Privacy Policy

ParkingNova is a parking discovery service, independently operated and registered in Ontario, Canada. This policy explains how we handle personal information under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

We are a parking search service. We do not own, operate or manage any parking facility, and we do not sell parking. See our Terms of Service for what that means.

Search details. When you search, the destination, coordinates, dates and times and any filters you apply are sent to our servers so we can return results. They appear in the page address, so a link you share carries them too.

Device location, only when you ask for it. If the search box offers a Use my location button, pressing it asks your browser for your position, and your browser asks you before answering. We never receive anything unless you allow it, and we never ask without you pressing it first. The coordinates are then used exactly as a destination you typed would be: to search, and to measure the walk from each lot. They appear in the page address while you are looking at the results, and they are not stored. The anonymous counts described below record the destination as the words your location, never the position itself. If you would rather not share it, type where you are going instead. Everything works the same way.

Technical request data. Like any website, our servers and hosting provider record standard request information: IP address, browser type, the page requested, and the time. This is used to run and secure the service.

Google Analytics. Each page you open is reported to Google Analytics: its address with anything you typed removed, its title, the website that linked you here, your browser, device type, screen size and language, and an approximate location that Google works out from your IP address. Google Analytics does not store the IP address itself. To tell one visitor's pages from another's, it sets cookies in your browser, named _ga and _ga_ followed by an ID, which hold a random identifier for your browser rather than anything about who you are.

Anything you send us. If you contact us, we keep your message and address so we can reply.

Anonymous counts. We keep running totals of how the service is used: how many searches were made for a destination in a given hour, roughly how long a stay was for, how many results came back, which parking operator was clicked, and, when you reach us through a link on another business's website, which business that link belonged to. That last one names the business, never you. These are counters, not records of visits. They hold no address, no device identifier, and nothing that connects one search to the click that followed it.

Searches we could not place. When our map data cannot find the destination you typed, we keep that text so we can add the missing place. It is handled carefully: anything that does not look like a place name is discarded immediately, anything typed fewer than three times is deleted within a day, and the whole list is erased after 90 days.

Reports about a municipal price. If you tell us a City of Toronto parking rate or a calculated total is wrong, we keep the report. It records which car park it was about, and, for a report about a total, the arrival and departure times you had searched and the figure the page was showing. Those come from the page you were on, and it says so before you send it.

The message box on that form is optional and it is yours to write, so we treat it like the searches above: we ask you not to put personal information in it, and we erase what is written there after 90 days. The rest of the report has no words of yours in it and is kept, because it is our record of why a price was corrected. We do not ask for your name or your email, so a report cannot be traced back to you and we cannot reply to it.

Those two are the only things here in your own words.

We state these plainly because they are the questions worth asking, and because we would rather be held to them.

No accounts. There is no sign-up, so we hold no names, email addresses or passwords for visitors.

No advertising cookies or trackers. The only cookies on the site are Google Analytics' own, described in clause 2. ParkingNova sets none of its own and uses no advertising trackers. Google signals and advertising personalisation are switched off, so your visits are not used for advertising or linked to a Google account.

No search history and no profile. The counters described above are totals, not a log of what you personally did. What you search for is removed before anything reaches Google Analytics, so neither we nor Google hold a record of your individual searches. Google Analytics can tell that a browser has visited before, through its cookie, but it is not told who you are and we do not try to find out.

No background location tracking. We ask for your position once, when you press the button, and we do not watch it afterwards. There is no tracking as you move, nothing is written to your device, and we cannot request your location again without you pressing the button again.

No payment information, ever. Reserving a space happens on the operator's own website. Card details are never entered on ParkingNova and never pass through our systems.

We do not sell personal information to anyone, for any purpose.

Search details are processed for the single purpose of finding and pricing parking near where you are going. Technical request data is processed to operate the service, diagnose faults and prevent abuse.

The anonymous counters exist to answer questions about the service, not about you: which destinations we cover badly, which places our map data cannot find, and whether the order we show results in is any use. They are deliberately coarse, grouped into bands rather than recorded exactly, so that no row describes a particular trip.

Google Analytics is used to understand how the site is used as a whole: which pages people visit, how they find us, and where they give up, so that we can improve it. It is never used to learn about any one person.

Using the search is your consent to this processing. It is limited to what the search requires, which is what PIPEDA's limiting collection principle asks for. Using the site after reading this notice is your consent to Google Analytics, and you can withdraw it at any time by turning it off as clause 5 describes.

Google, through Google Analytics. Google receives the visit details listed in clause 2 and processes them to produce our reports. It never receives what you typed into a search. Google's own privacy policy also applies to it.

Turning it off. Install Google's opt-out browser add-on, block cookies for this site, or use a browser or extension that blocks trackers. The site works exactly the same either way.

Nobody else, while you are on a page here. Every other script, font, image and map tile the site uses is served by us, so no other third party is contacted and none of them learns that you visited.

Google, if you ask for directions. The directions button opens Google Maps with the carpark as the destination, which means leaving this site. From that point Google's privacy policy governs rather than ours. The link carries the carpark's coordinates and nothing about you.

Infrastructure providers. Hosting, database and caching services process data on our behalf under contract, and only to provide those services.

Search details are not stored after your results are returned. Cached provider prices are held briefly to avoid asking the same question repeatedly, and are keyed by a coarse map area and time slot rather than by any person.

Server logs are retained for a short period for security and troubleshooting, then discarded. Messages you send us are kept as long as needed to deal with the matter.

The anonymous counters are kept indefinitely. They describe no one, so there is nothing in them to expire.

Google Analytics keeps the detailed record of visits for 2 months and then deletes it. The summary reports built from it remain, and they count visits rather than describe any one person.

The two things written in your own words are the exception, and the limits are firm. Searches we could not place: entries seen fewer than three times are deleted within a day, and everything is erased after 90 days. The message box on a price report: erased after 90 days, leaving the report itself, which contains nothing you wrote.

Our infrastructure providers and Google operate globally, so data may be processed outside Canada, including in the United States. While it is in another country it may be accessible to that country's courts and authorities under their laws.

The site is served over encrypted connections and access to our systems is restricted. Holding almost no personal information is itself the strongest protection we can offer: there is very little to lose.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Under PIPEDA you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it if it is wrong, and withdraw consent to our processing.

In practice we hold no profile for you, so a request will usually be answered by confirming that. Google Analytics data is linked only to the random identifier in your browser's cookie, not to a name or an email address, so we cannot find yours to send it to you; deleting the cookie, or the opt-out in clause 5, stops any more being collected. Write to us and we will respond within thirty days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

The service is intended for drivers and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their personal information.

If we add features that collect more, such as accounts, saved searches or analytics, we will update this page before those features go live and change the date at the top.

Privacy questions and requests: privacy@parkingnova.ca