Ernest privacy policy

1. Person in charge of the protection of personal information

The person in charge of the protection of personal information at Lumos Intégrité Inc., 804, rue Alfred-Laliberté, Mont-Saint-Hilaire (Québec) J3H 5M6. Email: privacy@lumos.property. A real person answers.

2. What we collect

• Your email address, to send you the link to the analysis and service-related messages.
• The inspection report you upload and its content: address and description of the property, findings, photos, the inspector’s name and, where they appear, your name or the seller’s.
• Your choices: language, acceptance of the terms, consent to tips emails.
• Payment data, processed by our payment provider. We receive only the payment confirmation and a transaction identifier, never your card number.
• Technical data: IP address, browser type, timestamps of each step (upload, payment, analysis, viewing), error messages. They serve security and support.

3. Why we use it

• To produce your analysis and deliver it to you.
• To process the payment, a refund or a claim under the guarantee.
• To answer your requests and provide support.
• To protect the service: prevent abuse, fraud and automated uploads.
• To improve Ernest using de-identified data (section 6).
• To send you tips and news, only if you consented. You can withdraw that consent at any time through the unsubscribe link or by writing to us.
• To remind you, with at most two emails, that an uploaded report is waiting for its analysis when the payment was not completed. Each reminder contains a link to stop receiving them; your address is then kept on an exclusion list so that choice is honoured.

We do not sell your personal information and we do not use it for targeted advertising.

4. Artificial intelligence and providers

To produce the analysis, the text of your report is sent to artificial-intelligence model providers, Anthropic and OpenAI (United States). Our agreements with them, under their business terms, exclude the use of your data to train their models. These providers do not receive your email address.

If you ask Ernest questions about your analysis, your questions and its answers are kept with the analysis, under the same terms (sections 6 and 7), and are processed by Anthropic (United States) to produce the answers, without being used to train its models.

We also rely on:

• Supabase, hosting the database and uploaded files, in Canada;
• Vercel, hosting the site and the application, in the United States;
• Resend, sending emails;
• a payment provider (Stripe), processing payments.

Each provider only has access to the data its service requires and is bound by contractual confidentiality and security obligations.

5. Transfers outside Quebec

Several of these providers process data outside Quebec, mainly in the United States. In accordance with Law 25, we carried out a privacy impact assessment before each transfer, verifying that the provider offers adequate protection and that the transfer is governed by contract. You may request a copy at privacy@lumos.property.

6. De-identified data

After the retention period (section 7), we keep the analysis in de-identified form: its technical content (findings, components concerned, severity, cost ranges, technical excerpts from the report) and the building context (type, city and province, year of construction, month of the inspection). Before keeping it, we remove your email, the name of the uploaded file, the civic address, and the names and contact details of individuals; the uploaded report itself is deleted. This data is used to calibrate estimates, measure the quality of analyses and produce statistics. It is no longer available through the analysis link and is not used to identify or contact you.

7. Retention

• The uploaded report and the analysis: twelve (12) months after the analysis, so you can come back to it during your transaction. The report is then deleted; the analysis is no longer available through its link and is kept only in de-identified form (section 6).
• Your email and the step log: the same period, then the email is deleted and the log de-identified.
• Billing data: seven (7) years, as required by tax obligations; payment identifiers are then erased.
• Consent to tips emails: until withdrawn.
• The email exclusion list: as long as needed to honour your choice.

You may request early deletion of your report and analysis at any time (section 9).

8. Security and incidents

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access to files is restricted and logged, and your analysis is reachable only through a private, non-indexed link. No system is infallible: in the event of a confidentiality incident presenting a serious risk of harm, we notify the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec and the persons concerned, as Law 25 requires.

9. Your rights

• Access: know what information we hold about you and receive a copy.
• Rectification: have inaccurate or incomplete information corrected.
• Withdrawal of consent: at any time, without affecting processing already carried out.
• Deletion: have your report, analysis and email erased, subject to billing data the law requires us to keep.
• Portability: receive your information in a structured, commonly used format.
• Unsubscribe: stop receiving tips emails, in one click.

To exercise a right, write to privacy@lumos.property from the email used at upload. We answer within thirty (30) days. If you believe your rights were not respected, you may file a complaint with the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (www.cai.gouv.qc.ca).

10. Cookies and tracking

Ernest uses only the storage strictly required for the site to work (language preference, session security). We use no advertising cookies, no profiling and no advertising trackers.

To measure site traffic we rely on our host’s statistics, Vercel Web Analytics: they set no cookies, use no persistent identifier and never follow anyone across sites. They hold only aggregate data (page views, country, device type) and never your email address or the content of your report.

11. Minors

Ernest is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect information about persons under 18.

12. Changes and contact

The version of this policy in force is the one published on this page, with its date. A material change is announced on the site before it takes effect.

Questions, requests or complaints: privacy@lumos.property. Lumos Intégrité Inc., 804, rue Alfred-Laliberté, Mont-Saint-Hilaire (Québec) J3H 5M6.