IPC Website Privacy Policy

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario has developed this site as a public resource for individuals wanting information about the Commissioner's Office, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA), and the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), as well as, other general access to information and privacy issues.

Personal Information

We only collect personal information that you choose to give us (for example, your email address when you email us at info@ipc.on.ca). We do not accept complaints or appeals under the Acts through our website or via email, to minimize the amount of personal information collected over the Internet.

We do not collect your personal information if you browse or download from our website. To the extent that our web server may collect IP addresses, that information is used only for the operation and security of our website and cannot identify a specific person directly.

The IPC recommends that unencrypted personal information should never be circulated over the Internet or by e-mail.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file containing certain pieces of information that a website creates when you visit the site. It can track how and when you use a site, which site you visited immediately before, and it can store that information about you. A cookie is not a program, code or plug-in. Cookies used by the IPC do not contain personally identifying information, do not give us access to anything on your hard drive, and cannot do anything to your computer.

There are two common types of cookies, "session cookies" and "persistent cookies." Session cookies store information only for the length of time that you are connected to a website - they are written to a temporary location on your hard drive. Once you leave the website, the originator of the cookie no longer has the information that was contained on it. The IPC does not use session cookies.

The information stored in "persistent cookies" is written onto your hard drive and remains there until the expiry date of the cookie. Our website uses one persistent cookie that makes it easier for your computer to interact with the dynamic content on our site. This cookie contains a random number – no personally identifying information is contained in it and the IPC does not use this cookie for tracking purposes.

Currently, browsers other than IE6 (and later versions) and FireFox do not distinguish between session cookies and persistent cookies. You do not have to accept cookies to access or search the IPC website. If you are concerned about having your browser enabled to accept cookies while you are surfing other websites, we recommend that you enable your browser to notify you when it is receiving a cookie. This enables you to accept or reject any cookie presented by the web server you are visiting.

External sites

If you visit any of the visible external links listed on our web pages, we cannot guarantee the following: the content of the external site, how they use personal information, or their privacy practices. When entering another website, you may find that it has its own privacy policy or statement that you can review in determining whether to proceed.

Contact us

You may contact us by any of the means outlined on our How to Reach Us page.