1. Who we are and what this covers
Northern Vector Systems Ltd. (“we”, “us”) is a software company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. This policy explains how we handle personal information in the products we run under our own name:
- Northern Vector Accounts, our sign-in service, with its billing and customer records, at accounts.northernvectorsystems.com and crm.northernvectorsystems.com;
- Chinook Mail, our email service, at webmail.northernvectorsystems.com and mailadmin.northernvectorsystems.com;
- Ledger by Northern Vector Systems, our accounting app, at ledger.northernvectorsystems.com; and
- this website, northernvectorsystems.com.
DFRDS, our research data platform, has its own privacy notice and terms on dfrds.com. If DFRDS signs you in through Northern Vector Accounts, this policy covers that account.
This policy does not cover the websites and apps we build or run for clients, such as the Canadian Metal Cards shop. Each of those has its own privacy policy.
We handle personal information under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), whichever applies. We are responsible for the personal information under our control, including what we pass to the service providers listed in section 5.
2. What we collect
Your account in Northern Vector Accounts
- Your name, your email address and the organization your account belongs to. When you sign up, we create a personal organization named after you.
- Your password, which we store only as a bcrypt hash. When you choose a password, we check it against Have I Been Pwned’s list of breached passwords by sending the first five characters of its SHA-1 hash. Neither your password nor its full hash leaves our servers.
- Your two-factor sign-in: the secret for your authenticator app (stored encrypted), your recovery codes (stored as hashes) and, for each passkey, its public key, the name you give it and when you last used it.
- If you sign in with Google, Apple or Microsoft: the account identifier that provider gives us, your email address and, for a new account, your name. We do not store the provider’s access tokens.
- For each device you sign in on: its IP address, its browser and operating system (from the user agent), and when you signed in and were last active. We use these to list your devices, to warn you about sign-ins from a new device and to let you end sessions you do not recognize.
- A security log of sign-ins, failed sign-in attempts and changes to your account, with the IP address of each.
Payments
When an organization pays for a plan, Stripe collects the card and billing details on its own payment pages. We never receive the full card number. We keep the Stripe customer number, the organization’s name and billing email, its subscriptions, and copies of its invoices as Stripe issues them.
Our customer records
We keep one customer record per email address across our products, with your name and the history of your accounts with us (created, changed, closed). If you write to us or work with us, we add your company, your phone number if you give it, and our notes.
Chinook Mail
- The email in your mailbox: the messages you send and receive, with their attachments, and your folders.
- Your mailbox address, your name and your sign-in details.
- For organizations that send email through our sending service: each message’s sender, recipients, subject, content and attachments, and what happened to it (delivered, bounced, marked as spam). If the sender turns on open or click tracking, which is off by default, we also record the reader’s IP address and browser when the message is opened or a link in it is clicked.
- The addresses that bounced or marked our mail as spam, so we stop sending to them.
- Failed sign-in attempts to the mail server, with the IP address and the username tried.
Ledger by Northern Vector Systems
Ledger is open by invitation only, and has its own sign-in. It holds your account (email address, name, language, password hash, two-factor sign-in and passkeys), a name for each device you sign in on, and a security log with the IP address and browser of each sign-in and change. It also holds what you put in it:
- ledgers, accounts (with only the last four digits of an account number, stored encrypted), transactions, payees, budgets, loans, trips and planned events;
- family funds, with their members and members’ incomes;
- company details such as the legal name and the CRA business number, GST filings and owner pay;
- the receipts you upload or email in, and the details read from them (section 4);
- your questions to Ask and its answers.
You can import bank statements as CSV or OFX files. Ledger keeps the transactions in them, not the file, and it never logs in to your bank. If you add other people, such as family members, tell them what you record about them.
This website
This website has no accounts or forms. It loads its typeface from Google Fonts, so your browser sends your IP address to Google. Google Analytics runs only as described in section 7. If you email us, your message and email address arrive in our Chinook Mail mailbox.
Server logs and page speed
Our servers log each request with its IP address, the page asked for and the response, but not what you typed. Our apps also measure how fast their pages load; we store those measurements with the page’s path, without your IP address or account.
