Privacy Policies Applicable to all our sites
This portion of our privacy policy describes some basic functionality how all our websites and mobile applications (collectively “Online Services”) use your Personal Information (including but not limited to REALTOR.ca). We’ve broken it down into four topics:
General Uses of Your Personal Information
We may use the Personal Information you provide to us via our Online Services for the following general purposes:
- To send you communications you have opted-in to receive.
- To respond to your questions, comments, or complaints.
- To tailor your experience of our Online Services.
- To help us analyze the browsing patterns of users in order to improve the content and design of our Online Services.
- For security purposes, such as the prevention, investigation or disruption of potentially prohibited (e.g. spam) or illegal activities.
- To register for events accessible through the our Online Services and to facilitate your attendance at such events, including but not limited to:
- to understand who is attending the event;
- to meet your needs at the event;
- to verify your identity;to manage any accounts you hold with us;
- to send you announcements, notification or message about the event;
- to better understand how you engaged with the event.
- To enforce the Online Services’ terms of use.
- For statistical analysis.
- As otherwise described to you when the information is collected.
Your Personal Information may be anonymized and consolidated into group data, which may be shared on an aggregated basis with third parties, including research firms and CREA member Boards and Associations. The shared data will not disclose your Personal Information and will not enable the recipients to contact you.
Cookie Policy
Our Online Services use standard technology known as “cookies”, which are text files that are used to store certain information in your browser or mobile application (“app”). We use “session” cookies and “persistent” cookies. Session cookies temporarily keep your settings. This information is stored until your Internet browser or app is closed. Persistent cookies store information on your computer or mobile device even after your browser or app is closed and are stored locally on your system. You may choose to delete persistent cookies after using our Online Services via your browser’s or app’s privacy settings. We may use session and persistent cookies to collect data for the following purposes:
- Usability:Pre-population:
- to pre-populate fields with information you entered earlier (for example, pre-populating fields on REALTOR.ca).
- Remembering what a user did previously: to keep track of a user’s actions (for example, recently viewed properties on REALTOR.ca)
- Terms of Use: to keep a record of whether a user has agreed to our Online Services’ terms of use.
- Security and protection of our Online Services: for example, to reduce the likelihood that someone is able to scrape our Online Services.
- Performance: to direct browsers and apps to communicate with specific servers that they have previously accessed to increase the performance with that server.
- New features/splash pages: when new features are announced on our Online Services, a splash page may be shown announcing those features. Users who indicate they do not wish to see the splash page again will have their preference stored in a cookie.
- Personalization: to allow us to know a bit about our Online Services users, for example, which third-party website they have just visited, so that we can display personalized content.
- Statistical Analysis: for example, to track the usage of features with respect to our Online Services.
- To permit specific third-party functionality: We have partnered with several third parties that install cookies on user devices when using our Online Services. These cookies help us improve the functionality of our Online Services (for example, cookies are used to support a program, which invites REALTOR.ca users to complete a survey and keeps track of whether they have been invited to complete the survey already and what REALTOR.ca pages they have seen) or help us determine how our Online Services are being used (for example, Google Analytics and Meta, which use cookies, are used on REALTOR.ca).
How can I manage my cookie preferences?
At any time, you can modify your cookie preferences via your browser’s privacy settings. Disabling certain types of cookies may impact the quality of your browsing experience and limit the services we are able to offer you. Each browser works a bit differently, so we linked a few browser-specific instruction guides below:
Interest-Based Advertising / Behavioral Advertising
- We work with advertising networks and publishers to serve personalized display ads for our products and services on our Online Services and third-party websites. Third parties, such as Meta, may use cookies, web beacons, or other technologies to collect or receive information about users’ interactions with content on our Online Services to help determine which ads are likely to be most interesting to you, to measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns, and other metrics. This information also helps us monitor and improve our products and services. Learn more about interest-based advertising and how to opt-out.
