Privacy policy

Zibby is a web design business run by Sandcherry Systems Inc., based in Burlington, Ontario. This policy explains what information we collect through zibby.ca, our sign-in area at app.zibby.ca, the Zibby iPhone app and the websites we run for businesses, why, and what you can ask us to do with it. We follow Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

What we collect

Almost everything we hold, you gave us. How long we keep each kind of record is under How long we keep it.

When you ask us about a website

• Preview lookup: the website address you type in. If we haven’t built a preview for it yet, we save the address so we can review it.
• Preview notifications: your email address and/or mobile number, if you ask to be told when your preview is ready.
• Your preview page: your name, email address and/or mobile number when you ask to buy your website or ask us to check back later, plus the reason you give if you turn the preview down.
• Contact form: your business name, what kind of business it is (if you say), website address, email address and/or mobile number, and any message you write. If you’re signed in to Zibby in the same browser, we also note which account sent it. We keep your message on its own, not with any business’s records, until someone at Zibby files it with the website it’s about. If we make a preview of a website for you from it, what you wrote is what we design it from, and we email you its link when it’s ready (or text it, if you gave only a mobile number). We check each message for signs of fraud, which includes looking up in the public domain registries when your email’s domain and any web address in your message were registered.
• Texts you send us: your mobile number, what you write, and any photos or other files you attach. We keep these so we can answer you and, if you’re having a website prepared, use the photos in it.
• Emails you send us: whatever you include in them.

Your Zibby account

• Buying your website: when you buy, we email the address you bought with about what happens next. That email has a link that works once, for 14 days; when you use it, we make you a Zibby account with that address, as your business’s owner, so you can sign in. If you were already signed in with that address when you bought, your account is made the owner straight away.
• Being invited to look after a website: if a business’s owner invites you, they give us your name and email address, and your mobile number if they choose to, and we email you a link that works once, for 7 days. We keep the invitation until you use it, it’s withdrawn or it runs out. When you use it, we make you a Zibby account with those details, unless you have one, and the number can sign you in only after you confirm it’s yours, and the business’s owners can see your name, your address and what you can do on their website. They’re told when you join, and they can remove you.
• Signing in: your email address, and your mobile number if you choose to sign in by text. We text a six-digit code to a number only after you’ve confirmed that number is yours, by receiving a code at it while already signed in. Until you confirm it, a number on your account can’t be used to sign in. A code works for ten minutes, and we never keep the code itself.
• Signing up in the chat: if you sign up at app.zibby.ca/start, your name and email address. We email a six-digit code to that address; when you enter it, we make you a Zibby account with that name and address. Then, in the chat, what you tell Zibby about your business: its name, what it does, where it is, and its website if it has one. We make a website request for your business from that, note that you started it (you become its owner when you buy it, or when you prove the business is yours), and keep what you told us with it, so we can design from it. Each account can start one. We check what you told us for signs of fraud, as we do for the contact form, including looking up in the public domain registries when your email’s domain and your website’s domain were registered. When your first design is ready, we email you once, at the address you signed up with.
• Signing in on an iPhone: after you use a code or a linked Apple Account, we keep a random app-session identifier, a hash of a rotating sign-in credential, and when that session was created, renewed and ended. We do not store your phone’s hardware identifier. The credential is kept in your iPhone’s secure Keychain, and the server record expires within 30 days of its last renewal. Signing out ends that device’s session. If you link an Apple Account, while signed in or by signing in with a code just after an Apple sign-in that isn’t linked yet, we store a one-way hash of its Apple account identifier so you can sign in with Apple later. In between, for up to 15 minutes, we keep that hash and Apple’s token, encrypted, with nothing that names you; if no code sign-in follows, we delete them and ask Apple to revoke the token within a week. We do not use the email address Apple provides to choose your Zibby account. When you link it, Apple also gives us a token for your Zibby sign-in; we keep it encrypted, and only so we can ask Apple to revoke it when you remove the link or delete your account, which Apple requires. You can remove the link in the app’s Account screen. Apple receives the sign-in request and handles its identity check; we briefly keep a one-use challenge to verify its response. The app also remembers up to five recently used email addresses and five phone numbers, so you can choose one next time; you can remove them from the sign-in screen. Zibby does not sync this recent-choice list to its servers. Your iPhone may include it in a device backup.