3. How we use it
- To run the products you use: to sign you in, keep your data, send and receive your mail, read your receipts and answer your questions.
- To keep accounts and systems safe: to block abuse, warn you about new sign-ins and investigate security problems.
- To bill organizations that pay for a plan, and to keep the records tax law requires.
- To send you service email: confirmations, password resets, sign-in alerts, invitations, and Ledger’s notifications and statements. We do not send marketing email.
- To answer you when you write to us.
- To see how this website and our apps are used, from page-speed measurements and from Google Analytics where you allow it.
- To meet our legal obligations.
We use personal information only for these purposes, for others you agree to, or where the law requires or allows it, for example under a court order. You consent to these uses when you create an account and use the features described here, and you can withdraw that consent (section 10).
We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. We do not use your content to train AI models.
4. AI features
Two products send content to Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, for specific features. Anthropic is based in the United States, and it processes this content outside Canada.
The Chinook Mail assistant
The assistant is off unless we turn it on at your organization’s request, and even then it runs only when you press Process on an email. It sends Anthropic that email’s thread: up to the 20 most recent messages and the one you opened, each with its sender, recipients, date, subject and text, together with your name and email address and any note you type for the assistant. It never sends attachments. If you ask it to research a reply, it can run web searches through Anthropic based on the email.
We store the assistant’s request and answer encrypted, and erase both within about an hour. For 31 days we keep only counts, such as how many times the assistant ran and how much text it handled.
Ledger receipt reading and Ask
Ledger reads every receipt you upload or email in, except an exact copy of one it already has, by sending it to Anthropic: a PDF as the original file, a photo as a reduced copy. Anthropic returns the details, such as the merchant, date, amounts and taxes. Ledger stores those details with the original receipt in Canada.
Ask sends Anthropic your question and what Ledger looks up to answer it: ledger names; totals by category, month or payee; matching entries (date, payee and amount); open loans with their counterparties; and what family funds owe their members.
5. Who processes it, and where
These companies handle personal information for our products. AWS, Anthropic, Grafana Labs and Sentry process it on our behalf. Stripe, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Cloudflare also use what they receive under their own privacy policies.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Hosting, storage, backups and email delivery. Northern Vector Accounts, Ledger and this website’s files are stored in Canada (Montreal). Chinook Mail runs in the United States (Northern Virginia), with backup copies in Oregon. Email we send goes through Amazon SES in Northern Virginia, and receipts emailed to Ledger arrive there and are deleted after 14 days. Amazon CloudFront serves this website from its locations in North America, Europe and Israel.
- Anthropic
- Claude, for the Chinook Mail assistant and for Ledger’s receipt reading and Ask (section 4). Outside Canada; Anthropic is based in the United States.
- Stripe
- Payments, subscriptions and invoices. Stripe is based in the United States.
- Google Analytics on this website and in Ledger, only as described in section 7. Google Fonts on this website, in the Chinook Mail web app and admin console, and on some Northern Vector Accounts pages. Google sign-in, if you choose it. Google is based in the United States.
- Apple and Microsoft
- Sign-in, if you choose Sign in with Apple or Microsoft. They send us your account identifier, your email address and, for a new account, your name.
- Cloudflare
- When bot protection is on, Cloudflare Turnstile checks the sign-up and password reset forms of Northern Vector Accounts. It receives your IP address and a token from your browser. Cloudflare is based in the United States.
- Grafana Labs
- Grafana Cloud monitors our servers. It receives operational measurements, such as request counts, response times and server load, which contain no personal information. It stores them in the United States.
- Sentry
- Error reports, when we turn error reporting on for a product. The reports are set to leave out personal information such as IP addresses and cookies. Sentry is based in the United States.
- Have I Been Pwned
- The breached-password check in section 2. It receives five characters of a password hash, which identify neither you nor your password.
6. Information outside Canada
The database of Northern Vector Accounts, and Ledger’s records, receipts and backups, stay in Canada. Copies of some of that information, and other information, are stored or processed outside Canada: the mail in Chinook Mail and every email we send, in the United States; content sent to Anthropic; payment details at Stripe; and what Google, Apple, Microsoft and Cloudflare receive.
