Legal
Privacy Policy
This policy explains what BlinKode collects when you use the product, what happens to the drawings and projects you create, and what we will and won’t do with any of it. We keep it plain, because a policy you can’t read isn’t a policy you can rely on.
- Who we are
- What we collect
- What we don’t collect
- What happens to your drawings and project content
- How we use AI, and what that means for your judgment
- How we use your information
- Cookies
- Who processes your information
- Where your information is processed
- How long we keep it
- Security
- Your rights
- Email and your consent (CASL)
- Changes to this policy
- Contact
1. Who we are
BlinKode is operated by BlinKode Technologies Inc., a corporation incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act and registered in Ontario. Our registered office is 818–273 South Park Road, Thornhill, Ontario L3T 0B5, Canada.
For any privacy question, or to exercise any of the rights below, email contact@blinkode.ca.
2. What we collect
We collect what the product needs to work, and not more.
- Your account: your email address, and a password we never see in readable form. If you sign in with Google instead, we receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google.
- A trial request: if you ask for a trial before you have an account, your name, email address, firm and role, so we can decide on the request and email you the link to start.
- Your projects: the cards on your canvas, how you’ve connected and arranged them, your notes and sticky notes, your region labels, and your project brief.
- Drawings you add to a canvas: images and PDF pages you place on a project canvas, stored as part of that project. See section 4: this one deserves its own explanation.
- Assistant conversations: the questions you ask the Code Assistant or the Project Assistant and the answers they give, saved so they are there when you come back.
- Searches you run inside the product.
- Standard technical information our hosting and database providers log to operate and secure the service, such as IP address and request timestamps.
3. What we don’t collect
We do not run website analytics, advertising cookies, tracking pixels, session recording, or third-party marketing scripts. We don’t build advertising profiles, and we don’t sell your information, to anyone, for any purpose.
We also don’t use your information to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects for you.
4. What happens to your drawings and project content
- 1Choosing a file uploads nothing. PDFs are rendered and images are read inside your browser. The file itself never leaves your device at this step.
- 2Saving a project stores it. Once you save a canvas as a project, we store that project, including the drawings on it, so it’s there when you return. It stays private to your account.
- 3Neither assistant is given your drawings. When you ask Project Assistant something, it receives the code references on your canvas, your region labels, the conversation and your project brief. Code Assistant receives your question and the article it is pinned to. Not your images.
We keep that boundary deliberately. Project Assistant is useful because it can see which parts of the code you’re working with. It doesn’t need to see your drawing to do that, so it isn’t given it. If that ever changes, we will say so on this page before it does, and we will make it something you choose rather than something that happens.
Codiag, coming soon, is the exception, and we are telling you before it reaches you. Codiag will review a drawing against the code by reading the drawing itself, so when it runs it will send drawing content, along with the question you put to it, to the same third-party model providers that already run the two assistants. No customer is using it today: it is reached from a plugin inside your design software that has not been released, and no account has been given access to it. When that changes we will say so here first, and it will be something you choose to run on a drawing rather than something that happens to every drawing you open.
We do not use your projects, drawings, notes or conversations to train AI models, and we do not share them with anyone else for that purpose. If we ever offer a way to contribute anonymized data toward improving them, it will be exactly that: off by default, opt-in, and reversible from your account settings.
5. How we use AI, and what that means for your judgment
BlinKode uses AI to structure building code into cited, navigable guidance, and to help you work through it. That guidance is informational. It is there to support your professional judgment, and approval stays with the building official.
We describe the known limits of that guidance plainly in our Terms of Service: code coverage, local amendments, the interpretation of ambiguous provisions, because you should know where the edges are before you rely on it.
6. How we use your information
- To provide the product: sign you in, save and reload your projects, run searches, and answer your questions.
- To respond when you contact us, and to handle demo requests.
- To keep the service secure, diagnose faults, and prevent abuse.
- To send you product email you’ve consented to receive.
- To improve the product, using aggregate patterns of how features are used, not the content of your projects.
7. Cookies
We set only the cookies the product needs to function:
- An authentication cookie that keeps you signed in between visits.
- A small interface preference cookie that remembers things like whether you left a panel open.
- A short-lived access cookie that records which parts of the product your account may open, so a page can be drawn correctly without asking our server on every click. It lasts a minute, it is signed so it cannot be edited, and it holds no personal information: only the list of what you have access to.
No advertising cookies, no analytics cookies, no cross-site tracking. If we ever add analytics, we will update this page and, where consent is required, ask for it first.
8. Who processes your information
We rely on a small set of providers to run the service: hosting, database and authentication, the AI models behind Code Assistant and Project Assistant, and email delivery. They process information only on our behalf, under their own security and confidentiality commitments, and only to the extent needed to run the service.
We don’t share your information with anyone else, and we never sell it.
9. Where your information is processed
Some of our providers store or process information outside Canada, including in the United States, where privacy laws differ from Canadian law and where information may be accessible to foreign authorities under their local law. Wherever it goes, we work with providers who commit to protecting it, and we share only what is needed to run the service.
10. How long we keep it
We keep your account and projects for as long as your account is open. If you delete a project, we remove it from our active systems; residual copies may persist briefly in encrypted backups before they expire on their normal cycle.
A trial request is kept with the decision we made on it. It is deleted when you close your account, or sooner if you ask us.
If you close your account, your access ends immediately and cannot be restored, not by you, and not by us. Your projects, notes and drawings stop being reachable at that moment, and signing up again later with the same email address starts a new, empty account with no route back to any of it.
We keep a closed record of the account. It holds your account details, your billing and usage history, and the content you created. We keep it to meet our legal and accounting obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce limits such as one free trial per person. It is never used to restore access, it is not visible to you or to anyone else using BlinKode, and it is never used to train AI models.
You can ask us to erase that record too. Email contact@blinkode.ca and we will delete it, except for anything we are legally required to keep, such as financial records, which Canadian tax law requires us to hold for six years.
One thing outlives even that erasure: a one-way scrambled form of your email address, with the date, recording that a free trial was taken. It cannot be reversed into your address and carries nothing else. It exists so that “one free trial per person” means what it says.
11. Security
Your projects are private to your account, access is restricted, and traffic is encrypted in transit. No system is perfectly secure, and we won’t claim otherwise, but we take reasonable steps to protect what you entrust to us, and we will tell you promptly if a breach affects your information.
We don’t read your projects. Nobody at BlinKode opens your documents, drawings or outputs except when you ask us to as part of a support request.
12. Your rights
Under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA), you can ask to access the personal information we hold about you, have it corrected, have it deleted, or ask us to explain how it is being used. You can close your account yourself from account settings, at any time and without asking. That ends your access immediately and permanently. To have the closed record erased as well, or for anything else, email contact@blinkode.ca and we’ll take care of it.
If you have a concern we can’t resolve together, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
13. Email and your consent (CASL)
When you create an account or give us your email address, you consent to receive email from BlinKode related to the service. Every commercial message includes an unsubscribe link and our mailing address, and you can opt out at any time, instantly and without giving a reason. We honour unsubscribe requests promptly. Essential service messages, password resets and security notices, are sent regardless, because they are part of operating your account.
14. Changes to this policy
As BlinKode grows, this policy will change. We’ll update the date at the top, and for changes that materially affect how your information is handled, we’ll tell you before they take effect.
15. Contact
Questions about privacy? Email contact@blinkode.ca, or write to BlinKode Technologies Inc., 818–273 South Park Road, Thornhill, Ontario L3T 0B5, Canada.