Privacy policy

Who we are

PLMBR is a volunteer project led by Maksim Rudzenka, who operates the site as an individual. PLMBR is not a registered company. Maksim Rudzenka is responsible for the personal information described here.

The person in charge of the protection of personal information is Maksim Rudzenka. You can reach them through our contact form: choose “Privacy request”. We do not publish an email address.

• Contact form (Privacy request)

What we collect

• Account: email address, name (for an emergency request sent without an account, the part of your email before “@”), language, account type, the versions of our Terms and of this policy you accepted and when (one checkbox covers both), and your optional consent to news emails (with its version and time; if you withdraw it, we keep when you agreed, which version you agreed to and when you withdrew, as proof of your choice).
• Plumber profile: business name, team size, years of experience, insurance, availability, “About” text, rates, service radius, services, licence number, province, class and a link to the public registry (we never ask for licence documents), gas licence status, profile and work photos, and the phone number (encrypted) shown when a visitor taps “Show phone number”.
• Job requests: photos (location and camera details are removed when you add them), category, description, the maximum budget you may set (a guide, not a price), postal code, exact address and phone number (both encrypted), and whether it is an emergency.
• Final price: if you choose to enter it after a job is completed, the amount you paid, in whole dollars. It is optional.
• Messages and photos you send in a conversation about a job.
• Contact form messages: the topic you choose, your message, and, only if you give them, your name and a reply email address. Without a reply address we cannot answer you. The message is delivered by email to the project lead’s mailbox; the copy of it (text, name and address) in our email queue is erased as soon as it is sent.
• Reviews, replies, reports and appeals you write.
• Security data: sign-in sessions (the browser and device description your browser sends, and a keyed hash of your IP address), a keyed hash of your IP address in abuse counters, kept for up to 2 hours to limit abuse, then deleted, a keyed hash of the IP address of the person who uploaded each photo, kept for as long as the photo exists, and a record of when a plumber’s phone number was shown.
• Notification subscriptions of your devices, if you turn notifications on (stored encrypted).
• One sign-in cookie (__Host-plmbr_session / plmbr_session) that keeps you signed in. If your account is suspended, one more cookie (__Host-plmbr_privacy / plmbr_privacy) lasts up to one hour and only lets you download or delete your data. Guests get no cookies. Details are on our cookies page.
• Anonymous visit and form counters: no cookies, no IP address and no identifiers.

“Use my location” sends your device’s coordinates to our server once, to pick the nearest postal area. We do not store them; the page address keeps only the first three characters of the postal code.

We do not collect payment card data, government ID or social insurance numbers, we do not track your location, and we use no third-party analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

Why we use it

• To publish your job request and let nearby plumbers reply, and to put you in touch with the plumber you choose.
• To show plumbers’ public profiles, reviews and ratings.
• To send sign-in codes, job updates, message alerts and the notifications you turn on. Job updates, message alerts, emergency alerts and digests can be turned off in your notification settings or with the unsubscribe link in each of these emails; sign-in codes and notices about your account, licence or appeals are always sent.
• To keep the service safe: prevent spam and fake accounts, handle reports and appeals, and investigate security incidents.
• To read and answer the messages you send through the contact form, including privacy requests.
• To count visits and form steps anonymously so we can improve the service.
• To send occasional news emails only if you agreed to it with the separate, unticked box. You can withdraw this consent at any time, and every news email will have an unsubscribe link.

We rely on your consent, given when you create an account or post a job, for the uses needed to provide the service, and on your separate, optional consent for news emails.

Who can see your information

• Everyone: a plumber’s public profile — name or business name, city and province (never the postal code), “About” text, rates, services, licence status, work photos and published reviews. Search engines can read the “About” text too.
• Plumbers near a job: its photos, category, description, postal area and distance.
• A budget you set is shown to plumbers who can see your request (see above); it is a guide, not a price, and is not shown on public pages or in notifications. PLMBR does not set, guarantee or collect prices.
• The final price you may enter after a job is completed is seen only by you and, without your name, address or plumber, in anonymous statistics for our team (a figure is shown only when at least 5 jobs are grouped). It is never shown to plumbers or on public pages, is not used for reviews or ratings, and is erased 25 months after the job is completed, or right away if you delete your account.
• Your exact address and phone number: you choose who sees them when you post a job. With “Only the plumber I choose sees my address” (the default), only the plumber you choose sees them, while the job is assigned or in progress; for an emergency job, a plumber without a verified licence sees them only after you share them. With “Nobody sees my address or phone until I share them”, the plumber you choose sees them only after you confirm.
• If you pick “All verified plumbers can see my address”, every plumber whose licence we checked can see your street address (not your phone number) while the job is waiting for a plumber, before you have chosen anyone. Pick it only if you are comfortable with that.
• When you send a request to one plumber (a Direct Request), only that plumber sees it until they answer or the waiting time (12 hours by default) runs out; we keep who it was sent to with the request.
• After a job is completed, the plumber no longer sees your address or phone number and can read the conversation for 30 more days.
• Reviews about a plumber are published without the client’s name. Reviews about a client are never public; plumbers see only an average rating.
• Our team: administrators protected by two-step sign-in. They read a conversation only when it is reported, and every such view is logged.
• Contact form messages: the project lead, who is also the person in charge of the protection of personal information, reads them in the mailbox that receives them.

