Your information.

Who we are

While You’re Away is a house and pet sitting service operated out of Caulfeild, West Vancouver, British Columbia. If you want to reach us about anything on this page, email loading….

What we collect, and why

We only ask for what we need to arrange care and get into your home when you are away.

When you send an enquiry

• Your name, email address, and phone number if you give one
• Roughly where you are, and what you are asking about
• Whatever you write in the message

When you request a booking

• Your name, email, phone and address
• Dates, the service you want, and any add-ons
• Details about your pets, including any special needs or medication
• Anything else you tell us in the notes

If you create a member account

• Your name, email, phone and address
• Your pets: name, age, type, breed, special needs, and photos if you add them
• Your home: emergency contacts, bin days, where mail goes, thermostat location, smart devices, off-limits areas, and any quirks worth knowing
• Notes and walk-through videos we record during visits
• Your preferred way to pay

What we deliberately do not collect

Two things are missing from that list on purpose.

Entry codes, alarm codes and WiFi passwords are never stored on this website. There is nowhere in our database to put them. We take them in person at the meet-and-greet, and they stay out of the system entirely, so a breach of this site cannot give anyone access to your home.

Card numbers never touch this site. When card payment goes live it will run through a payment provider on their own pages. We never see, handle or store a card number, expiry date or security code.

Where your information is kept

Our database and file storage are provided by Supabase, and our email is sent through Resend. Both store data on servers in the United States, which means your information is held outside Canada and may be accessible to United States authorities under their laws. If you would rather not have your information leave Canada, tell us and we will arrange your booking by phone and on paper instead.

How long we keep it

Enquiries and booking requests are kept while we are in touch with you and for a reasonable period afterwards, so we remember your home and your pets if you come back. Member account information is kept until you ask us to delete it. We do not keep anything indefinitely for its own sake.

Walk-through videos are deleted two weeks after your sitter checks out of the final visit. We email you three days beforehand so you can download anything you want to keep. Video of the inside of your home is the most sensitive thing we hold, and the shortest sensible life for it is the safest thing for you.

Who else sees it

Your information is used to look after your home and pets, and for nothing else. We do not sell it, rent it, or share it for advertising.

We never publish photos or video of your home or your pets, on our marketing website or anywhere else. The walk-through videos we record are uploaded to your member page, where only you and the sitter assigned to your booking can see them. We will share one with your insurer or the police if you ask us to, and we will comply if the law requires it. Otherwise they go nowhere.

The sitter assigned to your booking sees what they need in order to do the visit. Our service providers, Supabase, Resend, Vercel and our payment provider, process information on our behalf under their own terms. We will also disclose information where the law requires it.

Keeping it safe

Access to your member area is by a one-time link sent to your email address, so there is no password to be guessed or reused. Our database restricts every record to the account it belongs to, enforced by the database itself rather than by the website. Traffic to this site is encrypted.

No system is perfect, and we would not claim otherwise. That is part of why the codes to your front door are not in it.

Your rights

Under Canadian privacy law you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct anything wrong, or delete it. Email loading… and we will deal with it within thirty days. There is no charge for this.

You can withdraw your consent at any time, though we may not be able to continue looking after your home without the information needed to do it.

Cookies

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies, and there is no analytics service watching what you do here. If you sign in to the member area, your browser stores a sign-in token so you stay signed in on that device. That is the only thing we keep in your browser.

Children

This service is for adults arranging care for their own home. We do not knowingly collect information from children.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information we will update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell the clients it affects directly rather than relying on you to notice.

Complaints

If you think we have mishandled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.