Privacy Policy

ShobShob Technologies Inc. (“ShobShob”, “we”, “us”) operates the ShobShob marketplace and is the organization responsible for the personal information described here. Our practices are designed to support our responsibilities under Canada’s PIPEDA and Alberta’s PIPA. We obtain consent where required and limit collection to information needed to run the marketplace.

What we collect

• Account: email and phone (phone is for order contact, not login).
• Sellers: business details, whether they prepare food in a home kitchen or in a commercial or shared kitchen (customers see only which of the two), kitchen photos, and an exact kitchen address. We send the address to the address-lookup service listed under "Service providers" to check the location, and use it privately to calculate distance and delivery eligibility, including when a customer asks at checkout whether a seller delivers to their address. We show it to a customer only after that customer's pickup order is confirmed and paid. Only an approximate area is shown publicly.
• Sellers: a regulatory-responsibility attestation, and the City of Calgary business licence number, which a kitchen must give before customers can order from it (it is not needed to apply). We record the number as the seller gives it, do not check it with the City, and do not show it to customers. A kitchen that wants to list or quote for higher-risk food, such as savoury meals, must first give, and a commercial or shared kitchen must give before customers can order from it, its Alberta Health Services food handling permit number and a copy of the permit, and confirm that the food is prepared in the establishment the permit covers; we record them as given and do not show them to customers. Our team records the permit holder or operator, the premises, the permit's term and any product scope shown on it. Other licence or permit numbers, documents, issuing-authority details, expiry dates, and related correspondence are collected only when a seller submits them voluntarily or ShobShob requests proof for a compliance review. The same applies to a food-safety training certificate and to proof of insurance, such as a liability policy: the document, its expiry date, and any details the seller adds, such as the insurer's name and policy number. A seller does not have to upload either one to apply or to have the application accepted. We do not show them to customers or publicly, and uploading them earns no badge and is not a statement by ShobShob about the seller's training or insurance.
• Sellers who apply with a partner organization's code: which organization referred them and when, to apply that organization's offer. We tell that organization only how many kitchens joined with its code and their combined results; when fewer than three kitchens joined, only how many.
• Sellers who are registered for GST: the GST number they give with their application. It is printed, with the seller's business name, on the receipts of that seller's orders, as a GST receipt requires. Before approving an application, ShobShob may look the number up in the Canada Revenue Agency's public GST/HST Registry; that lookup shows only what the registry shows at the time and is not an audit of the seller's tax affairs or an authentication of the seller.
• Sellers: tax identity information — legal name, entity type, date of birth (for individuals), Social Insurance Number, Business Number or CRA trust account number depending on the entity type, province of tax residence (currently Alberta only), and primary residence or registered-office address. We ask for all of this when a seller sets up payouts, before a Stripe payout account is created, so that ShobShob can meet tax information-reporting rules that may apply to sales made through the marketplace. On the same page the seller ticks a box acknowledging how this information is used and protected, and we record the date and time of that acknowledgment. To start payout setup, we send the seller's legal name, entity type, email address, and a ShobShob account reference to Stripe; Stripe may also ask the seller for identity information directly. We also use the residence or registered-office address to keep it out of text the seller publishes. ShobShob does not show this information on the marketplace, and within ShobShob access is restricted to the seller and authorized ShobShob personnel. While the seller account is open, we keep it on the seller profile. If the account is deleted and no orders or order requests are associated with the account (as a buyer or as a seller), the information is deleted at that time. Otherwise it is kept with restricted access until six years after the end of the calendar year of the account's most recent order or order request, or longer under a legal or evidence hold, and then deleted. Information already sent to Stripe is kept by Stripe under its own terms.
• On an unfinished seller application, selected non-sensitive draft details may be stored only in your browser on that device for up to seven days. The draft excludes your exact address, tax/legal identity, GST number, licence or permit numbers, and credential uploads; you can discard it from the onboarding page.
• Orders, reviews, and support messages. Notes you add to an order at checkout are visible to the seller as soon as you send the order request (for an Available now order, as soon as your card hold passes the postal-code check), before payment, and remain visible to the seller even if the order is declined or never paid.