How long we keep it

After the period below, the information is deleted or replaced with “[REDACTED]”. Anonymous statistics may be kept as described.

Contact form messages stay in the project lead’s mailbox only as long as needed to answer you and follow up. We aim to delete them within 12 months. This is done by hand, not by the system.

Who we share it with

• We never sell or rent personal information and we do not use it for advertising.
• Our hosting provider stores the service on servers in Canada under a contract that protects your information.
• We send our emails from our own mail server. Contact form messages are delivered to a mailbox of the project lead, run by an email provider the project lead chooses (see “Information outside Quebec and Canada”).
• Notifications: Notifications pass through your browser company's server (Google, Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft), which may be outside Canada. They are encrypted and never contain addresses, phone numbers or message text.
• Authorities, only when the law requires it.

Information outside Quebec and Canada

Your information in the service is stored on servers in Canada. There are two exceptions. First, a notification you turn on: it passes through your browser company’s notification service, which may be located outside Canada, and contains only a short generic text and a link — never your address, phone number or messages.

Second, a message you send through the contact form: it is delivered by email to the project lead’s mailbox, which is run by an email provider chosen by the project lead. The place where that provider stores messages is to be confirmed.

How we protect it

• Encrypted connections (HTTPS) everywhere.
• Exact addresses, phone numbers and notification subscriptions are encrypted in our database; sign-in codes and links are stored only as a one-way hash.
• Location and camera data are removed from every photo.
• Private photos are shown only to people allowed to see them.
• Administrators use two-step sign-in, and sensitive actions are logged.
• Backups are encrypted before they leave the server.

Your rights and choices

• Access and portability: download a copy of your information (a ZIP file with your data and photos) on the “Privacy and your data” page of your account.
• Correction: change your name on the same page; for anything else, send a privacy request through the contact form.
• Deletion: delete your account on the same page. Your personal information is erased right away; reviews you wrote and reviews about you are removed. A few records stay for the periods in the table above: the other person’s messages in their copy of a conversation (without your name), reports, a security log of sign-ins and team actions that no longer holds your IP address and keeps only the anonymous number of your deleted account, proof that you accepted our Terms and this policy, and encrypted backups until they are overwritten.
• If your account is suspended you cannot sign in, but you can still download a copy of your information or delete your account. Open the page “Get a copy of your data or delete your account” (it is linked from the sign-in page and from the suspension email), enter the code we email to the address of the account, and use the two functions it offers for up to one hour. This does not lift the suspension. If you cannot open that mailbox, send a privacy request through the contact form (choose “Privacy request” and give a reply email address); we then handle it by hand, after we confirm that it is you.
• Withdrawing consent: turn off news emails on the same page, change notification settings, or use the unsubscribe link in any email. News emails use their own unsubscribe link, which withdraws only your consent to news.
• Questions and complaints: use the contact form and choose “Privacy request”; it reaches Maksim Rudzenka. We aim to answer within 30 days. To be able to answer you, we need an email address in the form.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or, in Quebec, to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec.

• Privacy and your data (your account)
• Contact form (Privacy request)
• Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
• Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec

Automatic decisions

• A plumber with 3 no-shows or late cancellations of taken jobs in 30 days automatically stops receiving emergency jobs for 7 days. The plumber is told by email and can appeal; a person on our team reviews every appeal and can lift the pause. If the pause ends before the review, the appeal is closed because the pause is over.
• A verified licence badge expires 12 months after it was checked; the plumber is told by email and can send the details again.
• A job request with no plumber chosen closes automatically after 48 hours, or 7 days if plumbers replied.
• Profile texts and appeals that look like they contain contact details are refused when you save them, so that contact details are shared only through a job.
• Job feeds and search results are ordered by distance and rating. This does not decide anything about you.
• To ask for a person to review any automatic decision about you, use the contact form and choose “Privacy request”.

Children

PLMBR is for adults who have reached the age of majority in their province. We do not knowingly collect information about children.

If something goes wrong

If a security incident involving your information creates a risk of serious harm, we will tell you and the privacy regulators promptly and explain what we are doing about it. We keep a record of every incident.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the version and the date above. When our Terms change in a material way, we show a notice in your account, where you are asked to confirm the new version on “Privacy and your data”. We may also send you a short service email about it. Please look at the date above from time to time.

Contact us

Maksim Rudzenka, the person in charge of the protection of personal information. Use the contact form; we do not publish an email address.

PLMBR — a volunteer project led by Maksim Rudzenka

• Contact form
• Cookies and storage on your device