Privacy Notice
Last updated 2 October 2026.
MyCottageWatch is subject to British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act. This notice says what we collect, why, and what you can ask us to do about it.
What we collect from this website
- What you type into our forms: name, email, phone, the community your property is in, and your message
- A one-way hash of your IP address, used only to stop the forms being abused
- Your browser's user agent string, for the same purpose
We set no cookies until you send us a form. When you do, your browser holds one cookie so the next page can greet you by name. It is deleted when you close your browser. Nothing else is stored on your computer.
We count how many people visit this site and which pages they read. The counting is done by Matomo, a statistics program that runs on our own server. Nothing is sent to Google or to any advertising company, and you are not followed to other websites.
What we collect as a client
- Your contact and billing details
- The property address, and how to get into it
- Photographs and written records of every attendance
- Sensor readings, if you have condition telemetry fitted
How access details are protected
Key locations, lockbox and gate codes, and alarm information are encrypted before they are stored, using a key held separately from the database. A copy of the database on its own does not disclose them. Every occasion on which one of these is read is logged. Key tags carry a code and never your address.
Confidentiality
Keys, alarm codes, lockbox and gate combinations, and everything we see or record at a property are held in strict confidence. All keys are kept inside a lockbox, in a locked safe, in a locked office, inside a locked, secure building, and access codes are never kept with the address they open. Reports and photographs go only to the owner and to anyone the owner names in writing. We do not tell anyone when a property is empty, what it contains, or how it is secured, unless the owner directs it or the law requires it. When a service ends, every key is returned and access codes are deleted from our records.
Who we share it with
Nobody, with three exceptions. A contractor you have asked us to admit is told the address and time. Your insurer or broker receives records you ask us to send. We comply with a lawful order if we receive one. We do not sell information and we do not share it for marketing.
How long we keep it
Visit records and photographs are kept for at least seven years, including after service ends, because a claim can be made long after the event and the record is what supports it. Enquiries that do not become clients are deleted after two years.
Your rights
Our privacy contact is Robert Kidd.
You may ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it where we are not required to keep it. Write to hello@mycottagewatch.com or call 1-800-483-4151.
If we do not resolve it, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.