Canary Privacy Policy
Last Updated: April 20, 2023
- Our Privacy Policy
- Information Canary Collects
- How Canary Uses Your Information
- Our legal bases
- Choices You Have to Limit Information Collection
- How Canary Shares Your Information
- Controlling Your Information
- Marketing, Advertising, and Analytics
- Email & SMS Communications
- Security of Your Information
- Other Rights & Important Notices
- Contact Us
Our Privacy Policy
Our mission at Canary is to build products that empower people to live fearless lives and make decisions about their safety and security. We believe that providing transparency around the data and personal information you entrust to us is critical to completing that mission. Your privacy and trust are our utmost concern.
At Canary, we provide (i) our website located at https://canary.is and related domains (collectively, the "Sites"), (ii) software that you may download to a mobile device ("Mobile Apps"), (iii) services accessible through our Sites and the Mobile Apps ("Canary Services") and (iv) home security devices, accessories and other hardware ("Equipment"). We refer to our Sites, Mobile Apps, Canary Services and Equipment collectively as our "Products."
This privacy policy ("Policy") describes how we collect and use personal and other information through our Products and it describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information, how we share your information, and how you can access and update your information.
If you are a resident of the US or Canada, Canary Connect, Inc. provides this Policy. If you are located outside the US and Canada, Canary Technology Europe, Limited is the controller of your User Information (defined below) and processes the personal information in Video Feeds (defined below) on your behalf as your processor. In this Policy, references to "Canary", "us," "we" and "our" mean either Canary Connect, Inc. or Canary Technology Europe Limited, as appropriate.
By visiting the Site or using our Products, you understand that your personal information will be handled as described in this Policy.
Information Canary Collects
We collect and receive information in several different ways, such as when you visit our Site or use our other Products. In many cases, you choose what information to provide, although some information is required for us to provide you with our Products or you may tell us to get personal information from a third party source. Besides collecting information from you, we also collect information from the following categories of sources: payment processing, credit evaluation and fraud detection services; and marketing and analytics partners.
There are two broad categories of personal information that we collect and process: (i) information which you choose to give us or which we require for, or collect or infer from, your registration and use of our Products ("User Information") and (ii) audio and video footage and images captured by our Products ("Video Feeds"). As highlighted above, we control User Information but only process Video Feeds on your behalf.
User Information
- Information you provide during device setup, such as your name, email address, phone number, the location of each piece of Equipment, and the number of people in your home.
- Information necessary to complete a purchase from our Site, including your name, billing and shipping address, payment information, and other information necessary to complete your transaction, as well as any other information that you choose to provide to us when making a purchase.
- If you are invited to create an account by another user of a Product, we will collect your name and email address from the Canary user that invited you. Your phone number and other account details will be obtained directly from you during the setup process, provided that you accept the invitation.
- Unique identifiers such as your user name and password.
- Identifying Product information, such as model and serial number, network information (including IP address), device activity logs, and historic and current Product configuration.
- Information about your mobile device such as your mobile device ID (which is similar to a website IP address), device type, operating system, and mobile service carrier, as well as your location if you activate automatic mode switching (e.g., among Away, Home, and Privacy modes).
- Analytics data, including how you interact with our Products, which may be associated with cookies.
Video Feeds
- Our Products collect audio and video data and we store it on our servers to ensure you can access it and playback footage.
- Certain of our Products also collect environmental data, such as air quality, humidity, temperature, and ambient light.
How Canary Uses Your Information
We collect the information identified above and use it for the following purposes:
- Provide you with services and improve the Canary Product functionality and user experience.
- To fulfill orders and process payments for the sale of our Products.
- Administer your account and back-up your data.
- Record log entries for your information and troubleshoot issues with Products.
- Send you notifications through the Mobile App and via email.
- Send you marketing communications, where permitted by applicable law.
- Conduct research and analysis to better understand how users access and use our Products, both on an aggregated and individualized basis, in order to improve our Products, to create new features, provide you new offerings and respond to user preferences.
- Where purchasing our Products includes an extension of credit, to determine your creditworthiness.
- Investigate, prevent, and respond to suspected fraud, illegality and potential threats to personal safety, and protect your data.
- Respond to your questions and concerns and provide customer support.
- For any other purpose for which we have obtained your express consent.
