Effective date: February 5th, 2020
This Privacy Policy has been prepared by Elston for their required site (herein known as “Elston”, “we”, “us”, “our”) and sets out the way Elston collects, discloses, use, and otherwise manages personal information.
The Privacy Policy also describes the privacy practices on the Elston required site website (the “website”, the “site”, or the “websites”) and through other interactions with consumers.
Collection and Use of Personal Information
Guest Registry: When you visit one of our sales centres and complete a guest registry form, we collect contact information such as your first and last name, mailing address, email address, and personal phone numbers. You may also choose to provide optional additional information such as your current housing situation, your reasons for moving, your desired housing characteristics, family status, age group, number of adults and children and your annual household income.
We only use this information that you have provided on the Guest Registry to form a better understanding of your needs, aid you in finding a suitable home and to send you tailored communications about your developments, products and services.
We also use this information on an aggregator basis to help us better understand our customers and to improve our products and service offerings.
Buying a Home: When you complete and AoPS (Agreement of Purchase and Sale) for a residential property through Elston at any of our developments, we will collect the information you provided on the Agreement including the first and name and contact information (such as telephone numbers and mailing address) for the purchasers, including the property description, and purchase amount. We utilize this information for the purposes of facilitating the residential property transaction.
Additionally, we will collect pertinent information to verify the identity of each purchaser (such as a valid government-issued piece of identification) as well as a personal cheque for deposit purposes.
Warranty Registration and Requests: We collect certain pieces of personal information, including your name, email address, mailing address, telephone numbers and property closing date when you register for a new home warranty plan in your respective and applicable province or when you make a warranty customer care request. This information will be used to complete the warranty registration and to fulfill your warranty request.
Website Registration: In order to obtain access to information regarding products and services on any password-protected areas of our websites, we may request certain personal information such as your name, telephone number, mailing address, email address and the corresponding password that you have selected. We use this information to provide and administer your online account or service your request.
Marketing Communications: When you complete and submit a guest registration form, or otherwise sign-up to receive information regarding our developments or related products and services, we collect your contact information such as your name, phone numbers, mailing addresses and email address. We will use this information to send you communications based on your expressed interests by mail, email or telephone. You may opt-out of receiving all future marketing and promotional communications at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link included in our email communications, or by contacting us with the credentials noted at the bottom of this Privacy Policy.
Customer Service: Any time that you contact us with a comment, complaint or a question, you may be asked for information to help us identify yourself (such as your name, address, and your telephone number) along with additional information we may need to help us promptly answer your question or respond to your comment or complaint (e.g: your lot number, warranty enrolment number, development, community, etc.) We may retain this information to assist you in the future and to improve our customer service and product and service offerings. We may additionally use personal information to establish and manage our relationship with you and provide quality customer service
Disclosure and Sharing of Your Personal Information
We will not under any circumstances disclose, rent, trade, sell or otherwise transfer your personal information without your consent, except as otherwise outlined herein.
Service Providers: Your personal information may be transferred (or otherwise made available) to our designated third parties or affiliates who provide services on our behalf. As an example, we may utilize a service provider for the maintenance of our website, including hosting an information form, providing additional services related to our site, sending electronic mail or other functions related to our business or services provided.
Our service providers are given only the information they need to perform designated functions, and are not authorized under any circumstances to disclose personal information for their own marketing purposes.
Your personal information may be maintained and processed by us, our affiliations and other third party service providers in Canada, the US or other foreign jurisdictions. In the event that personal information is transferred to other foreign jurisdictions, it will be subject to the laws of that country and may be disclosed to or accessed by their respective courts of law (or related parties), local law enforcement and governmental authorities in accordance to their laws.
Legal/Compliance: Elston, its affiliates, sister companies and its Canadian or foreign service providers may provide your personal information in response to a search warrant or other legally valid order or inquiry to another organization for the purposes of investigating any breaches of an agreement, violation of a law or detecting, preventing or suppressing fraud, or as otherwise permitted or required by applicable Canadian or other foreign laws. Your personal information may also be disclosed where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims and to prevent or investigate loss or harm to persons or property.
Sale of Business: Personal information may be provided to third parties in connection with a prospective or completed business transaction, including a sale or merger (including transfers made as part of bankruptcy proceedings or insolvency) involving all or a part of Elston or as a part of a corporate reorganization or stock sale or additional or other changes in corporate control.
Internet-Based Advertising, Information About or Website and Cookies
Overview
We and/or our service providers collect IP (Internet protocol) addresses from all visitors to the website and other related information such as browser type, operating system, page requests and an average time spent visiting our website.
This information is only used to enable us to understand our site’s activity and to improve and monitor the website.
Tracking Tags, Web Beacons and Cookies
Our site uses a technology called ’web beacons’ and ‘tracking tags’. These systems allow us to understand which pages you frequent on our site. Tracer tags like these are utilized to help us learn how we can tailor and optimize our website for yourself and other site visitors.