• Payments. You pay the seller through Stripe, on the seller's own Stripe account, because the seller is the merchant of record. Your full card number and security code go directly to Stripe and never reach our servers. On their Stripe account the seller can see the card brand, the last four digits, the expiry date, the card's country, a card fingerprint that can recognise the same card on a later payment, the billing country and postal code you enter with your card, Stripe's fraud assessment of the payment (which uses your IP address and its approximate location, and information about your device and browser), our order and payment references, and the amount and status of the payment. This includes a card hold that is later released, a payment attempt that fails or that you leave unfinished after entering your card, and a payment form you open but never submit (then without card details). The seller can see our references and the amount from when the payment form opens (for an Available-now order, right after you send the order, before they have accepted it; for scheduled and custom orders, when you choose to pay after the seller accepts), and the card details and Stripe's fraud assessment from when you submit your card. Stripe and the seller keep this information under their own legal obligations, and deleting your ShobShob account does not remove it from Stripe or from the seller's Stripe account. Our Seller Agreement allows sellers to use customer information only to fulfil the order. We keep the payment notifications Stripe sends us, which include the card and billing details above but never the full card number or security code, with our financial records for six years after the end of the year in which Stripe sent them. We also record whether the billing postal code you entered matched your card (Stripe's check result, not the postal code itself), to decide whether to take or release the payment, and keep it with the payment record for the same six years.
• Waitlist. If you join our waitlist: your email address, whether you want to order or to sell, the neighbourhood you give us (optional if you want to order), and whether you asked for launch emails. If you ask for them, we first email you a link to confirm the address, unless it is already confirmed, was sent one in the last day, or has unsubscribed. We keep the latest request we acted on (with the version of the wording you agreed to), when we sent the link, when you confirmed and, if you unsubscribe, when you did. We email launch news only to a confirmed address, and every such email has an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing with the link in our emails also turns off marketing email to a ShobShob account that uses the same address. If you tell us you want to sell, we also keep your first name, your mobile number, your neighbourhood, a short description of what you cook, when you asked us to contact you, and the version of the contact wording you agreed to. A person from ShobShob uses these details only to contact you about selling on ShobShob, by email, phone call, text message or WhatsApp. If we contact you on WhatsApp, WhatsApp (Meta) handles that message under its own terms. Asking to be contacted about selling is not a request for launch emails, and it does not create a seller account or an application. We keep a waitlist entry until you ask us to remove it (write to info@shobshob.com) or delete a ShobShob account that uses the same confirmed address. We delete your seller-contact details (name, mobile number and description) 12 months after you last asked us to contact you, unless you have started a seller application by then. With the entry we keep the latest record of your request, confirmation and withdrawal, so we can show what you agreed to and that we honoured an unsubscribe.
• Calls, texts and messages you send us. If you call, text, WhatsApp or email us, we receive your phone number or email address and what you tell us. We use them to answer you, to help you apply to sell on ShobShob if you ask, and for the other purposes this Policy describes for what you raise with us — for example, handling an order or support request, a privacy request, or a complaint about a kitchen, which can lead to a compliance review. We do not record calls. We keep notes of a call, text or WhatsApp conversation only as long as we need to follow up, and delete them within 12 months unless you join our waitlist or apply to sell, or the conversation becomes part of an order, support or complaint record, which we keep as this Policy describes for that record.
• Messages, favourites, and custom-order requests. Photos attached to custom requests are private to the customer, the selected seller, and authorized administrators.
• Store follows you explicitly choose, including the consent version, consent time, and any later withdrawal. Saving a favourite, viewing a store, or ordering does not automatically follow that seller.
• Storefront analytics are aggregate daily page-load counts only. For this metric we do not store a viewer identity, IP address, device fingerprint, referrer, or precise location. Sellers see only aggregate follower counts and repeat-customer trends; repeat data is withheld until the privacy threshold is met.
• For delivery orders, the delivery address you provide and any unit or suite number you add. The seller can see them only after the order is confirmed and paid.
• Your location for discovery, if you choose to enter one (a street address or a neighbourhood). We convert it into map coordinates and keep those coordinates and the address or place name you entered in a signed, httpOnly cookie in your browser for up to 30 days. We use it to show rounded approximate kilometres, sort nearby kitchens, and estimate delivery eligibility. When you enter a delivery address at checkout, it replaces your saved location in that cookie, together with any unit or suite number, for up to one hour.
• Technical and security data: your IP address, used to run and protect the service. Abuse-prevention counters are keyed to your IP address, or to a hashed form of it, or to a hashed session, device or account identifier or sign-in email address. They expire automatically: most within minutes or hours, and those that limit address, location, and delivery-availability checks within 30 days. For location features we also set two httpOnly cookies: a random session identifier (up to 30 days) that ties a saved location to your browser, and a random device identifier (up to one year from when it was last set) used to limit repeated address and location checks. Error reports are described under "Service providers" below.