Your website with us

• Changes to your website: if you own a business with us and change your website yourself, the words you change and any change you describe for our AI editor, with its replies, its questions and your answers. If you ask Zibby for a larger change, we keep your request, attachments, follow-up messages, its status and draft history. Zibby staff may use AI coding tools, such as Codex or Claude, to help make that change. If you have Zibby make a whole new design of your website, we keep what you chose for it, the comments you make while it’s built, a step-by-step copy of it being built, its plan and what it cost. If you make one of your designs your website, we keep when you did, who did it and which of the pictures Zibby made for it you accepted. We keep these records with the history of your website.
• Talking with Zibby in the chat: if you use the chat at app.zibby.ca, what you type to Zibby and its answers, with which of your websites you were looking at, and which photos you sent with a message (the photos themselves are kept as described under Photos you add to your website). We keep a conversation with your account for 180 days, so it carries on where you left off on any device, and then delete it. Your earlier conversations are listed, by their first message, so you can go back to one; each is deleted 180 days after its last message.
• Photos you add to your website: the photo, which your browser makes smaller before sending it, and a small copy of it. The editor’s AI model is shown the photos you attach to an AI edit request — the small copies when you send several — so it can choose which to use, describe them on your website, and point out anything you should check first, such as a face or a house number. Photos attached to a larger request are reviewed by Zibby staff. We remove the information a camera stores inside a photo — including where it was taken — from both before keeping them, so none of that reaches your website. A photo you add is on your website once you publish it. A photo you add to a product in your shop is kept with your shop’s products, with the same information removed.
• Reporting content in the Zibby iPhone app: when you report a concern, we keep the reason you chose, which draft, suggestion or design it was about, anything you wrote, your website, and your account’s name, email address and mobile number, with the messages sent through our contact form, and Zibby’s team is emailed and texted about it so someone looks within 24 hours.
• Notifications in the Zibby iPhone app: if you turn them on, we keep the notification address Apple gives your iPhone for the Zibby app with that phone’s app session, which version of the app it is, and whether you want to hear about drafts and questions, publishing results, or both. We use them only to tell you when a draft is ready, when Zibby has a question, and whether a change reached your website. Apple delivers them: it receives that address and the notification, which says only that something happened and which change it’s about, never what you asked for or your website’s words. We keep a record that a notification was sent, which change it was about and whether Apple accepted it, for 30 days. Signing out on that phone, signing out everywhere, or deleting your account removes the address; you can also turn notifications off in the app’s Account screen or in your iPhone’s Settings.
• Hero Studio videos in the Zibby iPhone app: filming, trimming and framing happen on your iPhone. When you choose Create website draft, the app prepares silent video files and still images, removes embedded location and camera metadata from those finished files, and uploads them with the website framing you approved to our private storage in Canada. Zibby places them into a website draft automatically; no AI model is shown the video. The draft’s media can be viewed by anyone who has its preview address. It reaches your live website only when you choose Publish. If a design cannot yet support automatic placement, Send to Zibby instead sends the original clips, approved trims and framing, and your optional note privately so we can investigate the automation gap. Staff may access private uploads for that work or support. Private uploads are kept for up to a year and deleted sooner with your website’s information; published website media remains with the website. The app records no sound. Clips you film stay on your iPhone until you delete them; one is saved to your photo library only when you choose Save to Photos.
• Moving your domain to us: your answers about what else uses your domain, and where your email is hosted and who you pay for it, so that nothing you rely on stops working in the move. We record which service holds your email, never the email itself. If you move your domain to us, also the name, business name, postal address, email address and phone number of its owner, which the registry requires, and the transfer code from your current registrar, which we send to our registrar and keep with the record of that transfer.

We don’t collect payment details through this website, and please don’t send us passwords or other sensitive information through it. If you become a client, you pay through Stripe (see below).

