Privacy policy

Who we are

FareTell is a trade name and service of BBN Labs Inc., a company federally incorporated in Canada under the Canada Business Corporations Act, with its registered office in Ontario. FareTell is a travel price comparison service — flights first: we show prices we found and explain what they mean. We never sell travel, take payment or issue tickets — you book on partner sites, and the partner sets the final price.

This policy describes the categories of personal information FareTell handles, why we handle them and the choices available to you.

What we collect, and why

• Email addresses for fare alerts. Email watches are not open right now: FareTell does not ask for an email address and does not take one, and no alert emails are going out. An address given to us before this was switched off is held in encrypted form (AES-256-GCM) next to a scrambled code we use to look it up, and is used only for the alert that person asked for. The links that change or stop an alert use scrambled codes instead of the address, and every message we send about an alert carries a one-click unsubscribe link.
• The address a request comes from. We use the network address a request arrives from, at the moment it arrives, to limit how often the site can be called and to stop abuse. We do not keep it in our records: no record we store holds a network address, and we do not use it to build a picture of you.
• Records of what you agreed to. When you agree to something — such as receiving fare alerts — we record what you agreed to and when, so we can show it later. These records hold no network address.
• Records of clicks to partners. When you follow a partner link, we record click codes, the page and the spot on that page, and the time, so the partner can credit us and so we can check the clicks are real. These records link the click to a page and a spot on that page — not to a picture of you as a visitor.
• Shared links. If you arrive through a link someone shared, we record which shared link brought you here.
• Product-use records. When our server receives actions such as searches, fare checks, watch activity, shares or partner clicks, we may record the page or surface, route or trip type, referral source and experiment version. Analytics identifiers are opaque, and our analytics system rejects names, email addresses and phone numbers. We use these records to operate, secure, measure and improve FareTell.

Saved trips stay in your browser

When you save a trip on FareTell, it is stored in your own browser, on your device. Saved trips are not sent to us and hold no email address. Clearing your browser’s stored site data removes them.

What we do not do

• No advertising cookies.
• We build no picture of you, and we sell nothing about you — to anyone.
• We do not follow you around other websites.

How long we keep it

These are the times we hold ourselves to:

• An alert that was never confirmed by email: deleted after 7 days.
• An alert that has ended, been unsubscribed or been deleted: the email address and the travel details go within 30 days.
• The small record of what someone agreed to, or asked us to stop: 3 years. It holds no network address and cannot be used to start sending again.
• Records of clicks to partners: 120 days, then we keep only totals.
• Product-use and message records: 13 months. A stored share record: 24 months.
• Privacy requests and the record of how we answered them: 3 years after we close them.
• Accounting records behind any commission: 6 years after the end of the tax year they belong to, because tax law requires it.
• Working backups roll over within 15 days, so deletions flow out as backups expire.

Deleting is a controlled step. Records that we are not allowed to change — such as the proof of what someone agreed to — can only be removed through a locked path that writes an audit record first, and the database refuses any other removal. We never quietly rewrite those records: we correct them by deleting, never by editing.

Who handles data for us

• Travelpayouts — sends us flight prices, and credits the clicks that go to partners.
• Our hosting company — the computers this site runs on.

That is the whole list today. If we ever switch on a service that handles personal information for us — an email sender, for example — it is named here before it is switched on, never after.

Your rights

We follow the rules of Canada’s federal privacy law, PIPEDA: we say why we need something when we ask for it, we take and use only what that reason needs, and we protect what we hold. You can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. You can stop fare alerts at any time with the one-click unsubscribe link in any alert email. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Questions

Privacy questions and requests go through our contact page, which shows the ways to reach us.