Privacy Policy — PolicyScanner

Who we are

PolicyScanner (“we”, “us”, “our”) operates this website from the office of Fairstar Insurance Group Inc., 104-2020 Winston Park Dr, Oakville, ON L6H 6X7, and is responsible for the personal information collected through it. We have a Privacy Officer who is accountable for how it is handled.

PolicyScanner is a branch partner of Fairstar Insurance Group Inc., an insurance brokerage registered with the Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario. The insurance we arrange for you is placed through Fairstar Insurance Group Inc..

This policy covers this website and the quote requests made through it. It is written to meet Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL). If you become our client, the privacy notices that come with your policy documents, and your insurer’s own privacy policy, also apply.

What we collect

What you tell us in the quote form. The type of insurance you want, your address, your name, email address and phone number, when you would like us to call, and the number of traffic convictions and insurance claims in your recent history. When you pick your address from the suggestions, we also record its map location, which is used only to show a street photo of it.

What we ask for when we prepare your quote. To get a price from an insurer, a broker needs more than the form asks — typically dates of birth, licence details, the vehicles or property to be insured, your insurance history and details of any claims. We ask for this directly, usually by phone, and explain why each item is needed.

Reports from third parties, with your consent. Insurers commonly require your driving record and your auto or property claims history from industry databases before they will quote or issue a policy. We or the insurer obtain these only with your consent, and only for the insurance you have asked about.

Information about other people. If you give us information about anyone else — another driver in your household, a co-owner, a family member — you confirm that you have their permission to share it with us for the purposes in this policy.

What the site records on its own. The servers that deliver this site keep standard technical logs (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to keep it secure and working. We do not use them to identify you.

Information we do not want. Please do not send us health information, banking details or government identification numbers through the site. If we need something sensitive, we will ask for it by a secure route.

Cookies and your browser

We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not run analytics or tracking scripts on this site. If that changes, we will update this policy first, and ask for your consent where the law requires it.

The quote form keeps your answers in your browser’s session storage so that a reload does not lose them. They stay on your device, are not sent to us until you submit the form, and are cleared when you submit it or close the tab.

Google Maps

When you type an address into the quote form, the text you type is sent to Google to suggest matching addresses, and a street photo of the address you pick is shown from Google Street View. Google may set its own cookies when it shows that photo. Google’s use of this information is governed by the Google Privacy Policy. You do not have to pick a suggestion: you can type your address in full and the form works the same.

Why we use it

We collect only what we need, and use it to:

prepare and explain insurance quotes you have asked for, and contact you about them by phone, email or text;
place, service and renew insurance for you, and help you with claims, if you become our client;
verify your identity and the accuracy of the information insurers rely on, and detect and prevent fraud;
meet our legal and regulatory obligations, including the record-keeping rules that apply to insurance brokers; and
understand, in aggregate, how the site is used, so we can improve it.

We will not use your information for any other purpose without telling you and, where required, asking for your consent. We do not sell, rent or trade personal information.

By submitting a quote request, you consent to us collecting, using and sharing your information as this policy describes, and to us contacting you by phone, email or text about your quote. We will ask for your express consent before collecting more sensitive information, such as your driving record or claims history.

You can withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions, by contacting us (see Contact us). If you do, we may not be able to get you a quote or provide a service that depends on it, and we will tell you if so.

We will only send you marketing messages, such as renewal reminders or offers, if you have agreed to receive them. Every such email includes a way to unsubscribe, and we act on a request within ten business days.

We share personal information only as needed for the purposes above:

Fairstar Insurance Group Inc., the registered brokerage we are a branch partner of, to place and service your insurance and to meet the brokerage’s obligations to RIBO, under the same protections this policy gives.
Insurance companies we approach for a quote or place your policy with. Each insurer handles your information under its own privacy policy.
Service providers who work on our behalf — such as website hosting, spam protection on our forms (Cloudflare Turnstile), email and text-message delivery, and client-management software — under contracts that require them to protect it and use it only to provide their service to us.
Regulators, law enforcement and others when the law requires or permits it, such as RIBO, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario, a court order, or to investigate fraud.
A successor business, if all or part of our business is sold or merged, under the same protections this policy gives.

Some of our service providers, and Google, may store or process information outside Canada. When they do, it is subject to the laws of the country where it is held, and may be accessible to that country’s courts and authorities.

How we protect it

We use physical, organizational and technical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including encrypted connections to this site and access limited to the staff who need it to serve you. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security; if a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Privacy Commissioner as the law requires.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purposes above, or as long as the law and our regulator require brokers to keep records. After that, we securely destroy it or remove anything that identifies you.

Your rights

You can ask us:

whether we hold personal information about you, what it is, how it has been used and who it has been shared with;
to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete; and
to withdraw your consent, as described above.

Send your request to our Privacy Officer (see Contact us). We may ask you to confirm your identity first. We will respond within 30 days, or tell you within that time if we need longer and why. If we cannot give you access to something — for example, because it would reveal information about another person — we will explain why.

This site is for adults

This site and our services are intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children through this site.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our practices or the law change. The date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make a significant change to how we use personal information, we will make it prominent on this site before it takes effect.

Contact us

Questions, requests and complaints about privacy go to our Privacy Officer:

**Privacy Officer, PolicyScanner**c/o Fairstar Insurance Group Inc.104-2020 Winston Park Dr, Oakville, ON L6H 6X7Email: info@policyscanner.caPhone: 1-866-576-7226

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.