Privacy Policy

Who we are

Anode Group Ltd. (“Anode”, “we”, “us”) is a web and software studio based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We are the organization responsible for the personal information described here. Questions, corrections and complaints go to hello@anodegroup.com or by post to:

We follow Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) and, where it applies, Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

What we collect and why

We collect only what we need to answer you, do the work, bill for it and keep the records the law requires.

When you contact us

The contact form on this site and the enquiry form on our pricing page ask for your name, email address, and optionally your company, phone number and a message. We also record the network address the form was sent from. We use this to reply, to keep a record of the enquiry, and to limit abuse of the form.

When you are a client

Clients get an account in the anode + portal at plus.anodegroup.com. For each account we hold the email address, name, a securely hashed password if one is set, and a record of sign-ins (time, network address and browser) so you can see and revoke your own sessions. The portal also holds what the engagement produces: proposals, agreements, project updates, files shared between us, time records, invoices and payment history.

When you accept a proposal or sign an agreement in the portal, we record the typed name and title you entered, the time, and the network address and browser used, so the signature can be verified later.

When you pay us

Payments are processed by Stripe. Card details are entered directly into Stripe’s payment form and never pass through or rest on our systems. We hold your billing name and address, the Stripe customer reference, which card is on file (type, last four digits and expiry, as shown in the portal), and the history of invoices, payments and refunds. Where you choose to pay by e-Transfer, we hold the record of the transfer.

Email

We keep a log of the transactional email we send you (invoices, receipts, reminders, sign-in links, project updates): the address, subject and whether it was delivered. We do not send marketing email, and this site has no newsletter.

Cookies and tracking

This website uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages and campaigns bring people to us. Google Analytics sets cookies (named _ga and _ga_*) that recognise a returning browser for up to two years; we use the reports in aggregate and do not use them to identify you. If you arrive from one of our ads, the campaign tags in the link are kept for that browser session and included with any enquiry you send, so we know which ad it came from. We also use Google Ads conversion tracking, which tells Google Ads when someone who clicked one of our ads sends an enquiry; it uses Google’s advertising cookies and does not pass your form answers to Google. You can opt out of Google Analytics with Google’s browser add-on or by blocking cookies in your browser.

The contact forms use Cloudflare Turnstile to tell people from bots; Turnstile runs in the browser and may set its own cookie for that purpose, under Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

The client portal sets one cookie, anode_session, which keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It is essential to the service, is not used for tracking, and is removed when you sign out.

Who processes information for us

We use a small number of service providers to run the site and the portal. Each receives only what it needs for its job and is bound by its own contractual and privacy obligations.

These providers operate in the United States and elsewhere, so information we hold about you may be stored or processed outside Canada and be subject to the laws there. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone else except where the law requires.

How long we keep it

• Enquiries are kept while we are in contact and for up to two years afterwards, so we can pick a conversation back up.
• Client records (accounts, projects, files, agreements) are kept for the length of the engagement and a reasonable period afterwards in case the work resumes, unless you ask us to remove them sooner.
• Financial records (invoices, payments, signed agreements) are kept for six years after the end of the tax year they relate to, as the Canada Revenue Agency requires.
• Sign-in records are kept for the life of the session plus a short period for security review.

How we protect it

Everything travels over encrypted connections. Portal passwords are stored as salted hashes, never in a readable form. Sessions can be revoked at any time from the portal, individually or all at once. Each client account can see only that client’s own records, and that rule is enforced on the server, not just in the browser. Files are stored in private storage and are reachable only through short-lived links issued to signed-in users who are entitled to them.

Your rights

You can ask us, at any time:

• what personal information we hold about you and how we use it;
• to correct anything that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• to delete information we no longer need to keep (we will explain if the law requires us to keep some of it, such as invoices);
• to withdraw consent to a use that depends on it, subject to any contract between us.

Write to hello@anodegroup.com and we will respond within 45 days, as PIPA requires. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta or, for matters under PIPEDA, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Children

Our services are for businesses and are not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes

When this policy changes we update the date at the top of the page. For changes that affect how we use information we already hold about clients, we will tell you directly by email.

See also our Terms of Service.