What we record without being given it

A business’s published contact details. When we prepare a preview for a business or check its current website, we note the phone numbers and email addresses that business publishes on its own website and its Google listing. They’re used for one thing: if somebody later tells us the business is theirs, we can check they’re connected to it. We don’t contact you at them, except to send that code. To claim a business you type the number or address in yourself, and we send a code only if it matches one already published, or you ask us to send it while we’re talking with you. Either way it goes there only because you asked for it. You can ask us to remove them at any time.

When you open the preview we made for you. If we’ve prepared a preview for your business, we record when it’s opened, which of its designs and which page it was opened on, how often, and when your flyer’s short link or code was last used. We don’t count our own staff’s visits when they’re signed in to Zibby. It’s a count on your business’s own record, kept so we know whether the preview reached you and is worth following up — not a profile of you, and nothing that follows you to other websites. These count as contact between us, so opening your preview extends how long we keep your information, in the same way a reply would.

Your domain’s public records. From the time we know a business’s web address, we keep a dated history of its domain’s public DNS settings — where its website and email are pointed — checked about once a day, so that if something breaks during a move it’s possible to see what changed and when. Anyone can look these up; we use them for nothing else.

When you use a website we run for a business

We build and run websites for local businesses. Some of them have a contact form, take appointment requests, sell online, let their customers make an account, or send quotes and invoices through Zibby. When you use one of these, the business is who you’re dealing with, and it decides how to use your details once it has them. We handle them for the business and use them for nothing else. For all of them:

• Who’s told: what you send the business is emailed to the address it gave us for these emails, with your email address as the one to reply to, and the business’s owners see it when they sign in to Zibby. The emails the business and you receive stay in your mailboxes, under your control.
• Previews: if the website is still a preview we’ve made for the business, a message or request sent through it comes to us instead and doesn’t reach the business, and nothing can be bought on it.
• Checking for spam: we check messages and appointment requests for spam or fraud. We look up in the public domain registries when your email’s domain and any web address you wrote were registered. The company that provides the AI model we use for this check (Anthropic, OpenAI or Google) is sent what you wrote, the business’s name and website, and the part of your email address after the @. It never receives your name, your full email address or your phone number.
• Correcting or deleting your details: ask the business, or write to us at info@zibby.ca. You can stop our emails with the link at the bottom of each one.

Messages through a business’s contact form

• What we collect: what you type into the form (your name, your phone number and/or email address, what you’re asking about, your message and the best time to reach you) and which website you sent it from.
• Spam: a message that looks like spam is kept for the business to read but isn’t emailed.
• How long: each message is deleted automatically 90 days after you send it, and sooner if the business’s website is removed from Zibby.

Appointments booked through a business’s website

You can ask for an appointment at one of the business’s free times, and the business confirms or declines it. The appointment is between you and the business.

• What we collect: what you type into the form (your name, your phone number and/or email address, and anything you tell the business), the appointment you chose, which website you sent it from, and a one-way scrambled form of your network address, which can’t be turned back into it, to limit how many requests one network can make.
• Emails to you: if you gave us an email address, we email you when you ask and when the business confirms, declines or cancels, and the day before a confirmed appointment, with the appointment attached as a calendar file and a link to see or cancel it. The page that answers your request shows the same link, so you have it even if an email doesn’t arrive.
• The business’s calendar: if the business’s owners ask us for a private calendar address, your confirmed appointment (your name, the service, the time, your phone number and email address, and anything you told them) appears in the calendar they add it to, such as Google, Apple or Microsoft’s, under that provider’s privacy policy.
• Spam: the spam check is also sent the service you chose. A request that looks like spam isn’t emailed to anyone and its time is let go, but it’s kept like any other, so a real one held by mistake can be found. On a preview, no time is held.
• How long: each request is deleted automatically 90 days after the appointment’s time, and sooner if the business’s website is removed from Zibby.

To cancel, use the link in your email or on the page that answered you, or call the business.

Orders from a business’s shop

When you buy from a shop we run, the business is the seller: your order, your payment and any refund are between you and it. We run the cart and keep the order for it.