Automatic checks on text you write. When a seller saves public text in the app — store name and story, listing text, review replies, and store updates — we check it automatically for a street address, house, unit, or PO box number, postal code, map coordinates, the seller's own saved addresses, invitations to come to the door without an order, requests to pay outside ShobShob, and offers to negotiate prices. We run a similar check on the notes a customer adds at checkout, looking for signs of a street address, postal code, unit or suite number, and door, gate, or buzzer codes. If a check stops your text, we tell you what kind of detail to take out and the text is not saved; we do not keep the text we stopped or a record of what matched. We may also hide a store update that this check would now stop. These checks are narrow and will not catch everything, and text that passes has not been reviewed or approved by us.

Seller credentials & compliance reviews

We use the City business licence number to decide whether a kitchen can take orders and for the reviews below, the AHS food handling permit to decide whether a kitchen can list or quote for higher-risk food and whether a commercial or shared kitchen can take orders, and voluntarily submitted or requested credential information (including a food-safety training certificate or proof of insurance) to review the identified evidence, conduct random, periodic, risk-based, complaint-triggered, or regulator-requested compliance reviews, investigate safety or fraud concerns, and meet legal obligations. Access to raw documents and numbers is restricted to the seller and authorized ShobShob personnel. We do not display raw documents or credential numbers publicly. Where lawful, we may contact an issuing authority about evidence a seller provides; that contact is an inquiry, not an authentication of the seller's credentials. We may provide evidence to a regulator or law-enforcement authority when required by law.

Raw credential evidence is retained only as long as reasonably needed for the review, complaints, disputes, investigations, or legal obligations. A completed sale alone does not turn optional credential evidence into a six-year tax record. On account deletion, raw credential files and numbers are deleted unless an active bounded credential-scrutiny hold or documented legal hold temporarily requires retention. When raw evidence is no longer needed, it is scheduled for deletion. We may retain a restricted minimal audit record — such as credential type, review outcome, review and expiry dates, and resulting account action — where reasonably necessary to document the review and protect users.

Service providers & where data is processed

We use service providers to run ShobShob: Supabase (database, file storage, and sign-in), Vercel (hosting), Stripe (card payments, which are made on the seller's own Stripe account as described under "What we collect", and seller payout accounts; when a seller starts payout setup, Stripe receives the seller's legal name, entity type, email address, and a ShobShob account reference), Resend (transactional email; notification emails can include order details and short notes written by a seller, for example when a seller cancels a custom order, or by ShobShob staff, for example a support resolution or the reason a kitchen was paused), ImprovMX (receiving email sent to our shobshob.com addresses and forwarding it to the inbox where we read it), Cloudflare (bot protection on sign-in, sign-up, and password-reset forms), Upstash (abuse-prevention counters), Sentry (error monitoring; we configure it to remove account details, cookies, request headers, query strings, and breadcrumbs before a report is sent, but a report can still include the page address, technical details about the device or browser, and the text of an error message, which may contain information someone entered), OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service (converting typed addresses into map coordinates), and WhatsApp (Meta), if you choose to message us there or we reply to you there. If you choose to sign in with Google, Google shares basic profile information with us, such as your name and email address. When you view the discovery map, your browser loads map images directly from OpenStreetMap's tile servers, which receive your IP address and the map area being shown. On a pickup order that has been confirmed and paid, the "Get directions" link opens the pickup address in Google Maps. Some of these providers store or process information outside Canada, primarily in the United States; while there, it is subject to the laws of those jurisdictions. We try to limit what each provider receives to what it needs for its service.

