Privacy

What stays in your browser

You can search, filter, save centres, draft applications, and track waitlists without an account. The information you add, including the centres you save, your waitlist notes and check-ins, and anything you type into an application draft such as a child’s name and birthdate, is stored only in this browser on this device. It doesn’t reach our servers unless you sign in.

What we store if you sign in

Signing in is optional and lets your saved daycares and waitlist progress follow you across devices. If you sign in, we store your email address, saved-centre history, the verified application route you used, and the application answers and draft you chose to save. Depending on a centre’s requirements, those answers can include a child’s name and birthdate, desired start date, schedule, subsidy status, postal code, and parent contact details. Sign-in and your email are handled by our authentication provider (Clerk); we never see or store a password. We also store your reminder-email preference and when a reminder was last accepted for delivery. When you first sign in, anything you saved as a guest is moved into your account.

Listing correction reports

When you submit a listing correction, we store the listing, your proposed correction, any supporting details or link, and the email you optionally provide. Signed-in reports are linked to your account. Reports are private and reviewed by DaycareMap staff. We email our team a notification linking to the private report; we do not automatically email you or share your report with the daycare. We retain reports to review corrections and their history. You can request access or removal through our privacy contact below. When we remove a report, we delete your email address, the link to your account, and everything you wrote or linked, and keep the listing, the category, the report and review dates, and our review outcome. Deleting your account does the same for the reports you sent while signed in.

Application drafts

When a verified route calls for email, we prepare an editable draft addressed to the application-specific recipient. It is only sent when you choose to open and send it from your own mail application; we don’t email centres or submit forms on your behalf. If you are signed in, the route, answers, and draft are saved with your waitlist history so you can follow up using the instructions you actually followed.

If you manage a listing

To understand where listing managers need help, we may measure claim steps, listing updates, and return reviews. These records use keyed account and listing hashes, event times, and broad categories such as province and verification method. They do not contain your contact details, form answers, verification codes, or proof. We keep these measurements for 90 days, including if you delete your account during that period. Reports exclude expired events immediately; a daily job clears the hashes and event details, leaving only opaque deduplication identifiers and retention timestamps. These internal hashes are not part of your account download. Our staff see aggregate reports.

Where we offer it, daycare operators and staff can sign in to claim and update their own listing. Usually, to claim a listing, you give us an email address for it and we email a short-lived code to that address. We store the address with your claim from the moment you ask for a code, even if you never finish. We keep only a one-way hash of the code, and the code expires within minutes. If a listing has no usable email, our staff may instead call the phone number in the official licence registry, and we keep the email address you choose, the time of the call, and the staff member’s notes with your claim. If we invited you to manage a listing, we hold your invitation email address in our private service configuration until we remove the invitation, and it becomes your claim’s email address when you accept.

While you manage a listing, we keep your claim’s status and dates, the listing details you add or change, which account made each change and when, and a record of the notices we send about the listing, including the address each one went to. We send security and change notices about a listing to the people who manage it and to the listing’s email address on file, so someone can spot and undo a change they did not make. We also send reminders to reconfirm your listing. Every listing email includes an unsubscribe link that turns off optional reminders, such as reconfirmation reminders, but not security and listing-change notices. Each claim-code email also has a link to pause new claim codes to that address. If a listing email bounces or is marked as spam, or you unsubscribe or pause codes, we keep a hash of the address, not the address itself, so that hold or choice keeps working.

We keep this listing history to protect listings from changes nobody authorized, to review and reverse changes, and to investigate misuse. It stays with the listing, including after a daycare closes, so it has no fixed end date. If you delete your account, we end your access to every listing you manage and clear the email address, proof, and code details from your claims. The listing history is kept, and it still includes the email address you used for each claim, the addresses our notices went to, and the account identifier recorded with each change. The download on your Account page includes your claims, the listing details you changed, and the notices we sent to your email addresses. It leaves out the rest of the listing history, because those records can also hold other people’s details; email privacy@updates.daycaremap.ca for a copy of your information in them or with any question about them.

Where the daycare information comes from

Official government licence data anchors every published listing. Regional and centre-level sources add details such as subsidy, availability, quality, websites, and application routes where they publish them or we can verify them. Those added details are checked on different schedules. Always confirm details, especially fees and openings, directly with the centre.

We may keep official source links privately while updating licensing records, including links whose text identifies a home-based provider. These links are not published or included in member account downloads. Listing privacy requests can be sent to our privacy contact below.