• Your cart: what you put in the cart (which products and how many) is kept in your own browser, not by us, until you check out or empty it. Nothing in it identifies you.
• Paying: you pay on Stripe’s own checkout page, on the business’s own Stripe account. Your card number goes to Stripe and never reaches the business’s website or us. Stripe collects your name, email address and phone number, and sends you its receipt for the business. Stripe may process data outside Canada, including in the United States.
• Shipping: if it’s being shipped, you type the address in the cart on the business’s website, because the tax depends on the province it goes to. We use it to work out the tax and pass it to Stripe with your payment. While you’re in the cart it’s kept only in your browser, until you close the tab.
• What we keep: once Stripe tells us you’ve paid, we keep the order: what you bought and the prices, shipping and taxes you paid, the province it was taxed for, your name, email address and phone number, the address it ships to (or that you’re picking it up), Stripe’s reference for the payment, and later whether it was shipped or picked up, any tracking number the business adds, and any refund or dispute. While you’re checking out we also keep which products are set aside for you and for how long, and the address it would ship to; if you don’t pay, both are deleted, usually within a day. We don’t keep your card details or your network address with an order.
• Emails to you: we email you to confirm the order, and when it ships, is ready to pick up, or is refunded, with a private link to your order. Anyone with that link can see that one order, so keep it to yourself.
• When something is back in stock: if a product, or your size or colour of it, is sold out, you can leave your email address to hear when it’s back. We keep your address, which product and size you asked about, which website you asked on, and when. Once it can be bought again we send you one email, under the business’s name, and delete your request. If it never comes back, we delete your request after 180 days. The business doesn’t see your address. On a preview, nothing is kept.
• Saved for later: what you save is a list of products kept in your own browser. If you’re signed in to an account on that website, we keep the list with your account too, so it’s there on any device you sign in on, until you remove things or delete the account. Nothing in it is shown to the business.
• Asking to cancel, return or exchange: from your order’s page you can ask the business to cancel your order, or to take something back or exchange it. We keep what you asked, which items, your reason and anything you wrote, with the order, and email it to the business. We email you a copy, and the business’s answer. Asking doesn’t refund or cancel anything by itself: the business does that.
• Reviews: from your order’s page you can rate what you bought and say a few words. We keep your rating, your words, the first name you give (if any) and which order it came from. The business decides whether it shows; if it does, your rating, your words, your first name and the month you wrote it appear on the product’s page on that website, for anyone to see. Nothing else about you is shown. You can change it from the same page, and the business can delete it. We keep it as long as the order.
• Gift cards: if you buy one, you pay on Stripe’s page as for an order, and you give us the name and email address of the person it’s for, and your name and a message if you like. We keep those with the card, and what’s left on it and where it was spent, for as long as the business uses Zibby, because a gift card never expires. We email the card to that person, under the business’s name, and a copy to you. The business sees who it was for and their email address. We never keep the card’s code itself, only enough to recognize it when it’s typed.
• How long: an order is a business record, so we keep it for as long as the business uses Zibby, and delete it when the business’s website is removed from Zibby. The business’s Stripe account keeps its own record of your payment, under Stripe’s privacy policy and the business’s.

For refunds, or a problem with what you bought, ask on your order’s page or contact the business: its phone number is on its website and in your order email.

Accounts on a business’s website

Some of the websites we run let you make an account, to see your orders and have your details filled in when you buy. Your account is with that business: it’s the business’s record of you as its customer, and an account on one business’s website is unknown to every other.