Our legal bases
If you are located outside the US and Canada, we rely on a number of bases to lawfully collect, use, share, and otherwise process your User Information for the purposes described in this Policy, including where:
- necessary to perform a contract we have with you, such as providing our Products in accordance with the legal terms available at canary.is/legal;
- you have consented to certain processing, which you may revoke at any time;
- required for Canary to comply with a court order or another legal obligation, or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims;
- you have made the information manifestly public;
- necessary to protect your vital interests or those of others; and
- necessary for the purposes of our, your, or a third party’s legitimate interests, such as those of other users or our commercial partners.
Our legitimate interests
We process your User Information as necessary in furtherance of your, our and our community’s legitimate interests in the following:
- Keeping the Products safe and secure: We use your personal information to try and keep our Products safe and secure. We do so as it is necessary to pursue legitimate interests in ensuring Canary is secure, and to protect against fraud, illegality, spam, misuse and abuse.
- Providing the Products: We use your personal information to provide the Products, including any personalized Products. We do so as it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests in providing an innovative and tailored offering to our users on a sustained basis.
- Research and Improving the Products: We work hard to develop, enhance and improve our Products. We may process your personal information in order to further our legitimate interests of learning how we can improve your experience on our Products, and contributing to research.
- Marketing the Products. We process your information in accordance with our legitimate interests of marketing the Products to you and others.
Choices You Have to Limit Information Collection
Location Services
Some features of our Mobile App use precise location-based data. If you allow these features, we will locate you using the Wi-Fi routers and the cell IDs of the towers closest to you. We use this information to facilitate the Equipment's automatic mode switching, for customer support, and to provide you with local emergency services contact information. We also may use this information when you use the Safety Button feature of our Mobile App, to provide first responders with your location. You may disable location services within your phone’s settings menu.
Video & Audio
You may configure your Canary Product from within the Mobile App to capture video and audio within the camera’s range and provide you with notifications. You can set your Canary Product to different modes from within the mobile app menu. Each mode determines when Canary records audio and video and when you receive notifications and can be customized depending on your settings. You should inform guests of any recording if the camera is on while others are in your home.
You may enable privacy mode or disable recording from within the Mobile App menu to prevent the recording of video and audio through the Equipment. In privacy mode, the watch live video feature and event notifications are disabled and the camera and microphone are turned off. Your Equipment will continue to monitor environmental activity in privacy mode so we may provide you with aggregated Home Health information. LED lights on the bottom of the Product will be turned off to indicate the Equipment is in privacy mode.
How Canary Shares Your Information
We will share certain categories of your information with third parties only in certain circumstances as described below:
Personal Information.
Personal information is any information that could be used to directly or indirectly identify you, like your name, email address and image captured by our Products. Both User Information and Video Feeds contain personal information. We only share this information under limited circumstances. Primarily, we share this information with third parties to provide you necessary services or to operate our Products for you. For example, this information is shared on a limited basis to assist in managing the computers that store your Video Feeds and User Information, and to third parties that assist us in providing you with customer support. We authorize these third parties to use your personal information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
Specifically, we may share this information as follows:
- Affiliates. We may disclose the information we collect from you to our affiliates and subsidiaries that provide services or process data on our behalf, or for data centralization and / or logistics purposes. If we do so, their use and disclosure of your personal information will be subject to this Policy.
- Service Providers. We may disclose the information we collect from you to third party vendors, service providers, contractors or agents who perform functions on our behalf (e.g., vendors that help us deliver Products to you, maintain our Site, or analyze Products usage).
- Business Transfers. If we are acquired by or merged with another company, or if we transfer substantially all of our assets to another company, we may transfer the information we have collected from you to the other company.
- In Response to Legal Process. We also may disclose the information we collect from you in order to comply with the law, a judicial proceeding, or another mandatory legal process such as in response to a court order (e.g., a search warrant).
- To Protect Us and Others. We also may disclose the information we collect from you where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, violations of this Policy or our legal terms available at https://canary.is/legal/.
- With Your Consent. We may disclose personal information to third parties where you consent to our sharing that information. For example, you may opt to share certain information to post it on social media accounts like Facebook or Twitter, you may link your Canary account with another app or service, or you may opt into providing information to Canary’s business partners to receive special offers. We will never share your personal information for these purposes without your consent, and we never share your Video Feeds for marketing purposes.
