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Privacy Policy
This policy explains how Hi Note Inc. ("HiNote", "we", "us") handles personal information in the HiNote mobile app, the website at hinote.ai and the HiNote partner portal (together, the "Services"). It is written for Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Law 25), and also covers rights you may have under other laws, such as the GDPR or US state privacy laws.
HiNote is for adults of legal cannabis age only (19+, 18+ in Alberta, 21+ in Quebec, 21+ in the United States). HiNote does not sell cannabis.
1. Who is responsible and how to reach us
Hi Note Inc., 1309 Coffeen Ave Ste 1200, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA, is responsible for your personal information.
Person in charge of the protection of personal information (Privacy Officer): Privacy Officer, Hi Note Inc.. Contact: support@hinote.ai (subject "Privacy").
2. What we collect and why
| Information | Why we use it | Legal basis / consent |
|---|---|---|
| Account: email address, password (stored only as a one-way hash) or Google / Apple sign-in identifier, date of birth, country and province / state, and optionally your name, username, profile photo or character, bio, gender, profession and employer. | Create and secure your account, confirm you are of legal age where you live, show your profile. | Necessary to provide the Services; the age check is required by law. |
| Your content: reviews, ratings, photos, posts, comments, questions and answers, lists, favourites, follows, messages, reports, feedback, product submissions, challenge and points activity. | Run the community features you use. Public content (for example reviews, posts and your profile) is visible to other users. | Necessary to provide the features you choose to use. |
| Photos you scan or upload (product labels, review photos, avatars). | Recognise the product and read the label (strain, THC / CBD and so on), fill in our product catalogue, and check uploads for prohibited content. | Necessary for the scan / upload feature you use. See section 4 on AI processing. |
| Sign-in and security data: IP address, approximate location derived from it (city / region), device type, user agent and time of each sign-in session; records of when you accepted our terms (version, time, IP address, user agent). | Show your signed-in devices, email you about new sign-ins, prevent fraud and abuse, keep proof of consent. | Legitimate interest in security; legal obligation to demonstrate consent. |
| App usage analytics: a random device identifier created by the app (not your advertising ID), a session identifier, platform and app version, and which product, store, brand, deal and promotion pages you open, the searches you run and the results shown, and taps on directions, call and website buttons. When you are signed in, these events (except searches) are linked to your account. Search text is never stored with your account. | Improve search and recommendations, measure which features work, prevent inflated statistics, and give partner stores and brands aggregated statistics (for example how many people viewed their page). Partners never see who you are. | Implied consent / legitimate interest. You can turn this off in the app: Settings > Privacy > Share usage analytics. |
| Install attribution: when you open a HiNote link from a partner (for example a store's QR code) and then install the app, we record which link led to the install. On Android this uses the Google Play install referrer. On iOS we compare a keyed hash of the IP address that opened the link with the IP address of the first app open within 30 minutes; we never store the IP address itself, and the hash is deleted about 2 hours after the click. We also record whether the install led to a sign-up, a first review or a first scan. | Credit partner campaigns and report aggregated results to them. | Legitimate interest / implied consent. Contact us to object. |
| Location: your device location when you allow it (to show nearby stores and the map), and, only if you turn on map presence, a coarse location (rounded to an area of at least 250 m) shown to other members. | Nearby stores, directions and the optional social map. | Express consent through your device permission and the in-app switch. Turning map presence off deletes the stored location. |
| Newsletter, waitlist and pilot sign-ups: email, name, and what you choose to tell us (phone number, birthday month and day, interests, phone platform, favourite products, how you heard about us, the campaign link you came from). | Send the newsletter or pilot information you asked for. | Express consent (the newsletter is double opt-in). Unsubscribe any time with the link in every email. |
| Business / partner accounts: business name, contact details, store claim proof (work email, licence number, notes), team members, campaign links, promotion requests, invoices and payment records. | Verify that you represent the store or brand, run the partner portal, bill paid promotions. | Contract; legal obligations (tax and accounting records). |
| Push notification token and notification preferences. | Send the notifications you enabled. | Consent through your device permission; change it in Settings. |
| Crash and error reports from the app (device model, OS and app version, the error and what led to it). | Find and fix bugs. | Legitimate interest. |
| Website cookies and analytics. | See our Cookie Policy. Optional analytics and marketing tools load only after you accept them in the cookie banner. | Consent for optional cookies; necessary cookies need no consent. |
We do not sell your personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and we do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing.
