Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Welcome to Plakyourpoem.com ("we," "us," or "our"). This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your personal information in compliance with applicable Canadian privacy legislation, including the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) . This policy describes our current practices for our website and services (collectively, the "Services"). It does not make non-essential analytics a condition of creating or purchasing a plaque.

2. Personal Information We Collect

We collect personal information that you provide directly to us or through your use of our Services. This may include:

• Contact Information: Name, email address, mailing address, and phone number.
• Order Details: Product selections, customization details (e.g., poetry text), shipping address, and transaction history.
• Payment Information: While we use Stripe for payment processing and do not store full credit card details ourselves, partial payment information (e.g., last four digits, card type) may be retained for reference and fraud prevention.
• Account Credentials: Username, password, and any profile information if you create an account.
• Post-purchase feedback: Your rating, optional written feedback and display name, an optional photo of the finished plaque, and your separate public-display choices.
• Device and Usage Information: IP address, browser type, operating system, referring pages, pages viewed, approximate location derived from technical data, analytics identifiers, and usage data collected through cookies or similar tracking technologies.

We only collect personal information necessary for the purposes outlined in this policy.

3. How We Use Your Information

Your information is used for the following purposes:

• Order Processing & Fulfillment: To process transactions, customize orders, and arrange shipping through our fulfillment partner, Gooten.
• Customer Support: To respond to your inquiries, provide technical support, and resolve issues.
• Account Management: To create and maintain your account, enabling you to manage orders and preferences.
• Communication: To send updates, newsletters, or marketing communications (if you opt in) and to inform you of any changes to our Terms or policies.
• Analytics & Improvements: To analyze usage trends, measure the effectiveness of our Services, understand checkout and purchase performance, and improve our website and offerings.
• Customer Feedback: To review feedback and optional plaque photos, improve our products, and display only the review content for which you gave the corresponding permission.
• Legal Compliance: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, and legal processes, or to protect our rights and the rights of our users.

4. Disclosure of Your Information

We may share your personal information with third parties under the following circumstances:

• Service Providers: We engage trusted third parties (e.g., Gooten for production, Stripe for payment processing, and Google Analytics for site measurement, and the artificial intelligence providers named in Section 7) to perform services on our behalf. These service providers have access to your personal information only as necessary to perform tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for other purposes.
• Legal Requirements: We may disclose your personal information if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g., a court or government agency).
• Business Transactions: In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets, your personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to confidentiality agreements and applicable law.
• With Your Consent: We may share your personal information for other purposes with your explicit consent.

5. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, to comply with legal obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements. When we no longer need your personal information, we will securely dispose of it in accordance with our data retention policies.

If you delete your account, we remove account profile data, saved designs, recovery or reminder consents, feedback tied to your account or account email, and partner account records tied to your account email where applicable. Paid-order records are retained for accounting, payment reconciliation, fulfillment support, fraud prevention, and legal obligations, but direct account, contact, shipping, design, and image fields are removed or nulled. Gallery heart records use salted visitor hashes rather than account IDs and are not deleted per account; rows tied to a deleted design are removed through the design relationship. Account-linked post-purchase feedback and any attached private plaque photos are also removed during account deletion; paid-order records continue to follow the retention rules above.

6. Cookies & Similar Technologies

We use browser storage and similar technologies for purposes such as sign-in, saved work, checkout continuity, security, and site measurement. Necessary commerce and security functions are separate from non-essential analytics. You can limit cookies and similar technologies through your browser settings, although blocking necessary storage may affect account or saved-work features.

Google Analytics is optional and is off for every visitor until that visitor selects “Accept optional analytics.” Before a grant, our main application does not load the Google Analytics tag, persist Google Analytics identifiers or campaign attribution, forward analytics context through checkout, or send a server-side purchase event to Google Analytics. Our standalone gift and occasion guide pages also remain uninstrumented.

After a grant, Google Analytics may collect or receive information such as page views, events, browser and device information, referring pages, approximate location, and analytics identifiers. We may also send a limited server-side purchase event after successful Stripe checkout, but only when checkout carries a current, server-verifiable grant. That event may include transaction identifiers, order/product details, purchase value, currency, and non-sensitive attribution context. We do not send full payment card details, account passwords, raw payment credentials, customer email, or shipping-address details to Google Analytics.

