purposes or as the law requires. Verification codes expire after 10 minutes. Access to the database is limited to the site’s server and the people who run it.
Accuracy, access, and correction
You may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it where we are not required to keep it. A business owner can propose a correction to a listing from the dashboard after a paid claim. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Changes
We may update this policy. The current version is always on this page.