Anonymous usage analytics

We use Vercel Web Analytics to understand which parts of the daycare directory are useful. Demand events contain only a coarse public area being viewed or searched, such as a service area, municipality, ward, or partial postal area, a public daycare slug where relevant, and a short action category. The area describes the directory or map content on screen, not where a visitor lives or is standing.

We do not send names, email addresses, IP addresses, full postal codes, typed search text, map coordinates, application answers, or destination URLs as analytics event properties. Query strings and page fragments are removed before page-view analytics are sent. Known crawlers are filtered by Vercel and by a conservative browser-side check; the browser’s user-agent string is used only for that local check and is not added to our events.

Like every host, Vercel receives connection information needed to serve the site and maintain security logs. Vercel says its Web Analytics reports are aggregated and cookie-free, do not expose or retain an IP address as an analytics property, and do not identify a visitor across sites. During platform processing, Vercel still derives an approximate visitor city and aggregates device and browser categories. DaycareMap receives those coarse aggregates and neighbourhood-interest counts, not a person’s browsing history or precise location.

Where the map starts

When you have not chosen an area or provided a usable saved postal code, we use Vercel’s approximate city or province estimate from your internet connection to choose the starting map view. This can be wrong, especially on mobile networks or VPNs. You can change the area using search. We do not request your device’s GPS location or access your browsing history. We do not save this estimate to your profile or add it to analytics events, and we do not read or store your IP address for this feature. The map position may remain in your search URL and browser session so you can return to the same view.

To assess this feature, we count whether a usable city or province hint was available, which kind of starting view was used, and the first action to change that view (Change area, submitting a search, or moving the map). These analytics properties contain categories only, with no city or province names, coordinates, postal codes, search text, or account identifiers. We do not link these measurements to parent profiles. Vercel processes them through the aggregated analytics described above.

Who else handles your data, and where

We use a small set of service providers to run DaycareMap, and share only what each needs to do its job:

• Clerk: generates and verifies sign-in codes and manages your account email (we never see your password).
• Neon: the encrypted database that stores your saved centres and waitlist history, and the claim and listing history for people who manage a listing.
• Vercel: hosting, security request logs, and aggregated cookie-free Web Analytics for the website.
• Resend: delivers sign-in codes, follow-up reminders, and system emails, sends listing claim codes, listing notices, and reconfirmation reminders to people who manage a listing, and receives mail sent to our public support and privacy addresses.
• Google Maps: renders the map; a postal code you type to centre the map is sent to Google.
• Stripe: if you send an optional tip, Stripe securely processes the payment and emails your receipt. It receives your email and card details to complete the charge; we only ever see the transaction record (amount, date, email), never full card numbers.

These providers process and store data on servers in the United States, so your information is stored and handled outside Canada and may be subject to lawful access requests there. We share data with them only to operate the service, under agreements that require them to protect it. We never share it for their own marketing.

How long we keep it

Guest data stays in your browser until you clear it. If you have an account, we keep your information for as long as the account is open so your waitlist history is there when you return. If an account goes unused for 24 months we may remove the saved application details, offers, and notes (including any child information) and may then also close the dormant account. When you delete your account, we remove your personal data, including saved centres, notes, application drafts, offers, and check-ins, from our database right away, and delete your sign-in identity from Clerk. If you manage a listing, we end your listing access first, and your other data is removed as soon as that finishes. We keep the listing history described under “If you manage a listing” above. Backups roll off on their own schedule shortly after.

What we never do

We never sell or rent your information. We collect and use it as described above to provide DaycareMap and help your family find a spot.

Your choices and rights

You can remove any saved centre or clear your browser data at any time. If you have an account, from your Account page you can choose how often to receive follow-up reminders, download a copy of everything we hold about you, and delete your account and all of its data yourself. If you manage a listing, the download includes your claims but leaves out the rest of the listing history, and deletion keeps that history, as described under “If you manage a listing” above. Every reminder email also includes an unsubscribe link. You can also ask us to access, correct, or delete your information, or explain how it’s handled, by emailing privacy@updates.daycaremap.ca. We’ll respond within 30 days.

Who’s accountable

Nadia Wright is the accountable privacy contact at DaycareMap, responsible for how your information is handled and for answering questions or complaints. Reach them at privacy@updates.daycaremap.ca. If we ever have a privacy breach that could put you at risk, we’ll notify affected families, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and any provincial privacy regulator whose residents are affected, as required.

Questions

Reach us any time at privacy@updates.daycaremap.ca. See also our Terms.