Anonymized Information
We may use and share your aggregated and/or de-identified information, which is anonymized and does not identify you. We may use this information in a variety of ways, including to publish trends about energy use or home security, and to generally improve our offerings. We may also share this anonymized information with third parties for marketing, advertising, research, or similar purposes.
Information Obtained from Third Parties
If you provide personal information about others, or if others provide us your information, we will only use that information for the specific reason for which it was provided to us.
Controlling Your Information
You have the ability to view, change, and correct your User Information through your settings within the Canary app. You have the ability to view and delete your Video Feeds through the Canary app.
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Products to you. We may retain your information for a longer period of time to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your information to comply with applicable tax/revenue laws), resolve disputes, enforce our Terms, or as otherwise described in this Policy. If you wish to cancel your account or request that we no longer use your information to provide the Products to you, contact us at support@canary.is. We also retain log files for internal analysis purposes. These log files are generally retained for a brief period of time, except in cases where they are used for site safety and security, to improve site functionality, or we are legally obligated to retain them for longer time periods.
Marketing, Advertising, and Analytics
Cookies, Tracking and Ads
We may automatically collect information about your use of our Products through cookies, web beacons, and other technologies. Information we collect this way includes your: Internet access device type (e.g., mobile vs. desktop); browser type and operating system; web pages you visit on our Sites and other sites where we promote our Products; links you click on our Sites; your IP address; the length of time you visit our Site and or use our Products; and the webpage that led you to our Site.
Do Not Track is a privacy preference that you can set in your web browser to indicate that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits collected across websites when you have not interacted with that service on the page. For details, including how to enable Do Not Track, visit www.eff.org/issues/do-not-track. Canary does not presently support Do Not Track. You can opt out of the use data collected across websites for interest-based advertising purposes by participating U.S. ad networks by following the instructions at www.aboutads.info/choices and http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.
We may use technologies to understand how many household members access your Canary Product(s) and what features they use within the app. We use this information to understand and optimize how our Products are used, and to provide content and features that may be of interest to you. Please refer to our Cookie & Ad Policy for more information about your choices around cookies and related technologies and third party advertising.
Email & SMS Communications
You may choose to submit your email address through a form located on our Site to sign up for marketing communications from Canary. You may also provide your mobile phone number to Canary in connection with account registration or otherwise. We may use the email address and mobile phone number associated with your account, in accordance with applicable law, to send you news about Canary, such as new features or marketing promotions, account updates, promotional offers, and information regarding Membership and other premium services. We may use one or more service providers to administer these messages. Canary does not share your email address or phone number with spammers or any other non-affiliated third parties for their own marketing purposes without your permission. You may opt out of receiving newsletters or marketing communications from us by following the unsubscribe instructions or by contacting us at support@canary.is.
Security of Your Information
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the information transmitted to us, both during transmission and upon receipt. No method of transmission or electronic storage is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about the security of our Products, contact us at support@canary.is.
Other Rights & Important Notices
Children
Our Products are intended for adults and we do not knowingly collect or store any personal information about children under the age of 16. If you are a parent or legal guardian and think your child has given us personal information, you can write to us or email us at the addresses provided at the end of this privacy policy.
International Users
Our business operations and the technical infrastructure that processes collected data to deliver our Products to you are hosted in the United States. If you are accessing or using Products in the European Union or other regions with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from US law, then please note that your personal information will be transferred to the United States in order to provide the Products.
Additional Information for users outside the US and Canada
If you are using our Products from the European Union, United Kingdom or Switzerland, we will only transfer your personal information to the United States through the use of appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commissionsu. To request a copy of the clauses, please contact legal@canary.is.
We will only use your personal data, as that term is defined under the General Data Protection Regulation and comparable laws (“GDPR”), when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
- Where you have consented to a certain use of your personal data.
- Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
To the extent permitted under applicable laws, we will also process, transfer, disclose, and preserve personal data when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary.
You have certain rights with respect to your information, such as: (i) data access and portability (including the right to obtain a copy of your personal data you provided to Canary, via your settings); (ii) data correction (including the ability to update your personal information, in most cases via settings or where not possible through the settings, by contacting us); (iii) data deletion (including the right to ask Canary to delete your personal information, except information we are required or permitted to retain, by contacting us); and (iv) withdrawal of consent or objection to processing which is based on legitimate interests (including, in limited circumstances, the right to ask Canary to stop processing your personal data, with some exceptions, by contacting us). You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local EU supervisory authority or Canary’s lead supervisory authority, the Irish Data Protection Commission
Your California Privacy Rights
California residents have the additional privacy rights described below. In this section of our privacy policy, we use the terms “personal information” and “sale” as they are defined in the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 and the California Privacy Rights Act 2023, which we refer to collectively as the “CCPA”.
