The Yaletown Ledger ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect when you visit yaletownledger.ca, how we use it, and your rights under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable British Columbia privacy law.

We collect the minimum information necessary to operate the site and improve our journalism. We do not sell your personal information. We do not build advertising profiles. We do not share your data with third parties except as described in this policy.

Information you provide voluntarily:

• Newsletter subscriptions: your email address when you sign up for our newsletter.
• Contact form submissions: your name, email address, subject, and message when you contact us.

Information collected automatically:

• Anonymous analytics: page views, scroll depth, and reading behaviour — using a randomly generated session identifier stored in your browser. No personally identifiable information is attached to these events.
• Device type: derived from your browser's User-Agent string (e.g. mobile, tablet, desktop). We do not store the raw User-Agent string.
• Country: derived from your IP address at the network edge. We store the country code only — not the IP address itself.
• Referrer: the URL of the page that linked you to us, if your browser sends one.

• To send you our newsletter, if you have subscribed.
• To respond to contact form submissions.
• To understand how readers engage with our content so we can improve the quality and relevance of our journalism.
• To detect and prevent abuse of our contact and newsletter forms.

We do not use your data for targeted advertising, profiling, or any automated decision-making that has a legal or significant effect on you.

We run our own first-party analytics system. When you read an article, we record an anonymous page view event tied to a randomly generated session ID stored in your browser'ssessionStorage. This ID is not linked to your identity and is discarded when you close the tab.

We track reading behaviour — such as how far you scroll and whether you complete an article — to understand what content resonates with our audience. This data is used exclusively to inform editorial decisions. It is not shared with advertisers or third-party analytics platforms.

We do not use Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, or any third-party behavioural tracking scripts.

We use localStorage to store your cookie consent preference (key: yl_cookie_consent). This is a functional preference, not a tracking cookie.

We use sessionStorage for the anonymous session identifier used in analytics (key: yl_session). This is cleared automatically when your browser tab is closed.

We do not set any persistent tracking cookies. If you decline cookies via our consent banner, no analytics events are sent.

If you subscribe to our newsletter, we store your email address in our database. We use it only to send you the newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in any email we send, or by contacting us.

We do not share subscriber email addresses with third parties. We do not send marketing communications on behalf of advertisers.

We use the following third-party services to operate the site:

Each of these services has its own privacy policy. We choose providers who are committed to data minimisation and security.

• Newsletter subscriptions: retained until you unsubscribe.
• Contact form submissions: retained for 12 months, then deleted.
• Anonymous analytics events: retained for 24 months.

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Request deletion of your personal information (subject to legal retention obligations).
• Withdraw consent for processing, where consent is the basis for processing.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us or email [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days.

For privacy-related questions or requests, contact us at [email protected] or use our contact form.

The Yaletown Ledger
Yaletown, Vancouver
British Columbia, Canada