Privacy

As Canada's only national provider of home income plans, CHIP is committed to high standards that require honesty, integrity and fairness. For this reason, we manage our client website in accordance with the Canadian Marketing Association's Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice.

In this policy, we use the terms "CHIP", "we", "our", and "us" to refer to the Canadian Home Income Plan Corporation. We use the terms "you" and "your" to refer to CHIP.ca visitors like you.

Personal Information

You do not need to give us any information about yourself in order to access CHIP.ca. You can visit our pages and learn more about our product on a completely anonymous basis.

If you want to take advantage of the calculators available on CHIP.ca, however, we request information about you (age, city of residence, type of dwelling, approximate market value of your home, amounts of any outstanding mortgage or loans secured by your home, etc.), but which does not personally identify you. 

This information is retained only for the duration of your visit unless you decide to save it for future reference, in which case, you will be asked to provide an email address which will serve as your user name to access your saved work, and to provide you with your password so only you can access that work.

Of course, if you use our online forms to request an estimate or to apply for your CHIP Income Plan, we will ask for certain information to prepare your estimate or application (such as name, date of birth, mailing address, e-mail address, phone number, estimated value of your home, value of any outstanding loans secured by your home, and type of home).

In the event that you request an estimate online or make an online application for a CHIP Income Plan, we will store your personal information in our computer files, and use this information to provide services to you and help us to answer any questions that you may have about our product.

We may also use this information for other purposes. For example, we may review demographic information, survey results, and statistical analyses of CHIP.ca web page usage in order to help us evaluate, modify, and develop services that are likely to be of interest to you.

On occasion, we may also use your personal information to send you notices in the mail or by e-mail about changes in our product or special offers. If you do not want to receive these mailings, you can:

1. E-mail us at privacy@chip.ca

2. Call us at 1-888-655-1119, or

3. Write to us at Canadian Home Income Plan,
      45 St. Clair Avenue West, Suite 600,
      Toronto, ON
      M4V 1K9
      Attn: Chief Privacy Officer

Regardless of whether you are visiting CHIP.ca or a related site, you do not have to disclose any personal information if you do not want to. You can always decide not to use the optional services that require the submission of such information. The choice is yours. We are only interested in offering you convenient online services that match your interests and needs.

Anonymous/Non-Personal Information

Like many financial institutional websites, we routinely collect anonymous information. Anonymous information is information that cannot be associated with or traced back to a specific individual or business entity. For example, our web servers collect some anonymous/non-personal information automatically when you visit CHIP.ca or related websites.

Gathered electronically, this information may include the pages you visited, the type of web browser you are using, the level of encryption your browser supports and your Internet Protocol address. The anonymous/non-personal information collected may be used for research and analytical purposes. For example, we are able to determine how many times our online privacy policy has been visited but we do not know any specific information about those visitors.

Use of Cookies

Cookies may be used by us to improve functionality and in some cases, to provide visitors with a customized online experience or to enhance security.

Non-persistent cookies may be used to improve operations and functionality. For example, these cookies improve navigation, maintain connectivity and ensure online service sessions are secured. They do not contain personal or financial information and they are not permanently stored for future use.

Persistent cookies may be used as a means of offering visitors with a personalized experience. For example, they allow us to remember the values you enter into one of our calculators so you won't have to re-enter that information if it's needed by another of the calculators.

We do not use cookies to follow the surfing behavior of visitors once they leave CHIP.ca or related websites, or for to remember passwords when accessing highly secured pages like My Saved Work. You will be required to provide this information each time you logon to your saved work.

If you would like to browse our websites, you may do so without accepting cookies. However, you should understand that if you choose not to accept cookies, some website function, our calculators for instance, may not operate properly or optimally.

Cookies are widely used and most web browsers are configured initially to accept cookies automatically. If you prefer not to accept cookies, you may adjust your browser settings to alert you when a cookie is about to be sent, or you may configure your browser to refuse cookies automatically. If you would like to learn more about how to set your cookie options, please refer to your browser's documentation or online help for instructions.

Information Sharing

We take seriously our responsibility to keep your personal information confidential and private. We do not sell or rent information to telemarketers, mailing list brokers, or any other companies.

We use technologies and processes such as encryption, access control procedures, network firewalls, physical security, and other measures to protect your information. These measures increase the security and privacy of information traveling to, from, and within CHIP. Only our authorized employees or Service Providers carrying out permitted business functions are allowed to access personal information. Employees who violate our privacy access policies may be subject to disciplinary actions, including termination and criminal prosecution.

Like many organizations, we also hire companies to provide certain administrative services that require access to your personal information, such as sending mailings i.e., your annual statement. Service Providers are only given information on an as needed basis. We require these Service Providers to hold your personal information in strict confidence. These Service Providers are contractually required to maintain the security and confidentiality of your information, and are prohibited from using that information for any purpose other than providing the services specified in their contracts with CHIP. We audit and monitor these companies to ensure that your information is protected.

We may also disclose personal information when required to do so by law or when such action is necessary or appropriate to comply with legal process served on CHIP, to protect and defend the rights or property of CHIP, or to protect the personal safety of users of the CHIP website. We reserve the right to contact the appropriate authorities in our discretion when visitors' activities appear to be illegal or inconsistent with our policies.

Finally, we may sometimes share aggregate statistics and non-personal information with the media, government agencies, our Service Providers, and other third-parties. For example, we may publish statistics on the number of clients in various provinces, or the number of visitors to our website. These aggregate statistics will not allow anyone to identify individual names or other personal information.