Disclosures Regarding Your Personal Information
We collect the categories of personal information from or about you as disclosed above under the caption “Information Canary Collects.” To learn about the business or commercial purposes for which we use this information, see above under the caption “How Canary Uses Your Information.” To learn about the categories of third parties with whom we share personal information for a business purpose, see above under the caption, “How Canary Shares Your Information.”
California Privacy Rights
- Right to Know: You have the right to request certain information about our collection and use of your personal information over the past 12 months: the categories of personal information we have collected; the categories of sources from which we collected personal information; our business or commercial purpose for collecting personal information; the categories of third parties with whom we shared personal information, and the categories of personal information we shared with each of them ;whether we’ve sold your personal information to third parties, and if so, the categories of personal information we’ve sold to each category of third party.
- Access: You can request a copy of the personal information that we have collected about you during the past 12 months.
- Deletion: You have the right to request that we delete the personal information that we have collected about you subject to exceptions. For example, we may retain personal information to comply with laws, to identify errors, to maintain security, to provide you our Products, or to complete a transaction or other action you have requested.
- Do Not Sell: You have the right to direct us not to “sell” your personal information as that term is broadly defined under the CCPA. See below under the heading “Personal Information Sales Opt-Out” for details.
- Right to Non-Discrimination: we will not discriminate against you for exercising your California privacy rights.
- Right to Correction: You have the right to ask us to correct any personal information we hold about you that is not accurate.
Personal Information Sales Opt-Out: While we do not exchange your personal information for money, we may disclose information about you that may be considered a “sale” under the CCPA. Importantly, none of these activities involve your Video Feeds. For the purposes of the CCPA, over the last 12 months, we have sold the following categories of personal information to third parties:
- Personal identifiers such IP addresses and cookie identifiers, and if you choose provide it to us, name, mailing address and email
- Analytics data about your interactions with our Products
We sell your personal information to the following categories of third parties:
- Marketing partners
For example, we may disclose information to partners that provide advertising services in order to provide you with advertising tailored to your interests. This information may include identifiers such as your IP address, advertising identifiers, and your activity such as your interaction with our Sites and advertisements.
You have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information by using any of the contact methods specified below, and once you have submitted an opt-out request, we will not ask you to reauthorize the sale of your personal information for at least 12 months.
Exercising Your Rights
California residents may exercise their rights described above by:
- Submitting a Do Not Sell web form request here
- Calling and leaving us a message at: 1-888-358-0286 or
- Emailing us at: privacy_support@canary.is
We may need to verify your identity and state of residence before we can fulfill your request.
You may also authorize an agent to exercise your rights on your behalf. To do this, you must provide your authorized agent with written permission to exercise your rights, and we will request a copy of this written permission from your authorized agent when they make a request on your behalf, and will verify the authorized agent’s identity.
We will respond to any valid request within 45 days of receipt, or 90 days if we notify you that we need more time. We will not charge you a fee for making a request unless your request is excessive or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that your request warrants a fee, we will notify you of the fee and explain that decision before completing your request.
Additional U.S. consumer privacy laws
The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act and comparable laws in other U.S. states (“Consumer Privacy Laws”) provide consumers of those states with specific rights regarding their personal information. To the extent that you are a resident of a state with an applicable Consumer Privacy Law, this section describes your rights under the Consumer Privacy Laws and explains how you may exercise these rights.
The categories of personal information we process, our purposes for processing your personal information, the categories of personal information that we share with third parties, and the categories of third parties with whom we share it are set forth in the terms of our Policy above.
Rights to Your Information
In addition to the rights set forth in our Policy, the Consumer Privacy Laws provide you with the following rights:
- Right to know. You have the right to know whether we process your personal information and to access such personal information.
- Right to data portability. You have the right to obtain a copy of your personal information that you previously provided to us in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily usable format that allows you to transmit the data to another business without hindrance, where the processing is carried out by automated means. You may request such personal information up to twice annually, subject to certain exceptions.
