Privacy Policy

The short version

• We collect what you type into our forms. Nothing more.
• We run no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking pixels. We set no cookies.
• We never sell, rent, or trade personal information. There is no circumstance in which we would.
• Most of our participants are minors, so we hold that data to a higher standard than the law strictly requires.
• Ask us to delete your data and we will, within 30 days, no reason required.

The rest of this page is the detail behind those five points. If anything here is unclear, email info@joinresearch.ca and a human will answer.

Who we are

Join Research Canada is a student-led nonprofit that runs free research education programs, including Research 101 and The Symposium. We operate from Ontario, Canada. We are the party responsible for the personal information described on this page.

You can reach us about anything on this page at info@joinresearch.ca. That inbox is read by the student team that runs the organization.

What we collect, and exactly when

We only collect information you type into a form and submit. We do not buy data, scrape it, or obtain it from third parties. Each form collects a different set, and this is the complete list.

Research 101 registration

First name, last name, grade, city, province, research field of interest, experience level, your goals for the program, email address, how you heard about us, and the researcher avatar you build. Submitted at the time you register.

Waitlist

First name, last name, grade, email address, field of interest, and an optional note.

Mentor application

Name, email address, institution, role, field, an optional link you provide, and your message about why you want to mentor.

Email notifications

Your email address and which topic you asked to hear about. Nothing else.

Automatically, on every form

The date and time of your submission, in Toronto time. This is so we can process registrations in the order they arrived.

Our forms include a hidden field that real people never see. Automated bots fill it in, and when it is filled in we discard the submission without storing anything. If you are a person, this never affects you.

We do not ask for your address, phone number, date of birth, government identification, financial information, or grades. Our programs are free, so we never handle payment details and there is no payment processor in this site.

What we do not do

This section is deliberately specific, because vague privacy promises are worth nothing.

• We run no analytics product. Not Google Analytics, not any alternative. We do not measure your visit.
• We set no cookies. There is no cookie banner on this site because there is nothing to consent to.
• We run no advertising and no retargeting pixels, and we are not part of any ad network.
• We do not build profiles, score you, or make automated decisions about you.
• We do not sell, rent, licence, or trade personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing.

The site stores exactly one thing in your browser: whether you switched the ambient sound on or off. It stays in your browser's local storage, it is not personal information, it is never sent to us, and clearing your browser data removes it.

Why we collect it

We use your information for the purpose you gave it to us for, and for nothing else.

Running the programs

Registering you, placing you in a cohort, sending you the schedule and joining details, and matching you with a mentor.

Confirming your submission

We send one confirmation email when you submit a form so you know it worked.

Telling you what you asked to be told

If you asked to hear when something launches, we email you when it launches. That is the entire mailing.

Understanding our reach

We count how many students we have reached and which provinces they are in. We report those totals publicly. They are counts, never individuals.

If we ever wanted to use your information for a genuinely new purpose, we would ask you first. Consent obtained for one thing is not consent for everything.

Students under 18

Most of the people who use this site are high school students, and many are minors. We treat that as the default rather than the exception.

• If you are under 13, please do not submit a form without a parent or guardian doing it with you.
• If you are between 13 and 17, we ask that a parent or guardian knows you are signing up. Our programs are free and online, so there is nothing to pay for and nothing to sign.
• A parent or guardian can ask to see, correct, or delete their child's information at any time, and we will act on it without requiring the student to make the request themselves.

Parents and guardians: email info@joinresearch.ca and tell us the student's name and the email they registered with. We will confirm what we hold and delete it on request.

We do not knowingly collect more information from a minor than we would from an adult, because we ask everyone for the same minimal set.

Where your information lives

We are a small nonprofit and we use ordinary third-party services to operate. These are all of them.

Google (Google Sheets)

Form submissions are written to a private Google spreadsheet that only our team can open. Access is through a dedicated service account, not a shared password.

Vercel

Hosts this website and serves its pages. Like any web host, its servers process standard request information such as IP address in order to deliver the page. We do not use that data for analytics and we do not combine it with anything you submit.

Namecheap Private Email

Our email provider. It carries the confirmation emails we send you and holds any email you send us.

These providers may store or process data outside Canada, including in the United States. Information held in another country can be accessed by that country's courts and law enforcement under its laws. If you would rather not have your information handled that way, do not submit a form, and email us instead so we can arrange something else.

How long we keep it

Registrations and waitlist entries

Kept for the program you registered for, and for up to two years after it ends so we can recognise returning students and report accurate totals.

Mentor applications

Kept for up to two years, so we can contact you about the next season rather than making you apply again.

Notification signups

Kept until the thing you asked about launches, or until you ask to be removed, whichever comes first.

After those periods we delete the records or reduce them to anonymous counts that cannot identify anyone. Ask us to delete something sooner and we will.

Your rights, and how to actually use them

Under Canadian privacy law, including PIPEDA, you have real rights over your information. We are not going to make you fight for them.

• Access. Ask what we hold about you and we will tell you.
• Correction. Tell us something is wrong and we will fix it.
• Deletion. Ask us to delete your information and we will, unless we are legally required to keep it. We are not aware of any such requirement applying to us.
• Withdraw consent. Change your mind at any time. Withdrawing consent may mean we can no longer keep you in a program, and we will tell you plainly if that is the case.
• Unsubscribe. Every non-essential email we send has an unsubscribe path, and you can always just reply and ask.

To use any of these, email info@joinresearch.ca. We respond within 30 days, and usually much faster. We will not ask you why.

If you are not satisfied with how we handled your request, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. We would rather you told us first so we can fix it, but that route is yours and we will not stand in the way of it.

Security, stated honestly

This site is served over HTTPS. Form submissions go to our own endpoint and are written to a private spreadsheet. Credentials are held as server-side environment variables and are never committed to our code or exposed to your browser.

We are not going to claim our security is perfect, because nobody can honestly claim that. What we can tell you is that we collect very little, we store it in one place, and very few people can open it. The strongest protection for your data is that we did not ask for much of it.

If a breach ever affected your information in a way that created a real risk of significant harm, we would tell you and notify the Privacy Commissioner, as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change actually matters, meaning we start collecting something new or using your information for a new purpose, we will say so clearly rather than quietly editing a paragraph and hoping nobody notices.