Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Ryt Saunas builds outdoor saunas in Pickering, Ontario. This policy covers rytsaunas.ca and the emails we send you. It is written to meet PIPEDA, the Canadian federal privacy law.

If you want your information out of our system, skip to section 9. You do not need a reason.

2. What we collect

When you use the contact form

First name, last name, email address, and the town or city you are in. Those four are required. Phone number, the model you are interested in, the type of enquiry, and whatever you write in the message box are optional or preset.

This one does not go into a database from the website. It is sent as an email to info@rytsaunas.ca, which Mark reads. Our own system then files that email as a lead. So it does end up stored, just by a different route than a form that writes straight to a database.

When you ask for a guide

First name and email address. There is also a tick box for occasional Ryt Saunas news. It is unticked by default and the guide arrives either way.

This one does go into our customer database. We store your name, your email, which guide you asked for, whether you ticked the news box, and if you did, the date you ticked it and which guide you were on at the time. That last part is us keeping proof that you said yes, which the law expects us to be able to show.

Where you came from

If you arrive from an ad or a campaign link, the link carries tracking codes in it. We save those with your enquiry so we know which ad worked. They describe the link you clicked, not you.

Automatically, when you visit

Our host records normal web server information, including your IP address, the pages you requested, and what browser you used. When you submit either form, your IP address is also sent to Cloudflare so it can check you are not a bot.

We do not ask for your address, your date of birth, any government ID, or any payment details anywhere on this website. If you buy a sauna, payment is arranged separately and is not handled here.

3. Why we collect it

• To answer you. Mark replies personally to every message, and he needs your email to do it.
• To send you the guide you asked for.
• To quote, plan, and build a sauna if you go ahead.
• To send occasional news, but only if you ticked the box.
• To stop spam and abuse.
• To see which ads and pages bring people in, so we spend less on the ones that do not.

That is the whole list. We do not sell your information, rent it, or trade it. Nobody buys a list from us.

4. Cookies and tracking

This website sets no cookies of its own. The ones you may pick up here belong to other companies.

• Meta, for Facebook and Instagram ads. A Meta tracking pixel runs on every page. It tells Meta which page you looked at, where you came from, your IP address, and your browser, and it sets a cookie so Meta can recognise the same browser later. When you finish the contact form it also records that a lead came in, along with the type of enquiry and which page sent you. It does not send Meta your name, your email, or your phone number.
• Cloudflare, for the spam check. The box you tick on our forms runs a check in your browser. Cloudflare sees your IP address and browser details.
• Google, on the homepage. Our reviews come from Google, and the small reviewer photos load from Google's servers, so Google sees your IP address when the page loads. The video thumbnail loads from YouTube for the same reason. If you press play, YouTube loads its player and sets its own cookies. Nothing loads from YouTube's player until you press play.
• Google Analytics and Google Ads. We have a Google Tag Manager container on the site. It is switched off and empty today. When we turn it on it will measure page views, where visitors come from, and which pages lead to enquiries, and it will set Google's cookies to do it. We will update the date at the top of this page when that happens.

Your browser can block or clear all of these. Nothing on this site stops working if you do, except the spam check, which the forms need in order to submit.

5. Who else sees it

A handful of companies handle parts of this for us. Each one only gets what it needs.

• Vercel hosts the website and runs the code that receives your form.
• Supabase stores our customer database, including guide signups.
• Resend sends our email. Anything we email you passes through them, including your address and the message.
• Cloudflare runs the spam check on our forms.
• Meta receives the ad tracking described above.
• Google receives the requests described above, and will receive analytics data once we turn it on.

Beyond that, we will hand information over if the law requires it. That is the only other case.

6. Data outside Canada

Every company in that list is based in the United States, and the part of our website that receives your form runs on a server in the United States. So your information leaves Canada, and while it is there it can be reached by American authorities under American law. That is true of most websites, but you are entitled to know it rather than assume it.

7. Marketing emails

We only send news to people who ticked the box. If you did not tick it, the only emails you get from us are the ones you asked for, like a guide or a reply to your own message.

Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. One click and you are off, and you do not have to sign in or explain yourself. Your email client's own unsubscribe button works too. If you would rather just tell us, email info@rytsaunas.ca and we will do it by hand.

Unsubscribing stops the news. It does not stop us replying to you, and it does not delete your enquiry. If you want the whole record gone, see the next section.

8. How long we keep it

These are the periods we hold ourselves to.

• Enquiries that do not turn into an order. Three years from the last time we heard from you, then deleted.
• People on our email news list. Kept until you unsubscribe. After that we keep one thing, the record that you gave consent and then withdrew it, because we need to be able to show that we stopped when you asked.
• Customers. Seven years after your last transaction with us.

The seven years is the number worth explaining. The Canada Revenue Agency requires businesses to keep records for six years. Our exterior shell warranty runs five. Seven covers both with a margin, so we are not deleting something we are still answerable for.

Deleting is not one button, so it is worth saying what it means. A guide signup is a row in our customer database, and that row goes. An enquiry is an email in our inbox and a record in our system, so both have to go. We do this by hand. Nothing on our side sweeps old records automatically, so read the periods above as the policy we work to, not as something a machine enforces for you. If you want your information gone sooner than any of this, ask us and we will do it.

9. Seeing or correcting your data

You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to fix anything wrong, and ask us to delete it. Email info@rytsaunas.ca with the address you used and we will sort it out. We aim to come back within 30 days, which is the limit the law sets.

One limit worth being straight about. If you have bought a sauna from us, we have to keep the records behind the sale for the period in section 8, so we cannot delete everything the moment you ask.

If you are not happy with how we handled it, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca.

10. How we protect it

The whole site runs over an encrypted connection. Our database keys are held as server secrets and never reach your browser. Access to the customer database is limited to Ryt Saunas staff who need it. Unsubscribe links carry an encrypted code rather than your email address, so nobody can read an address out of a link or guess someone else's.

No system is perfect, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. If something does go wrong in a way that puts you at real risk, we will tell you and we will tell the Privacy Commissioner, which is what the law requires.

11. Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect, we update this page and change the date at the top. There is no archive of old versions, so if the date has moved and it matters to you, read it again.

12. Contact us

Mark Rytkonen is the person accountable for privacy at Ryt Saunas. The law asks every business to name someone, and at Ryt that is not a formality. Mark reads this inbox and answers this phone himself.

Any privacy question, or any request under section 9, goes to the same place as everything else.

Mark Rytkonen
Ryt Saunas
Unit 1 & 2, 895 Dillingham Rd
Pickering, Ontario, L1W 2Y6
info@rytsaunas.ca
416-760-6945