• What we keep: your email address, and anything you add: your name, phone number and up to five addresses. If you set a password, we keep only a one-way scrambled form of it, which can’t be turned back into your password; we never keep the password itself. We also keep when you made the account and last signed in, the addresses you used before if you change it (so your older orders stay on your account), and, after you buy, the reference Stripe gives you as a customer on the business’s own Stripe account.
• Signing in: we email you a six-digit code, which works for 10 minutes, to make your account or sign in. A strictly necessary cookie on the business’s website keeps you signed in for up to 30 days; it isn’t used for tracking, analytics or advertising, and it ends when you sign out. To stop people guessing passwords, we count wrong passwords for an email address for an hour, kept as a scrambled form of the address.
• Your orders: your account shows the orders paid with its email address, including ones from before you made it. When you buy while signed in, the cart fills in the address it ships to from the addresses you’ve saved, and Stripe’s checkout page is filled in from your account, and Stripe keeps what you type there with your customer record on the business’s account; if you choose to save your card, Stripe keeps it, never the business or us.
• Who sees it: the business’s owners see who has an account on their website (your name, email, phone, address, and when you joined and last signed in) when they sign in to Zibby, and can download that list or remove your account. Our staff see only how many accounts a website has.
• How long: until you delete your account, the business removes it, or the business’s website is removed from Zibby, and in any case three years after you last signed in. Deleting it removes your details and signs you out everywhere; your orders stay with the business, as its records.

You can change your details or delete your account yourself, signed in on the business’s website.

Quotes and invoices a business sends through Zibby

If a business is sending you a quote or an invoice through Zibby, it decides what goes on the document and what it does with your details. Payment details never come to us: you pay the business directly, by the method on its invoice.

• What we keep: what the business enters about you as its client (your name, company, email address, phone number and address, a second email address and a second phone number if it adds them, such as a partner’s or a colleague’s, the address where its work for you usually is if that isn’t your billing address, the address of each job, the payment terms it gives you, and any notes it writes), and its quotes and invoices to you: what they’re for, your own reference for the job (such as a purchase order number), the date of the work, the amounts, any deposit it asks for, and the dates they were sent, opened, accepted or declined. When you pay, the business records it: the date, the amount, how you paid and its reference (such as a cheque number or e-Transfer reference). Your copy of the document shows what’s been received and what’s left, but not how you paid. If you first wrote to the business through its website’s contact form, it can start your record from that message. If the business fills in a quote with Quick quote, your name, company and address are read by an AI model to recognise you (see “Where your information is stored”).
• Your link: each quote or invoice has a private link, which we email to you from Zibby’s address under the business’s name, with the business’s email address as the one to reply to. If the business has a second address for you, that address gets its own copy of the same email and link. If an invoice is overdue, the business can have us send you a reminder of it the same way. Anyone with the link can read that one document; the business can replace the link if it went to the wrong person. The first time the link is opened we note the date, so the business knows you’ve seen it. Accepting a quote records the name you type and when you did it; if you said yes to the business by phone or in person instead, it records that it was told, by whom and how.
• Who sees it: the business’s owners, when they sign in to Zibby. The business can download its quotes and invoices, for example for its bookkeeper.
• How long: invoices are business records the business may have to keep for years, so we keep these records for as long as the business uses Zibby, and don’t delete its website’s records until its invoices have been downloaded. A client with no quote or invoice sent, and no payment recorded, can be deleted by the business at any time.

Why we use it

• To review your website and build a preview of a new one.
• To tell you when your preview is ready, if you asked us to, or asked us for one through our contact form.
• To tell you what happens next after you buy, to set up your account as your business’s owner, and to tell you when your website goes live and its billing starts.
• To make your account and your first design when you sign up in the chat, and to tell you once when it’s ready.
• To reply to your message, answer you in the chat, and talk with you about your website.
• To make the changes to your website you ask for, and to suggest ones you might want.
• To run the contact forms, appointments, shops, customer accounts, and quotes and invoices on the websites we run, for each business.
• To check messages and requests for spam and fraud.
• To check that somebody telling us a business is theirs really is connected to it, before we let them change or delete anything.
• To trace a problem during a domain move to what actually changed.

We don’t sell, rent or trade your information, and we don’t add you to marketing lists. If we’d ever like to use your information for something else, we’ll ask you first.

Emails and text messages

Sign-in codes are not marketing, and you can’t unsubscribe from them. A code is only ever sent because you just asked to sign in, to an address or number already on your account — so turning off marketing messages never locks you out of your own account. Everything below is about the messages you can turn off.