- Through our apps, we and third parties, such as Meta, may also collect, receive, and use similar information to serve personalized display ads within those apps. These ads are personalized based on your use of apps, as well as online activities on your mobile device and other devices (sometimes referred to as “cross-device personalization”). Mobile application technology works a bit differently than browser technology so follow the following instructions if you wish to opt out:
- Apple (iOS) - on your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Privacy & Security* > Apple Advertising. Toggle off Personalized Ads to opt-out of interest-based ads.* In earlier versions of iOS and iPadOS, this setting is called "Privacy".
- Android – on your Android phone, go to Settings > tap Security and privacy > More privacy settings > Ads > Ad privacy. Then toggle on/off the features to suit your preferences.
- Through our apps, we and third parties, such as Meta, may also collect, receive, and use similar information to serve personalized display ads within those apps. These ads are personalized based on your use of apps, as well as online activities on your mobile device and other devices (sometimes referred to as “cross-device personalization”). Mobile application technology works a bit differently than browser technology so follow the following instructions if you wish to opt out:
- We also use social media matching tools, such as Facebook Custom Audiences and Google Customer Match. This allows us to deliver personalized ads to CREA Members or users of our Online Services who are also users of those sites/apps. This requires us to provide a minimal amount of information (e.g., name and email address) to these sites so they can determine which Members/users also belong to those sites. This information is “hashed” before it is disclosed, is deleted once the matching process is complete, and is not used for any other purpose by social media sites or any other third-party. You can opt-out of this process by:
- Facebook: clicking on the icon on the top right corner of our ads that you see on Facebook. To learn more about advertising on Facebook generally and how to control your preferences, visit www.facebook.com/about/ads.
- Google: Go to https://adssettings.google.com and ensure that the “Ads based on your interests” setting is turned off.
- We may use non-identifiable information to personalize the content you see on our Online Services based on a site you have previously visited. For example, if you click on a hyperlink on a third party website that brings you to one of our websites, the third party website may place a cookie in your browser that contains a numerical code, and based on that code, our website might display a widget. The cookie will persist for 30 days, so if you clear your cookies, the content will no longer be personalized.
- Certain advertising on our Online Services is managed by Playwire LLC. Playwire LLC may collect and use certain aggregated and anonymized data for advertising purposes. To learn more about the types of data collected, how data is used and your choices as a user, please visit https://www.playwire.com/privacy-policy
- Our Online Services may include affiliate links, such as those provided through the Amazon Associates Program. When you interact with an affiliate link, third parties may collect information about your interaction, including whether you purchase a product after clicking the link. These third parties may use cookies or similar technologies to track this activity. For more information, please refer to the applicable third party’s privacy policy.
Other Technical Stuff Relating to Our Online Services
You have to be a bit of a tech geek to understand topics falling under this heading (p.s. we love tech geeks!).
IP Addresses
Our Online Services collect information about how our platforms are used. Each time a visitor comes to one of our Online Services our web server collects the visitor's domain name or IP address. We cannot determine an individual’s identity from only an IP address; however, periodically users may inform our support staff of their IP addresses during the provision of support services. Users that submit their name when using the email functionality on our Online Services will also have their names associated with their IP addresses. At such time, we treat such information as Personal Information.
Messages and Emails
Many of our Online Services have “Contact Us” or similarly named functionality that allows you to contact us. It is probably obvious but we collect the e-mails provided through this functionality, so we can respond to your questions or suggestions. Less obvious is the fact that we may use this information for security purposes, such as screening the emails for spam.
Surveys
While visiting our Online Services you may be asked to participate in a survey conducted by us or a third party. If you are selected to participate in a survey, a persistent cookie is stored on your device’s hard drive for 60 days to preclude a new invitation during that time. All surveys are optional and, unless expressly stated, the information collected will not be associated with any Personal Information. Survey data m used to permit accurate analysis, produce summary reports, and monitor overall trends with our Online Services.
Google Analytics
Many of our Online Services use Google Analytics, a web and mobile analytics tracking tool provided by Google, for audience activity, demographics reporting, and remarketing. You can opt-out of Google Analytics by installing a browser plug-in available on Google’s website. As Google Analytics also uses cookies, you may wish to review that section of our privacy policy as well.