Analytics is not required to create or purchase a plaque, complete checkout, receive order confirmation, or use necessary sign-in, saved-work, security, payment, and fulfillment storage. Accept and decline are available as equal choices. You may also continue without choosing, in which case optional analytics stays off. We store an accept or decline choice for up to 180 days so it works across visits.

You can revisit or withdraw your choice at any time with Analytics choices in the site footer. Withdrawal stops future browser and server-side analytics under that choice and removes PlakYourPoem's stored campaign attribution and accessible Google Analytics cookies from the browser. Any checkout you started before withdrawing may still have its purchase counted when payment completes, because the checkout record is created when checkout begins. It does not retroactively delete information Google received while consent was active. You may also use browser privacy controls or contact us at info@plakyourpoem.com with an analytics-consent or withdrawal request.

7. AI Processing of Your Content

Some parts of our Services send content you provide to third-party artificial intelligence providers. This section describes what is sent, to whom, and separates the safety checks that run automatically from the features you choose to use.

Automatic safety checks. These are part of the Services and are not optional, because they protect the printed product and other customers. When you save a design, and when you download a plaque image, your poem text is sent to OpenAI for content moderation. Review text you submit is checked the same way. When you upload an image for a plaque design, that image is sent to Google Cloud Vision to screen it for unsafe content and to detect text or watermarks in the image. These checks run whether or not you use any of the optional features below.

Review photos. A photo of your finished plaque that you optionally attach to post-purchase feedback is not sent to an AI provider in the current review flow. We resize it, remove embedded photo metadata, store it in private storage, and make it available to authorized staff for moderation through a short-lived link. Permission to display rating or written feedback does not grant permission to display the photo; the review form asks for that permission separately.

Optional AI features. These send content only when you choose to use them:

• Poem coaching and writing suggestions: your poem, your instructions, and any context you provide are sent to Anthropic.
• Image-based poem inspiration: the image you select is sent to Anthropic so it can suggest poem ideas.
• Tag suggestions: the poem or saved design you ask us to tag is sent to Anthropic.
• AI background generation: your poem is sent to Anthropic to compose an image description, and that description is then sent to OpenAI to generate the image.
• AI background generation from a description: the background description you type is sent to Google Gemini to generate the image. If you purchase a design that uses an AI-generated background, that background image is sent to Google Gemini again after payment to raise its resolution for printing.

We do not send your contact details, shipping address, payment information, or account credentials to any of these providers. Each provider handles what it receives under its own terms and privacy policy, linked above. AI output is only a suggestion: you decide what your plaque says, and you can create and purchase a plaque without using any optional AI feature.

8. Third-Party Services & Links

Our website may contain links to external websites or use services provided by third parties. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these external sites or services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party site you visit or service you use.

9. Children's Privacy

Our Services are not directed to individuals under the age of majority in their respective jurisdictions. We do not knowingly collect personal information from minors without verifiable parental consent. If you believe we have collected personal information from a minor without proper consent, please contact us at info@plakyourpoem.com, and we will take steps to remove such information.

10. Data Security

We implement reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. However, no data transmission over the internet or electronic storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security of your information, but we adhere to industry best practices and continuously review and enhance our security measures.

11. Your Rights & Choices

Depending on your province or territory, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, including:

• Access & Correction: You have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you and to correct any inaccuracies.
• Withdrawal of Consent: Where we rely on your consent to process your information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
• Deletion & Erasure: You may request the deletion of your personal information, subject to certain legal or contractual obligations.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at info@plakyourpoem.com. Authenticated account holders may also request a machine-readable account data export or submit an account deletion request through our authenticated privacy request endpoints. We require a signed-in session and a confirmation step before account deletion. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable privacy legislation.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable laws. When we do, we will post the revised policy on this page and update the "Last Updated" date above. We encourage you to review this policy periodically to stay informed of how we protect your personal information.

13. Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or wish to make a complaint about our privacy practices, please reach out to us at:

Email:info@plakyourpoem.com
Website: Plakyourpoem.com

We will strive to address your concerns in a timely and satisfactory manner. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/ or the privacy commissioner in your province or territory.