3. Service providers who process data for us
These companies process personal information on our behalf, under terms that limit their use of it to providing their service to us. Many are located in, or store data in, the United States, so your information may be processed outside your province or Canada and may be accessible to authorities there under local law.
| Provider | What they do for us | Data involved |
|---|---|---|
| Railway | Hosts our API, database and cache (Redis) | All app data |
| Vercel | Hosts the website | Website requests, IP address |
| Amazon Web Services (S3, SES) | Stores uploaded photos; sends our emails | Photos, email address, email content |
| Cloudflare | Content delivery for images | IP address, requested files |
| Google Firebase | Google / Apple sign-in, push notifications | Email, sign-in identifier, push token |
| Google (Gemini) | AI reading of product labels from scanned photos; AI-assisted text features | Photos you scan, product text |
| OpenAI | Automatic moderation of uploaded images | Uploaded images |
| Roboflow | Product recognition in scanned photos | Photos you scan |
| Mux | Video hosting and streaming | Videos you upload, playback data |
| Meilisearch | Search index | Product, store and brand data; search queries |
| Mapbox | Maps in the app | Map area viewed, approximate location, device data |
| Sentry | Crash and error reporting | Device and app data, error details |
| Teardown | App version checks and update prompts | Device and app version data |
| ip-api.com | Approximate location of a sign-in from its IP address | IP address |
| Slack and Telegram | Internal team alerts (new sign-ups, scan results) | Email or username, scan result |
| Mailchimp | Newsletter delivery and website sign-up forms | Email, name, newsletter activity |
| Google (Tag Manager, Analytics), Plausible | Website analytics, only with your consent | See the Cookie Policy |
| Greenline | Point-of-sale integration, only for stores that connect it | Store inventory and sales data |
We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect people's safety or our rights, or to a buyer or successor if our business is sold or merged (the information stays protected by this policy).
4. AI processing of photos
When you scan a product or upload a photo, the image is sent to Roboflow and to Google's Gemini models to recognise the product and read the text on its label, and to OpenAI's moderation service to detect prohibited content. The results (for example the product name and cannabinoid values) may be added to the public HiNote product catalogue. Please do not photograph people, faces or documents. We use these providers' paid API services, whose terms do not allow them to use your photos to train their models.
5. How long we keep it
- Account data and your content: while your account exists. When you delete your account, see section 7.
- Install attribution IP hashes: deleted about 2 hours after the link was opened.
- App usage events: the link to your account (and any search text) is removed after 95 days, and the events themselves are deleted after 400 days. Aggregated statistics that cannot identify you are kept.
- Install attribution records: while your account exists; when it is deleted they are de-identified.
- Map presence: hidden after 24 hours without an update; deleted when you turn sharing off.
- Pending sign-up and confirmation codes: from a few minutes up to 24 hours.
- Newsletter: until you unsubscribe (we keep a record that you unsubscribed so we never email you again by mistake).
- Invoices and payment records of business accounts: as long as tax law requires (generally 6 years in Canada).
- Backups: overwritten on their regular cycle after the data was deleted from our systems.
6. Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you can:
- access the personal information we hold about you and get a copy in a structured, commonly used format (portability);
- correct it (you can edit most of it yourself in the app or on the website);
- withdraw consent, for example turn off analytics, location, notifications or the newsletter;
- ask us to delete it (see section 7);
- object to or restrict some uses;
- if you live in a US state with a privacy law (such as California): know, delete and correct your information and opt out of sale or sharing (we do neither). We honour Global Privacy Control signals on the website.
Email support@hinote.ai from the address on your account so we can verify it is you. We answer within 30 days. We will not treat you differently for using these rights.
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca), the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (cai.gouv.qc.ca), the privacy commissioner of your province, or your local data protection authority.
7. Deleting your account
Delete your account in the app (Settings > Delete Account), on the website (Account > Settings), or without signing in at hinote.ai/delete-account. Your account is deleted 30 days after the request, and you can cancel until then. We then delete your profile, content and sign-in data and the app usage events linked to your account or devices, and de-identify your install attribution records. Records the law requires us to keep (for example invoices) and aggregated statistics that cannot identify you remain.
8. Security
We use encryption in transit, hashed passwords, access controls and keyed hashing of the IP addresses used for attribution. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify you and the regulators as the law requires.
9. Minors
The Services are only for adults of legal cannabis age where they live. We check your date of birth when you sign up and refuse accounts below the legal age of the province, state or country you give. We do not knowingly collect information from minors; if you believe a minor has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
10. Changes to this policy
We will post changes here and update the date above. If a change is significant, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect and, where the law requires, ask for your consent again.