Consent & your rights

You consent to this processing when you create an account or join our waitlist. You can use the account-page export for the records that are safe to release automatically, and delete your account, from your account page at any time, once nothing of yours is still in progress: an order or a payment, or, if you sell on ShobShob, a refund, a customer's refund or dispute request, or a payment issue about one of your orders. You may contact us for a reviewed access request covering other personal information we hold about you. Access remains subject to applicable legal exceptions, including protection of third-party personal information, privileged material, and confidential investigative or internal case information. Deletion removes private uploads and contact, profile, delivery destination, message, and preference data, then anonymizes the account. For a seller deletion, we may retain a minimal non-login account tombstone and the Seller Agreement acceptance needed to preserve the contract and audit record or respond to claims, for an applicable documented retention period. The tombstone cannot be used to sign in. Limited financial, GST, and seller tax records may be retained with restricted access for six years after the end of the related tax year. Credential evidence and audit records follow the purpose-based periods described above. A bounded credential-scrutiny hold temporarily preserves only the seller evidence under review; it does not retain unrelated private uploads. A separate documented legal hold may apply more broadly and extend an applicable period. When an applicable period expires, time-limited credential evidence and retained content are scheduled for deletion or irreversible de-identification. The minimum non-login contract/audit tombstone may remain where reasonably necessary to preserve that binding record or meet another legal duty.

Deleted information can remain for a limited time in backups: our database provider's daily backups, which are kept for about seven days, and copies we take before database changes, which are stored offline with restricted access and deleted when no longer needed.

Communications

Operational messages — order updates, payment notices, password resets, safety, and account notices — are part of the service. We send marketing or promotional messages only with your consent; those messages identify ShobShob and include an unsubscribe option, and you can withdraw consent at any time. If you asked us to contact you about selling, we may call, text, WhatsApp or email you about that; you can ask us to stop at any time by replying or by writing to info@shobshob.com.

Following a seller is a separate, explicit choice for in-app store updates. You can unfollow immediately at any time. Seller updates in this release are in-app only; a follow does not enrol you in email or text marketing, and sellers never receive follower identities or contact details.

Location privacy

A seller’s exact coordinates and street address are stored privately. Discovery shows only an approximate area and rounded approximate kilometres. For pickup orders, the exact pickup address is shown to the customer only after the order is confirmed and paid. For delivery orders, the customer’s exact destination is shown to the seller only after the order is confirmed and paid, and ShobShob does not itself show the seller’s address to the customer in the app or in ShobShob emails; anything a seller writes to a customer is the seller’s own. Once shown, an address stays visible on that order, including if the order is later cancelled.

When you ask at checkout whether a seller delivers to your address, we calculate the distance between the seller’s kitchen and the delivery address you gave us, and use that distance to tell you whether that seller delivers there and what their fee is for that distance. We show you only that answer and the fee, not the distance and not the seller’s location, although the fee can indicate which of the seller’s published distance bands applies. On the browse and search pages, delivery availability is worked out from the approximate area only, so they may show fewer kitchens, or a higher fee, than checkout.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, database access is restricted row by row, and sign-in is protected by attempt limits and temporary account lockouts after repeated failures. We review this policy as the service evolves; changes are posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date.

Privacy incidents

If a privacy breach occurs that poses a real risk of significant harm, we will notify the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta without unreasonable delay, and affected individuals where required by law.

Contact

For general questions, contact ShobShob Technologies Inc. at info@shobshob.com; for privacy questions, to exercise your rights, or to report an incident, use support@shobshob.com or write to us by mail at 150 Evergreen Mount SW, Calgary, AB T2Y 0L8.