Our website utilizes a technology known as ‘cookies.’ Cookies are essentially pieces of data that sit on your hard drive so we can recognize you again when you return to our site.
We utilize cookies on the sections of our site in which you are prompted to log in or have boxes which are customizable. In the event that you have registered on our site, these cookies will allow us to identify who you are and which browser you are using and will allow us to recognize that you have previously visited the site and it is may be necessary to access your account information (which is automatically stored on our computers) in an effort to personalize services and deliver products.
Cookies provide us and our service providers with information pertaining to your utilization of our site (e.g: which sections of the site you have frequented) that will then be used to personalize our site in accordance with your designated interests and preferences.
Our site is not designed to respond to ‘do not track’ signals that are received from browsers.
Internet-Based Advertising
You may find our advertisements on other websites through the usage of our third parties, such as Facebook. These companies may additionally use web beacons, tracer tags, cookies to report understand certain information surrounding your visits to our site and other sites you visit and/or interact to ads, in order to measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns and to deliver the appropriate ads which are relevant to you on and off our website.
If you would like to learn additional information about the collection and use of information by third parties for behavioural purpose. Additionally, if you would like to opt-out of certain third-party cookies or selection what online advertisements you choose to receive, you may do so by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada website.
If you would like opt-out of internet-based ads from Google, you may do so here.
Analytics
We may utilize services from a third party such as Google Analytics to aid us in obtaining and analyzing information about the sections of our site which you frequent. These third parties may use technologies as noted above including: web beacons, web server logs and cookies. This information will be used to improve and evaluate your customer experience and the simplicity and convenience of our website, in addition to aiding us in understanding the specific ways in which you use our site based on your website visits. If you would like further information regarding how Google uses data when on a patterns’ sites or applications, you may do so here.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
You can opt-out of having made your activity on the service available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.
For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en
- Facebook Advertisement
Facebook offers advertising that targets users based on designed audiences and specific objectives. Facebook collects this data based on provided and approved user parameters.
Alternatively, ads may target you based off of data from your browser through the utilization of algorithms. Facebook may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.
You can opt-out of ads by going to your Facebook profile, selecting settings, ad, and then making modification in the Ad settings (Ads based on data from partners) by selecting ‘Not Allowed.’
Social Media
This site may provide you with the opportunity to engage with our content on or through third-party social networking sites, applications or plug-ins. When you engage with our content on or through third-party operated social networking websites, applications or plug-ins, you may allow us to have access to certain information that is associated with your social media accounts (Username, email, name, gender, profile picture) to deliver the content or as a part of the operation of the website, application or plug-in. When you provide information from your social media account, we may utilize this information to personalize your experience on our site and on the third-party social networking websites, applications or plug-ins and to provide you with other services or products you may request.
Third Party Links
Our site may contain links to other sites that are not owned or operated by us, this includes social media websites. The links to our website may be featured on third party websites on which we advertise on. Except as you provided herein, we will not under any circumstances provide any of your personal information to these third parties without your explicit consent. These links are provided to third party websites as a convenience to you as the site user. Links are not intended to act as an endorsement of or a referral to the linked sites. These linked sites have independent and separate privacy statements, terms of use and notices which we advise you to read very carefully. We do not have any control over these websites, and as such, have no liability or responsible for the manner in which these organizations that operate these linked websites may use, disclose, collect, secure or otherwise treat your personal information.
Retention and Safeguards
We have applied reasonable administrative, technical and physical measures in an effort to protect the personal information in our custody and control against loss, theft and unauthorized access including the usage, modification and disclosure of information. We restrict access to your personal information on a need to know basis to employees and authorized service providers who need access in order to fulfill their job requirements.
Your online access to your personal information may be protected with a password that you have selected. We strongly discourage you from disclosing or sharing your password with anyone. We will never prompt you for your password via any unsolicited communication (such as phone calls, email, phone calls, or social media messaging systems.)
Our personal information retention processes are meant to retain personal information of our customers for no longer than necessary for the purposes stated above or to otherwise adhere to legal parameters.
Access to Your Personal Information
You retain the right to access, update and correct inaccuracies in your personal information that we have in our custody and control. This is subject to personal exceptions as prescribed by the law.
You may request access to update, modify and correct inaccuracies in personal information that have in our possession or control by emailing, writing us, or calling us through the contact information as noted below.
We may in turn request certain information for verification purposes in order to properly identify you as the appropriate person seeking access to their personal information records.
Changes to the Privacy Policy
This privacy policy may be updated periodically to reflect changes to our personal information practices in accordance with the law. We will post the updated Privacy Policy on our website; your personal information will always be treated in accordance to what is noted within the Privacy Policy in place at the time your personal information was collected, unless you otherwise consent.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