Information held in another country is subject to that country’s laws. Its courts, law enforcement and national security authorities may be able to obtain it.
8. How long we keep it
Northern Vector Accounts
Your account stays until you delete it. When you ask us to delete it, we end all your sessions at once and delete the account 14 days later, unless you choose Keep my account before then. Deletion removes your profile, sessions, passkeys, linked sign-ins and the apps you authorized.
Some records outlast the account: its security log (actions, times and IP addresses); your customer record and its history; and invoices and billing records, which we keep for at least six years, as Canadian tax law requires. The security log and customer records have no fixed end date today. While the account exists, we keep the record of each session it had. Backups of the database can hold a deleted account for up to six weeks.
Chinook Mail
- Mail stays in your mailbox until you delete it. Deleting a message from Trash erases it from the mail server, but backups of the server’s disk can hold it for up to 30 more days.
- Messages sent through our sending service: content and attachments are deleted after 7 days, and the rest of the record (sender, recipients, subject and delivery events) after 45 days.
- Assistant requests and answers: about an hour (section 4).
- Failed sign-in attempts: 1 day.
- Addresses that bounced, marked our mail as spam or unsubscribed: kept until an administrator removes them, so that we do not mail them again.
- Database backups: 90 days. Until a backup expires, it can hold sent messages, encrypted assistant runs and failed sign-in attempts that the live database has already deleted.
Ledger by Northern Vector Systems
Ledger keeps business records, receipts included, for at least six years after the end of the tax year they relate to, and records of capital property with no end date, as the Canada Revenue Agency requires. During that period Ledger refuses to delete a receipt; after it, deleting a receipt hides it, and we erase it if you ask. Posted entries cannot be erased, only reversed, so that the books stay complete. Database backups are kept for seven years. To close a Ledger account and erase what the law does not require us to keep, write to us.
Everything else
Server request logs are overwritten as they fill up. Page-speed measurements are deleted after 90 days. Your analytics answer stays in your browser until you change it or clear your browser’s storage.
9. How we protect it
- Our websites and apps are served only over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Mail exchanged with other mail servers is encrypted whenever the other server supports it.
- Northern Vector Accounts and Ledger store passwords only as bcrypt hashes. Authenticator secrets and other secrets are encrypted in our databases.
- Northern Vector Accounts supports two-factor sign-in and passkeys, and some products require two-factor sign-in. Ledger requires it.
- Backups are encrypted.
- Security logs record sign-ins and account changes.
- Access to our servers is limited to the people who run them.
No system is perfectly secure. If you find a security problem, tell us at contact@northernvectorsystems.com.
10. Your rights and choices
- Access. Ask us what personal information we hold about you, how we have used it and to whom we have disclosed it, and we will give you a copy. In Northern Vector Accounts, Download my data on your account page gives you your profile, organization, sessions, passkeys, authorized apps and security log right away.
- Correction. Correct your name and email address in your account, or ask us to correct anything else that is wrong or incomplete.
- Withdrawing consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual limits and with reasonable notice. Some withdrawals mean we cannot go on providing a product or feature. For example, Ledger reads every receipt through Anthropic, so if you do not want receipts sent there, do not add them to Ledger.
- Deletion. Delete your Northern Vector Accounts account from your account page, or ask us to delete information we hold. We delete what the law does not require us to keep, and tell you what we keep and why.
We answer requests within 30 days. If we need more time, as the law allows, we tell you why. We may ask you to confirm your identity first.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta.
11. Breaches
If a breach of our safeguards involving your personal information creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will tell you as soon as we can, and report it to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, as the law requires. We keep a record of every breach of our safeguards that involves personal information.
12. Children
Our products are meant for adults and businesses. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to us and we will delete it.
13. Changes to this policy
When we change this policy, we post the new version on this page with a new date. If a change affects how we use information you have already given us, we tell you by email or in the product before it takes effect.
14. Contact us
Write to contact@northernvectorsystems.com with “Privacy” in the subject. Requests and complaints about personal information go to the person responsible for privacy at Northern Vector Systems Ltd., Calgary, Alberta, Canada.