Privacy policy

Effective: November 2, 2026.

OpenCondoDocs (OpenCondoDocs.org) is run by CommonFile, a business based in Alberta, Canada. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who handles it for us, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do. We follow Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act and, where it applies, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Questions or requests: write to CommonFile's Privacy Officer at hi@commonfile.ca.

What we collect

When you contribute documents through the Contribute page (OpenCondoDocs.org/contribute/; we don't accept documents by email), we collect:

• your email address;
• your property (its address, city, province or state, name, or plan number);
• how you're connected to the property (owner, buyer, realtor or other) and how you got the documents;
• the files you send;
• your consent, with the date and the version of the notice you saw.

We don't ask for your name or unit number.

When you ask us to watch a property, we collect your email address, the property, and your consent with its date and version. We email you once, when documents for that property are added, and use your address for nothing else. We never publish it.

Inside the documents. Condo and HOA documents name other people: owners, directors, tenants, managers and staff. We use that information only to check the documents and remove personal information. We never publish it.

When you visit the site, we set no cookies of our own and run no analytics. Our host, Cloudflare, keeps standard server logs, which include IP addresses, and its security service may set a strictly necessary cookie if it needs to check that a visitor isn't a bot. The site uses your device's own fonts. The Contribute page loads its upload tool from jsDelivr. Search, the Contribute page and the watch sign-up talk directly to our database (Supabase), so what you type in search reaches it. Search words can also become part of the page address, so they can reach our host's server logs and stay in your browser's history. In each case your browser's IP address reaches those services. To limit abuse, the Contribute page and the watch sign-up keep a scrambled (salted hash) form of your IP address for one day, never the address itself.

Privileged legal material

Don't send us legal advice or other privileged legal material. If it arrives, we delete it without reading further, before it enters our records, and we don't keep who sent it. We record only that the property may have a legal matter, by year.

Why we use it

• To identify your property and file the documents under it.
• To check the documents and remove personal information.
• To publish the documents, with personal information removed.
• To tell you when documents for a property you're watching are added.
• To answer your questions.
• To keep the site secure and working.

What we publish

We publish, on each property's page:

• copies of documents with personal information removed;
• the property's public details, such as its name, address and plan number.

We never publish who sent a document. Before anything is published, a person checks every page and removes names (directors' included), unit numbers, amounts owed or paid by a unit, contact details, signatures, how individual directors voted, and anything else about an identifiable person. In small properties we also leave out unit-level details that could point to one household.

Who we share it with

• Service providers who work for us (see below), only to provide their service to us.
• When the law requires it, for example to comply with a subpoena, warrant or court order. Otherwise we never disclose who sent a document.

We don't sell personal information.

No ads

OpenCondoDocs.org carries no ads.

Service providers outside Canada

CommonFile uses service providers outside Canada to collect, store and process personal information for us.

• Countries: the United States. Providers that run our website and deliver downloads also carry traffic through their networks in other countries. The public documents they deliver have had personal information removed.
• What we authorize them to do:
  1. store the documents people send us, and our working files;
  2. run our website and Contribute page, and deliver downloads;
  3. send and receive email;
  4. read documents with artificial intelligence, to suggest what to remove, which a person then checks;
  5. host our database, which is stored in Canada by a provider that may reach it from the United States.
• Each provider handles personal information under its standard business terms. Documents that still contain personal information are read by AI only through a business service whose terms say it doesn't train its models on what we send (today, Anthropic). Grok (xAI) works only with material after personal information has been removed.
• Information held in another country may be accessed by courts and government authorities there, under that country's law.

Our providers today (the list can change; the purposes above don't):

Questions about our use of service providers outside Canada go to the Privacy Officer at hi@commonfile.ca.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we reasonably need it, then delete it or remove what identifies you.

• The files you send: while a published page relies on them, or while a dispute or request about them is open. We review this yearly and delete within 90 days after.
• Your email and submission record: 2 years after we last hear from you.
• Your consent: as long as we hold anything collected under it, plus 2 years, so we can show we had it.
• Submissions we can't use: 30 days after we tell you.
• Watch sign-ups: until we've told you documents were added, or 2 years, whichever comes first.
• Privileged legal material: not kept (see above).
• Requests you make to us (access, correction): 1 year after we answer.

If we receive a legal demand, or you ask for your information, we stop deleting whatever it concerns until the matter is closed.

How we protect it

Only named reviewers can reach the files you send. Every account that can reach them uses multi-factor sign-in. Your original files are never shared by public link. A person checks every page before anything is published, and we keep a record of who checked it. We require our providers to protect what they hold for us.

Your rights

• See your information. Ask the Privacy Officer, in writing, for the personal information we hold about you and how we've used it. We answer within 30 days, free. If an answer would reveal someone else's personal information, we leave that part out. That is how we protect the people who send us documents.
• Correct it. Ask us to fix information about you that's wrong. Where we don't agree, we note your correction beside it.
• Remove something we missed. If your name or other personal details appear in a published document, tell us and we'll take it down and fix it promptly.
• Withdraw your consent. Write to the Privacy Officer. We'll stop using your contact details and, if you ask, take down the documents you sent. We can't recall copies others have already downloaded.
• Complain. If you're not satisfied with our answer, you can ask the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (oipc.ab.ca) to review it, within 30 days of our answer. Where federal law applies, you can also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

If something goes wrong

If personal information we hold is lost, or seen by someone who shouldn't see it, and that creates a real risk of significant harm, we report it to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta and, where federal law applies, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and we tell the people affected. A personal detail we missed on a published page counts: we take the page down at once.

Children

OpenCondoDocs.org is for property owners and buyers. It isn't directed to children. We don't knowingly collect information from them.

Changes

We'll post any change here with its date. If a change affects how we use information we already hold, we'll tell the people affected before it applies.