When you give us your email address or mobile number, you agree to receive messages from Zibby (Sandcherry Systems Inc.) about your website preview and your enquiry. Every message will say who it’s from and how to reach us. You can withdraw your consent at any time by replying “STOP” to a text, using the unsubscribe option in an email, or writing to info@zibby.ca. Message and data rates may apply to texts.

If you text or call our business number, we’ll have your mobile number. A text and anything attached to it is saved to our dashboard so we can act on it — attached to your business if we recognise the number, and otherwise kept on its own until we work out who sent it. We don’t reply automatically, and we don’t use a number you text us from to start marketing to you. Calls to our number are forwarded to our own phone; we don’t record them.

Cookies and tracking

zibby.ca doesn’t use cookies, analytics, advertising pixels or other tracking tools. Our fonts and code are served from our own site, not from third parties. We have no figures for how many people visit zibby.ca, and nothing we run reports your visit to anyone else. The one thing we count is described above: opens of the preview page we prepared for your business. Preview pages we build for you (on preview.zibby.ca) don’t use cookies either.

Our sign-in area at app.zibby.ca uses only strictly necessary cookies, and the sign-in pages are ours, not a third party’s. One keeps you signed in, and expires when you sign out, after 12 hours without use, or 30 days after you signed in, whichever comes first. If you sign in to more than one account in the same browser, a second keeps the others signed in so you can switch between them. While you sign in with Google, another lasts ten minutes so the sign-in can’t be completed from another website; if you were already signed in, one more, with the same limit, carries your other sign-ins through it. None of them is used for tracking, analytics or advertising, or to follow you anywhere. The chat also remembers, in your browser and nowhere else, whether you left its menu open or small, and whether you’ve opened it before.

The Zibby iPhone app uses a secure device credential instead of the website’s sign-in cookie. It is used only to keep your app signed in and can be ended on that phone or revoked across your phones. It is not used to track your visits to other websites.

A website we run for a business counts its visits for that business, without cookies: each page tells the website’s own address that it was looked at, and nothing is sent at all if your browser asks not to be tracked (Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track). To count you once a day rather than on every page, we keep a one-way code made from your network address and browser with that day’s key, for two days; it can’t be turned back into your address and can’t recognise you on another day or another website. The business sees only the totals: how many people and pages each day, kept for 13 months. A website that lets its customers make an account also uses one strictly necessary cookie, only to keep a customer signed in (see Accounts on a business’s website).

Like any website, our hosting provider processes technical information such as your IP address and browser type to deliver pages and protect the site from abuse. We don’t store IP addresses with your requests or use this information to identify you.

Where your information is stored

We use trusted service providers who process information on our behalf and are required to protect it:

• Amazon Web Services hosts zibby.ca, app.zibby.ca and the websites we run for businesses, and stores what we keep — requests, messages, appointment requests, orders, quotes, invoices and client records — in its Canada (Montréal) region. It sends the emails described in this policy, including those to a business about its messages, appointments and orders, those to you about an appointment or an order, and a business’s quotes and invoices to its clients. It also sends us alerts about requests and replies, by email and by text to our own phone, with the business name or website address and a link to our dashboard.
• Twilio carries our business phone number. Calls and texts to that number pass through Twilio — including sign-in codes we text you — and it keeps its own records of them under its privacy policy, and may process data outside Canada, including in the United States. Photos you text us are copied to our own storage in Canada.
• Stripe processes payments from clients (card or pre-authorized debit) and keeps billing records. When you buy, we send Stripe your name, your business’s name and the email address and phone number you gave us, so it can bill you and send your receipts; your business’s name is printed on its invoices. A free website sends Stripe nothing, until you buy something for it. Stripe’s checkout asks for your billing address, because its province decides the tax on every invoice; while we set up your website our staff read your name and billing address back from Stripe to confirm them with you, and check its province against your business’s address, and we don’t keep a copy. Card and bank details go directly to Stripe; they never reach us, and we don’t store them. From your account at app.zibby.ca you can change them, your billing name and address, and see your invoices, on Stripe’s own page. If you cancel there, we keep the date and any reason you give, and send the reason to Stripe with the cancellation, as a record of the change to your plan. For a business that sells through a shop we run, Stripe runs the business’s own account: we send it the business’s name and the email address of whoever sets it up, Stripe asks the business for the rest itself, and its shoppers pay on Stripe’s page (see Orders from a business’s shop). Stripe may process data outside Canada, including in the United States.
• Tucows (OpenSRS), in Toronto, registers and renews client domains. To register a domain we have to send them the registrant’s name, business name, postal address, email address and phone number, because the registry requires it. For a .ca, CIRA hides an individual’s details but publishes a business’s. CIRA may also contact a registrant directly to confirm they meet its Canadian presence requirements.
• Anthropic, OpenAI and Google provide the AI models behind our website editor, the chat and the checks below. We choose which model each part uses, and only that model’s provider is sent what that part reads. All three may process data outside Canada, including in the United States.
  • Changing your website. When the editor makes a change, the request, the answers to its questions, any photos attached to it and the text of your website are sent to the provider of the model doing it, so it can work out the change. When Zibby Vision suggests a change, the text of your website is sent the same way. When you ask the editor to change a picture or make a new one, OpenAI or Google is also sent a description of the picture and, to change one, the picture itself: one from your website or one you attached, with its location and camera details already removed. Simpler changes to a picture (cropping, brightening, taking out a plain background, or cutting a subject out of a busy one) are made on our own servers, and the picture isn’t sent anywhere for them.
  • Your agreement. The Zibby iPhone app asks for your agreement to this before your first AI change or suggestion. When you agree in the editor on your website’s page, we keep when you agreed, and to which wording, with your account; the app’s own change-request screen remembers your agreement on that iPhone. If you don’t agree, nothing is sent, and you can still change your website’s words and photos yourself.
  • Suggesting changes. Each time a design of your website, or a change to it, is published, the text of that design and short summaries of its recent changes are sent, so we can work out which changes you’re most likely to want to make and offer them as choices.
  • The chat. When you write to Zibby in the chat, the provider of the model we use for it is sent your conversation, your name, and what we know of where each of your websites stands (their names and addresses, what stage each is at, what’s waiting on you and the plan you’re on), so it can answer; never your email address or phone number.
  • Knowing what a website is. When a business’s website is added to our list, the text of its home page is sent, so we can note the business’s name and what kind of website it is. So is what kind of business you said it is in our contact form, and what you told Zibby your business does when you signed up in the chat.
  • Designing a business’s new website. To check how its current website is doing, the text of its home page and pictures of how it looks on a phone and a computer go to the provider of the model we choose, or to a coding assistant on our own computer, so it can tell us what a new design should do better. To write the design, a coding assistant (Claude Code, Codex or Antigravity) reads the business’s public website and any notes we made of what the business told us. Or our own design tool writes it: the provider of each model we choose for it is sent the text of the business’s public website (or of one of its designs with us), photos from that website or design and any the owner added for it, the public details of its Google listing, what the business wrote in its contact-form message or told Zibby in the chat when it signed up, and what kind of business it said it is (never its email address or phone number), pictures of the new design as it’s built, and the owner’s comments on it while it’s built. When the design needs a new picture, OpenAI or Google is sent a written description to draw it from, never the business’s own photos. Separately, we may give OpenAI’s ChatGPT photos from the business’s public website, to make better versions of them, or describe the business so it can draw new ones.
  • Checking for fraud and spam. For a message through our contact form, your business name, what kind of business you said it is, your website address and message, and the part of your email address after the @. When you sign up in the chat, your business’s name, what you said it does, where it is, its website address and the part of your email address after the @. For a message or appointment request on a website we run, what’s described under When you use a website we run for a business. None of these checks receives your name, your full email address or your phone number.
  • Quick quote is the one exception, for a business’s own clients: when a business fills in a quote or an invoice with it, the provider of the model we use is sent what the business’s owner said or typed about the job, the business’s price list, and its clients’ names, companies and addresses, so it can recognise who the work is for. It never receives a client’s email address or phone number.
• Google Workspace handles our email, so alerts and messages you send us are stored in our Google mailbox. Google may store data outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be subject to that country’s laws.

