Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 August 2026

Home Team helps you find Canadian alternatives to U.S. products. This policy describes what the app collects and what it does not. It is written to be checked against the app's behaviour, not to be reassuring.

There are no accounts and no sign-in. We never ask for your name, and we have no way to identify you across sessions.

What stays on your device

These are saved on your device and are never sent to us:

• your language choice (English or French),
• the province, postal code, or approximate position you set as your location.

Clearing the app's data removes them.

Your location — only if you ask

The app never requests your location when it starts. You choose how much to tell us, and you can tell us nothing:

• Nothing. The app works. It shows how many chains carry a product without
claiming any of them is near you.
• A province. Chosen from a list. Stays on your device.
• The first three characters of a postal code (for example K1A). This
identifies a neighbourhood in a city or a region in the countryside. It is not enough to locate a person, and it stays on your device.
• Your device's location. Only after you tap "Use my location" and grant
permission. Your coordinates are rounded to about one kilometre before they leave your device.

When you use a postal code or your location, we send that approximate point to our server to work out which grocery chains have a store within 15 km. We do not save the point in our database and we do not build a history of where you have been. The request itself travels over the internet, so our hosting provider processes it in the ordinary course of serving the request.

You can revoke location permission at any time in your device settings. The app falls back to province-level answers.

Advertising

The app is free and is paid for by advertising. Two kinds of ads appear, and both are labelled "Sponsored", "Promoted" or "Advertisement":

Ads we sell directly. We choose these advertisers. Serving them involves no information about you beyond the province you may have set, which decides whether a regional advertiser is shown. The advertiser receives nothing about you — not your location, not what you searched for, not what you looked at.

Ads from Google AdMob, shown when we have not sold a slot. These are requested as non-personalised ads: we do not permit your device's advertising identifier to be used to build a profile or target you, and the app shows no App Tracking Transparency prompt because it does not track you across apps or websites.

Google still receives the technical information any web request carries — including your IP address, device type, and whether an ad was seen or tapped — and uses it to serve and measure ads and to prevent fraud. That processing is governed by Google's own policies: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

We never send Google your searches, the products you view, your saved location, or anything you write in a report.

The map on our website

The website can show you which shops near you carry a product. Two parts of that involve someone other than us, and you should know which.

• The street map itself comes from OpenFreeMap, a free, donation-funded service built on OpenStreetMap. Your browser fetches the map squares directly from them, which means they receive your IP address and the area of the map you are looking at. They do not set cookies and do not require an account. We do not send them your postal code, your searches, or anything you have saved.
• Advertising. Slots we sell directly are served from our own database and set no cookies and no trackers of any kind. When a slot goes unsold it may be filled by Google AdSense, and that is different: Google receives your IP address and page, may set cookies, and may use them to choose what to show you. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland you will be asked to consent before any of that happens, and you may refuse. When advertising is switched off entirely — which it is until we have an advertiser — the page loads no Google code at all.
• Product photographs on some cards are the maker's own, served from Shopify's image network (cdn.shopify.com), because that is where the shop keeps them. Your browser fetches the picture directly, so Shopify receives your IP address and can tell which product's photo was asked for. We send no referrer, so they are not told which page you were reading, and we do not send them your searches, your list, or anything you have saved. Cards without a photograph make no request at all.
• "Directions" links open Google Maps. Nothing is sent to Google unless you click one; if you do, it is an ordinary link and Google receives the shop's coordinates as the destination, along with whatever your browser normally sends. If you would rather not involve Google, the shop's address and distance are shown on the page itself.

The shop pins are our own data. Working out which shops are near you happens on our server from the rounded point described above, and the result is not stored.

The place you set on the website is kept in your browser's local storage on your own device. Clearing your browser data removes it, and the page offers a "forget this" link that does the same thing.

What we collect, and only if you send it

If you use "Something here is wrong" to report an inaccuracy, or ask us to add a product, we receive:

• the text of your report or request,
• the product it concerns,
• your language, so we can reply in it,
• your email address only if you choose to provide one.

We use this to correct our catalogue and, if you gave an email, to reply. Reports are readable only by the people who maintain the catalogue — they are not readable by other users of the app. You may report anonymously by leaving the email field blank.

Where the data lives

The catalogue and any reports you send are stored with Supabase, on servers in the United States.

We are telling you this plainly because it is the kind of thing people reasonably want to know, and because Canadian privacy law requires that a transfer outside the country be disclosed. It means U.S. law can apply to that data, including lawful requests by U.S. authorities.

What is actually there is very little: the product catalogue, which is public information, and any report you chose to send us. Unless you typed your email into a report, we hold nothing that identifies you.

Reports are kept while a correction is being investigated and for a reasonable period afterwards, so we can show why a claim changed.

Children

Home Team is not directed at children. We request only ads rated suitable for general audiences, and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

Your rights

Under Canadian privacy law — PIPEDA, and Quebec's Law 25 — you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete it. Because the app has no accounts, the only personal information we are likely to hold is a report you sent with an email address attached.

Write to hello@shophometeam.ca and we will answer.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect, we will update the date above and describe the change in the app's release notes.