Privacy policy

effectiv-hvac.com is operated by EffectiV Inc., 101-50 Jean-Paul-Cayer, Blainville, QC, Canada, J7C 0N9. Under Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Law 25), EffectiV is responsible for the personal information it holds. The person in charge of protecting it is named below, under “Questions and complaints”.

• When you write to us (contact form or email): your name, email, phone number if provided, and the content of your message. We also keep contact-form requests (name, email, phone, subject and the start of the message) on our server for up to 60 days so we can follow up; they appear in a weekly summary emailed to our sales team, kept for at most 12 months.
• If you subscribe to our newsletter: your first name, last name and email address.
• If you use the website assistant: your questions and the answers are sent to our artificial intelligence provider to generate the answers. We keep the questions and answers, without your IP address, to check answer quality and improve the assistant: 30 days on our server, and in a daily summary emailed to our sales team, kept for at most 12 months. In your browser, the conversation stays in session storage until you close the tab. If you ask the assistant to pass a request to our team, your name, email, the details you provide and the conversation are emailed to us. If you ask for a copy of the conversation, we use your name and email (and company, if given) to send it and attach them to the conversation in our daily summary; we follow up about your project only if you tick that box. Do not enter sensitive information.
• If you take the continuing-education course: your email (to send you a sign-in link), your profile (the name printed on the certificate, company, role, province or state, licence number if given, whether you want our news), your progress (active reading time per module, animations tried, quiz answers and results) and your certificate. If you leave the course unfinished, we send you at most four email reminders (24 h, 36 h, one week and one month after your last visit); each one has a link to stop them, and you can also turn them off in your profile. A session cookie (ev_train) keeps you signed in; the course needs it to work. We use this information to track your progress, issue and verify your certificate and produce statistics about the course. The name, hours and date of a certificate are shown to anyone who enters its ID on the verification page.
• Analytics, only with your consent: Google Analytics collects usage data (pages viewed, time on site, device and browser type, approximate region, how you arrived) using cookies. Nothing is collected until you click “Accept”.
• Your consent choice is stored in your browser’s local storage (key ev-consent) and is not sent to our servers.
• Technical logs: like any web server, our host receives your IP address and technical information about each request, for security and to keep the site running.

We do not collect sensitive information and we do not sell personal information.

• To answer your requests, prepare quotes and provide service.
• To send the newsletter, if you subscribed; every issue has an unsubscribe link.
• To understand how the site is used so we can improve it (analytics, with consent).
• To keep the site secure and working.

We do not use your information for other purposes without your consent, unless the law allows it.

Google Analytics cookies (for example _ga) are only set after you consent, and are used only for audience measurement. You can withdraw your consent at any time with the “Cookie settings” link at the bottom of every page; you can also delete cookies in your browser settings.

YouTube and Vimeo videos and 3D viewers only load when you start them. Those services may then collect data under their own policies; YouTube videos use privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com).

We only share your information with the providers that help us run the site and answer you, and only as needed:

• Vercel (website hosting);
• Google (Google Analytics, with consent);
• Anthropic (the artificial intelligence model behind the website assistant, only if you use it);
• Cloudflare (Turnstile bot check on the contact form, the assistant and the course sign-in);
• Resend (delivers contact-form and assistant messages to our inbox, and course sign-in links and certificates to you);
• Upstash (the database that keeps assistant exchanges for 30 days and contact-form requests for up to 60 days);
• Prisma (the database of the continuing-education course: accounts, progress, certificates);
• Microsoft (Microsoft 365, our email);
• our newsletter provider, if you subscribed;
• our authorized representatives and distributors, when your request concerns them (for example a quote in your region).

These providers may process information outside Quebec, including in the United States. Before any disclosure outside Quebec, we assess whether the information will be adequately protected and govern it by contract. We may also disclose information when the law requires it.

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes it was collected for, or as the law requires. Google Analytics data is kept for at most 14 months, and website assistant exchanges for 12 months. Your course record is kept while your account is active; you can ask us to delete it at any time. Issued certificates are kept for seven years so they can be verified, for example during an audit by your licensing body. When information is no longer needed, it is securely destroyed or anonymized.

We take reasonable security measures suited to the sensitivity of the information: encrypted connections (HTTPS) across the whole site, access limited to the people who need it, protected accounts and reputable providers. If a confidentiality incident presents a risk of serious injury, we will notify the Commission d’accès à l’information and the people concerned, as the law requires.

At any time, you may:

• request access to the personal information we hold about you;
• request its correction if it is inaccurate, incomplete or equivocal;
• withdraw your consent to its use or disclosure;
• request that the dissemination of information about you cease, or that it be de-indexed, in the cases provided by law;
• request that your computerized information be provided to you in a structured, commonly used technological format.

To exercise these rights, write to the Privacy Officer (below). We will respond within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity before acting on your request.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec.

Our site links to other sites (SelectiV, UV Diffusers, our careers site, social networks, MADEL). This policy does not apply to them; please read their own policies.

We may update this policy. The date of the last update is shown at the top of this page. If we make a significant change, we will say so on the site.