Privacy policy
What we collect, why, where it's kept, who can see it, and how to have it deleted.
Effective October 20, 2026
BCINs.ca is a private forum for Ontario BCIN holders. It is run by Brad Moore (Harmony Design and Renovation, 331 Charleton Ave W, Hamilton ON L8P 2E6). This policy explains what we collect, why, where it is kept, who can see it and how to have it deleted. We follow the fair information principles in Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
Privacy questions or requests: brad@harmonydesign.ca
1. What we collect
When you sign up
- Your name, username, email address and password (stored only as a one-way hash)
- Your BCIN (individual or firm)
- Your region, and your firm name if you choose to give it
When we verify you
We look up your BCIN on the Ministry's public QuARTS registry. We keep a short admin-only note of the result: registration status, classes, firm, and whether you currently work as a building official. All of this comes from the public register or from you.
When you use the forum
- What you post: topics, replies, private messages, uploaded files and reactions, including conversations with OBCbot
- Anything you add to your profile, such as a photo, bio or website
- Technical data the forum software records for security: IP addresses, browser type, and sign-in and activity times
- Your email and notification settings
If you were invited by email
Invitations are sent to BCIN holders using the contact details published on QuARTS. We keep a log of who was invited and when, and a list of people who asked not to be contacted again, so that nobody is emailed twice or after saying no.
2. How we use it
- Your BCIN is used only to confirm membership. We check it at signup, re-check every member against QuARTS once a quarter, and use it to make sure each person has one account.
- To run the forum: your account, notifications and digest emails, and replies to your messages.
- To moderate: keeping posts within the forum guidelines, and investigating flags and complaints.
- To keep the forum secure and stop spam or misuse.
We don't sell, rent or trade your information, and there are no ads. Your account information is not used to market Harmony Design and Renovation, SmartSTRUC or any other product or service, and it isn't shared with those businesses. You may receive occasional emails about BCINs.ca itself, such as forum announcements, and you can turn them off in your email preferences.
3. Who can see what
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| The public | Nothing on the forum. You have to sign in to see anything, and search engines don't index it. The site at bcins.ca shows only general information about the forum. |
| Other members | Your name, username and photo; your region; your firm, if you entered one; your badges (qualification classes such as House or Structural, and Building Official for members who currently work as one); your posts; and anything else you add to your profile. |
| Forum administrators only (currently Brad Moore) | Your BCIN, email address, IP addresses, verification notes and moderation history. The forum software lets administrators open private messages. We open them only to deal with a flag, a complaint or a security problem, and to review OBCbot conversations for answer quality. |
Your BCIN never appears on your profile, your posts or your user card, and other members can't search for it.
BCINs aren't secret. Every BCIN is a public record: anyone can look one up on the Ministry's QuARTS registry, along with the holder's name, classes and firm. What we keep private is the link between your BCIN and your forum account.
4. Where it is stored, and who helps us run the forum
We use a small number of service providers. Each one gets only what it needs to do its job.
| Provider | What it does | Information involved | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| OVHcloud | Hosts the forum server | All forum data | Beauharnois, Quebec, Canada |
| Cloudflare | Domain name service, the bcins.ca website, and storage for forum backups | Daily backups of the forum database, which include account details and BCINs (encrypted at rest) | May be outside Canada |
| Resend (on Amazon Web Services) | Sends forum email: sign-in codes, notifications, digests and invitations | Your name, email address and the email content | United States |
| Anthropic (Claude) | Writes OBCbot's answers, and runs the automated first-pass moderation check on new and edited posts | The text of posts and OBCbot questions | United States |
| OpenAI | Converts text into a search index (embeddings) so OBCbot and forum search can find relevant material. It doesn't write answers. | The text of posts and OBCbot questions | United States |
| Microsoft 365 | Email you send to brad@harmonydesign.ca | Your email and its content | Canada or United States |
Your BCIN is not sent to the AI or email providers. Anthropic and OpenAI process forum text under their business API terms, which don't allow them to use it to train their models. Information handled outside Canada is subject to the laws of that country and may be accessible to its authorities.
5. How we protect it
- All traffic to the forum and the website is encrypted (HTTPS).
- The BCIN field is hidden from everyone except administrators, and members can't change it after signup. Corrections go through an administrator.
- Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes. We can't see them.
- Access to the server, the admin tools and the backups is limited to the administrator.
- Members and administrators are asked not to post clients' names, addresses or other personal information. The automated moderation check is set up to hide posts that include them until a moderator reviews them.
If a breach puts your information at real risk, we will tell you and report it as the law requires.
6. How long we keep it
- While you're a member: for as long as your account is open.
- When you close your account: within 30 days of your request, we remove your name, username, email address, BCIN, region, firm, profile, verification notes and IP addresses. Your posts stay in their threads under an anonymous name so that discussions still make sense. If you'd rather your posts were deleted too, say so and we'll delete them.
- Backups: one backup is made each day and only the last seven are kept. Anything deleted is gone from the backups within about a week.
- Signups we can't verify: deleted once the signup is closed.
- Invitation log: kept while invitations are being sent. If you ask not to be contacted, we keep only your email address on a do-not-contact list so we can honour it.
- Service providers may keep delivery or processing logs for a limited period under their own terms.
7. Your choices and rights
- See and correct your information. You can edit most of your profile yourself. To correct your BCIN, or for a copy of what we hold about you, email us. You can also download your own posts from the Activity page of your profile.
- Control email. Choose a daily or weekly digest, or no email at all, under Preferences → Emails.
- Close your account and withdraw consent at any time by emailing brad@harmonydesign.ca.
We will respond to requests within 30 days. If you aren't satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
8. Cookies
The forum uses only the cookies it needs to keep you signed in and to protect forms. There are no advertising or third-party tracking cookies, and no outside analytics services.
9. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If the change matters, we'll also post it in the forum's Announcements category.
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