How long we keep it

• Website requests and the contact details you send us: up to 12 months after our last contact with you — which includes the last time you opened your preview — unless you become a client. A website you start by signing up in the chat is a website request like any other.
• Messages through our contact form: 12 months after you send them. Once one is filed with a business’s website, your contact details are kept with it, as above.
• Texts, and photos attached to them: deleted with the rest of your information, and in any case within 12 months.
• Emails: only as long as we need them for your enquiry.
• If you become a client: the information we need to provide our services and meet our legal and accounting obligations. The history of your website — its changes, requests and designs — is kept with it and deleted with it.
• Photos you add to your website: the copies we keep for making a change, including the ones not used, are deleted with your website’s information, and in any case within a year. A product’s photos are deleted with the product.
• A new design being built: its step-by-step copy is deleted after 7 days, and your comments on it after 30.
• Chat conversations: 180 days after their last message.
• Sign-in: a code works for ten minutes, and the link after you buy for 14 days or until it’s used. An iPhone app session expires within 30 days of its last renewal.
• Your Zibby account: until you delete it (see below).
• Your domain’s DNS history: deleted with the rest of your information.
• For a business’s own customers: each part of When you use a website we run for a business says how long.

If you ask us to delete a preview or your details, we take the preview down right away, delete the rest within 30 days, and keep only your website address on a do-not-contact list, so we don’t prepare another preview for it. If you have verified that the business is yours and you sign in to ask, we delete the rest at the same time rather than within 30 days — the 30 days are there so we can undo a removal that wasn’t made by the owner.

Deleting your account

If you have a Zibby account because you own a business with us, you can delete it yourself in the Zibby iPhone app (Account, then Delete my Zibby account) or at the bottom of Your account on the web. It happens straight away, not after a waiting period. You can also ask us at info@zibby.ca, and we’ll do it within 30 days.

• Deleted at once: your account, with your name, email address and mobile number; every app session, so each phone you were signed in on is signed out; the link to your Apple Account, and we ask Apple to revoke the sign-in token it gave us (if Apple can’t be reached, we keep the token encrypted and try again each week until Apple has it); the record of changes to your account; and the note of your account on messages you sent through our contact form while signed in. You can’t sign in to that account again; to come back, ask us for a new one.
• Your business’s website isn’t deleted. A website you own belongs to your business, not to your account, so deleting your account doesn’t take it down, delete it or stop its billing. A website you started in the chat and haven’t bought isn’t deleted with your account either: it stays a website request, kept as described under How long we keep it, and you can ask us to delete it. What you did to it stays in its change history and requests, shown as “Former owner” instead of your name. Your name stays only on quotes and invoices you sent, which are the business’s records of money, and is deleted with the website. To have the website removed or its service stopped, tell us. Billing records Stripe keeps for the business stay with Stripe, and we keep what accounting and tax law require.
• What we’re told: Zibby is emailed that you deleted your account, with your name and email address and which websites you owned, so someone can get in touch with each business about who looks after its website now. That email stays in our mailbox like any other.
• What takes longer: our server logs, which can include your account’s identifier, are deleted after 90 days, and our database backups are replaced within 35 days.

How we protect it

Information is sent over encrypted connections (HTTPS) and stored with access limited to the people who need it to respond to you: everyone who works for Zibby signs in as themselves, each action is recorded against them, and someone who looks after your business can only see the businesses they look after. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access.

Your choices and rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what information we have about you,
• correct it if it’s wrong,
• delete it, or stop contacting you.

If you have a Zibby account, you can also delete it yourself in the Zibby iPhone app (see “Deleting your account” above).

Email info@zibby.ca and we’ll respond within 30 days. If you’re not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Who’s responsible

Sandcherry Systems Inc. is responsible for the information collected through zibby.ca, app.zibby.ca and the Zibby iPhone app, and for how we handle what’s sent through the websites we run for businesses. Each business is responsible for what it does with your details once it has them. Questions about privacy can go to our privacy contact:

Privacy contact, Sandcherry Systems Inc.
103-2201 Brant St., Burlington, Ontario L7P 3N8
info@zibby.ca

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top.