How To Make Your website Canada PIPEDA Compliant in less than 1 week

PIPEDA stands for Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It is Canada’s federal law on personal data protection. Since its enactment in April 2000, PIPEDA has been amended multiple times to make the comprehensive online privacy law aligned with most of the current privacy legislation trends that is now.

PIPEDA relies on ten principles:

1. Accountability
2. Identifying Purposes
3. Consent
4. Limiting Collection
5. Limited Use, Disclosure, and Retention
6. Accuracy
7. Safeguards
8. Openness
9. Individual Access
10. Challenging Compliance

Through the answers to the following questions, we will present you with the way PIPEDA implements these principles in practice.

Although PIPEDA has its own specifics, it unavoidably resembles other privacy laws. The most recent data protection laws aim to international businesses, hence many have similarities between them.

The Canadian federal law is very similar to the GDPR, so if you are already compliant with it, you may comply with the PIPEDA easily.

If your business focus is not on Europe, but on North America, and you are CCPA-compliant, you’ll have to put some effort into getting compliant with the Canadian PIPEDA.

Yes, you have to comply with province privacy laws, too. Certain collection, use, or disclosure of data can be exempt from compliance with PIPEDA and be subject of compliance only of the province law only if:

• Your business operates in that province and
• You collect, use, or disclose personal information of citizens only from that province
• You collect, use, or disclose personal information only within the province.

In short - only if the data does not leave the province. Only the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec have data protection laws. They are all substantially similar to the PIPEDA, so compliance with the federal law means compliance with the province law as well.1

PIPEDA applies to:

• Canadian organizations that collect, use, or disclose personal information for commercial purposes
• Foreign organizations that collect, use, or disclose personal information of Canadian citizens for commercial purposes.

Although the law itself does not explicitly mention the application to foreign companies, the penalties that some of them have got in the past are a clear signal that they have to comply with it. Foreign companies have to comply with PIPEDA as soon as they get in touch with their first Canadian user.

If you are a Canadian business, then the necessity to comply with PIPEDA is a no-brainer.

The Office of Privacy Commissioner and the Federal Court enforce Canada PIPEDA. The Commissioner will investigate the case and produce a report with the findings. The complainer can use the report in court.

Having a PIPEDA-compliant website means that you have taken the necessary measures to protect your users’ privacy before anything goes wrong with their data that you have collected or processed. Being proactive is the way to go toward compliance.

Start by figuring out what the requirements are, assess your risks, and implement the required measures. Ensure that you apply all the PIPEDA principles in your online business activities. As a minimum, you need a PIPEDA-compliant privacy policy and a consent management solution.

Your website is affected by the PIPEDA if:

• Your business is based in Canada and you collect or process personal data from people from Canada or anywhere in the world
• Your business is based anywhere in the world and you collect or process personal data of Canadian citizens for commercial purposes.l

Tracking technologies are often necessary for businesses that operate online. Making decisions based on data is impossible without them. Therefore, most website owners opt for using them. If you have installed any plugins on your website, then you may be using them already.

PIPEDA and other data protection laws aim to regulate tracking technologies to prevent irresponsible use of data, so they impose certain obligations to website owners. Fulfilling these obligations require you to be aware of the data trackers your websites use and bring them under compliance with the PIPEDA.

If you were wondering what trackers does your website use, feel free to use our free tool to audit your website. It will provide you with the results in less than 5 minutes at no cost at all.

Consent may be given in various forms, but obtaining it must meet the following requirements:

• The user must be informed that their data is being collected and will be used or disclosed and
• The user must be informed about the purpose of the collection and processing of data.

In most cases implied consent is not valid under the Canada PIPEDA. Implied consent is when you have a banner stating that you use cookies and that by staying on your website the visitor agrees to them. That’s simply not enough in most cases.

Instead, you should opt for affirmative cookie banners. They should serve the purpose of requesting explicit consent. Explicit consent is provided only if the visitor agrees to the use of cookies by clicking an affirmative button, such as an “Accept” or “Agree” button.

Users who have given you consent for collecting and processing their own data may want to withdraw the previously given consent at any point in time. If that happens, you should inform them of the implications of the withdrawal.

Secure Privacy offers an automated and integrated solution to your website:

1. 'Do not sell' for websites: Opt-out from advertisement and other tracking plugins using our web widget
2. 'Do not sell' for other systems: A CCPA form from which users can select what data they wish to opt-out from. This can be data in e.g. your SalesForce system.

Yes, we CCPA readiness tests, webite audits, training and more. Please write us at hello at secureprivacy.ai about your inquiries.

Yes, we offer full support for GDPR among other data privacy laws.

Yes, we offer volume discounts. Please contact us at hello at secureprivacy.ai

Yes, you can. We offer a FREE trial. You can cancel anytime. See our pricing here.

You sure can. Go to your administration panel at any time, and you will find cancel in the account section.