- Right to delete. You have the right to delete personal information that you have provided by or that we have obtained about you. Please note that we may deny such request if the requested deletion falls under an exception as set forth in the Consumer Privacy Laws. Additionally, if you request deletion of your personal information and we have obtained such information from a third-party source, we may retain such data by keeping a record of the deletion request and the minimum data necessary to ensure that your personal information remains deleted from our records and that such retained data is not used for any other purpose, or we may opt you out of the processing of such personal information for any purpose except for those allowed under the Consumer Privacy Laws.
- Right to opt out. You have the right to opt out of the processing of the personal information for purposes of: (i) targeted advertising; (ii) the sale of personal information; or (iii) profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you. As of the latest date of the Privacy Policy:
- We do process personal information for the purposes of targeted advertising;
- We do not sell your personal information in exchange for monetary consideration; and
- We do not engage in profiling decision based on your personal information that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning you.
If you wish to opt out of the processing of your personal information for any of the above purposes,
- Submitting a Do Not Sell web form request here
- Calling and leaving us a message at: 1-888-358-0286 or
- Emailing us at: privacy_support@canary.is
- Right to correct. You have the right to correct inaccuracies in your personal information, taking into account the nature of the personal information and the purposes for which we process it.
- Right to nondiscrimination. You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment by us for the exercise of your privacy rights. Unless permitted by Consumer Privacy Laws, we will not:
- Deny you goods or services;
- Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties;
- Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services; or
- Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.
How to Exercise Your Rights; Verifying Your Identity
To exercise any of your Consumer Privacy Law rights, or if you have any questions about your privacy rights, you may contact us by:
- Calling and leaving us a message at: 1-888-358-0286 or
- Emailing us at: privacy_support@canary.is
After submitting a request, we will take steps to verify your identity in order for us to properly respond and/or confirm that your request is not fraudulent. We may contact you for additional information as reasonably necessary to authenticate your request, but if we are ultimately unable to authenticate your request using reasonably commercial efforts, then we may not be able to comply with it.
Only you may make a verifiable request related to your personal information. If you are making a request as the parent or legal guardian of a known child regarding the processing of that child’s personal information, we may ask you to submit reliable proof of your identity.
Response Time; Your Right to Appeal
We will make every effort to respond to your request within 45 days from when you contacted us. If you have a complex request, Consumer Privacy Laws allow us up to 90 days to respond. We will contact you within 45 days from when you contacted us to inform you of the need for additional time and the reason for such extension. We may charge you a reasonable fee to cover administrative costs if your requests are manifestly unfounded, excessive, or repetitive.
If we decline to take action on a request that you have submitted, we will inform you of our reasons for doing so, and provide instructions for how to appeal the decision. You may have the right to appeal within a reasonable period of time after you have received our decision under applicable Consumer Privacy Laws. Within 60 days of our receipt of your appeal, we will inform you in writing of any action taken or not taken in response to the appeal, including a written explanation of the reasons for the decisions. If we deny your appeal, we will provide you with a method for contacting a regulator to submit a complaint if you have such rights under applicable Consumer Privacy Law.
California’s “Shine the Light” Law / Your California Privacy Rights
Under California Civil Code § 1798.83, if you are a California resident and have an established business relationship with us, you have the right to ask us once a year if we have shared your personal information with third parties for direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please contact us at privacy_support@canary.is and specify you are making a Shine the Light request.
Your Nevada Privacy Rights
Nevada residents have the right to opt-out of the sale of certain personal information to third parties who intend to license or sell that personal information. We do not currently sell your personal information as sales are defined in Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 603A. You can exercise your opt-out right as to any potential future sales by emailing privacy_support@canary.is with the subject line “Nevada Do Not Sell Request” and providing us with your name.
Notification of Privacy Policy Changes
We may update this Policy to reflect changes to our information practices or changes to our Products. If we make any material changes, we will notify you by email (sent to the email address specified in your account), through a push-notification, or by means of a notice in the app prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this Policy for the latest information on our privacy practices.
Contact Us
To exercise your privacy rights, contact privacy_support@canary.is. If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, you may contact us at legal@canary.is or by mail to:
If you reside in the US or Canada:
Canary Connect, Inc.
Attn: Privacy Inquiries
115 Broadway, Fl 5
New York, NY 10006
If you do not reside in the US or Canada:
Canary Technology Europe, Limited
Attn: Privacy Inquiries
28-32 Pembroke Street Upper,
Dublin 2,D02 EK84, Ireland