Toronto Housing Society (TOHS) Privacy Policy

Toronto Housing Society (TOHS) is a community-run housing support organization. This policy explains, in plain language, what information we collect through our website and tools, why we collect it, who can see it, and how you can ask us to remove or correct it. We are a Canadian organization and follow the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). What we collect Housing posts (offering or seeking). When someone posts in a TOHS Facebook group or through a future direct posting tool, we may capture the post text, the poster's first name (for public display) and full name (kept private, team-only), the general location information they provide (e.g. intersection, neighbourhood, or area -- not full street addresses), and basic post attributes (unit type, price, timing). Voluntarily supplied contact or address information. Some posts include phone numbers, emails, or specific addresses. This information is never made public and is restricted to the TOHS team members who need it to help coordinate housing matches or moderate the community. Website usage data. We use Google Analytics (GA4) to understand how people use tohs.ca -- which pages are visited, which tools are used. GA4 is configured to exclude personal information and never receives post text, names, or contact details. Knowledge base and support interactions, including FIKI. Our public assistant, FIKI, uses a third-party AI service (Anthropic's Claude API) to understand your question and phrase its reply. Whatever you type to FIKI is sent to Anthropic to generate that reply. TOHS does not store or log the content of your FIKI conversations -- each conversation is processed statelessly on our end. Anthropic's own standard policy is to not use this data to train its models unless a customer opts in (TOHS has not), and to retain API request data for up to 30 days before deleting it (longer only if flagged for a safety/policy-violation review on Anthropic's side). Please avoid typing sensitive personal information (like your address, phone number, or financial details) directly into the FIKI chat -- FIKI will also remind you of this if you try. What we do not make public TOHS never publicly displays: raw Facebook post text; full names (public views show first name only, where approved); Facebook profile links or aliases; full street addresses; phone numbers or emails; internal moderation notes, incident records, or join passphrases. Public search, filter, and open-data tools only ever draw from views we've deliberately built to exclude this information -- never from raw internal records. Why we collect this information We collect housing post information to help connect people looking for housing with people offering it, within a moderated, community-trust-based system. We collect general location detail (intersection/neighbourhood/area) because it is directly relevant to housing search -- not for tracking individuals. We use analytics only to understand tool usage and improve the platform, never to identify or profile individual visitors. We use Anthropic's Claude API for FIKI so it can understand real questions instead of relying on rigid keyword matching, while all TOHS-specific facts (rules, rent caps, templates) still come directly from our own knowledge base, never invented by the AI. How long we keep information Housing post text and details are retained indefinitely by default, since historical posts remain useful for our internal records and community history. FIKI conversations are not stored by TOHS at all (see above); Anthropic's own retention for API request data is up to 30 days by their standard policy. If you want your post information removed, see "Your rights" below -- we will act on removal requests rather than waiting for a fixed retention schedule to apply. Your rights You can contact us at any time to: ask what information we have about you or your post; ask us to correct inaccurate information; ask us to remove your personal information (including raw post text, contact details, or your name from any public-facing display). Contact: happyhunting@tohs.ca -- we aim to respond to all privacy requests within 5 business days. We will not require you to justify a removal request. We may ask you to confirm your identity (e.g. matching the Facebook account or contact detail associated with the original post) before acting on it, to prevent someone else from having your information removed without your consent. Cookies and analytics We use minimal cookies necessary for the site to function, and Google Analytics (GA4) to understand aggregate usage patterns. GA4 does not receive your name, post content, or contact information. A cookie-consent banner is planned as part of our platform rebuild (the previous Squarespace and Google Ads platforms provided this automatically; since we are moving off both, we are building our own consent mechanism) -- this policy will be updated with details once that is in place. Changes to this policy We will post the date of the most recent update at the top of this page. Significant changes will be announced through our community channels.