Privacy Policy

What we collect

To match you with coworkers who share your commute, we collect:

• Account basics: your personal email address, first name, and last initial, and a securely hashed password.
• Work email verification: we confirm your work email belongs to an eligible organization. The address itself is cryptographically hashed before it's stored — we never keep or log your work email in plain text, even internally.
• Commute details: your postal code, the building or address you commute to, your schedule (days and times), and your role (driver, rider, or willing to rotate).
• Ride preferences: things like smoking, scent-free, winter tires, and how chatty you'd like your ride to be.
• Messages: messages you send to people you've connected with through the app.
• Safety and reliability information: reports you file or that are filed about you, users you've blocked, and ride-outcome feedback (on time, late, cancelled, no-show) used to calculate a reliability score.
• Notification settings: your preferences for email and push notifications, and a device token if you enable push notifications.
• Basic technical logs: standard web server information like IP address and browser type, kept briefly for security and troubleshooting.

How we use it

We use your information to verify you're eligible to use iHopOn, match you with people on a similar commute, let you message people you're connected with, run our safety and reliability features (reports, blocks, reliability scores), and send you service notifications you've asked for.

We don't run ads, we don't use your information for advertising or marketing beyond service notifications you control, and we don't sell your personal information to anyone.

Your exact location stays private

This is the part we care most about getting right. Your postal code is converted, once, into a precise point on a map — but that point is only ever used on our server to work out which broad "commute corridor" you belong to (for example, a general area like "Kanata" or "Orléans," not a street address).

Other users never see your postal code, your precise location, or your home address. They only ever see the broad corridor you're in and, if relevant, the building you're heading to.

We never track your live location. There is no GPS tracking anywhere in iHopOn. If you opt into nearby-ride alerts, they compare your saved corridor location against other people's saved corridor locations — never anyone's real-time position.

Who we share it with

Other users you're matched or connected with see only your first name, last initial, destination building, broad commute corridor, schedule overlap, role, and reliability score. They never see your postal code, precise location, or full email address.

We use a small number of service providers to run iHopOn — for hosting, email delivery, and push notifications. They only ever handle your information to provide that specific service, never for their own purposes.

We may disclose information if we're required to by law, or if we reasonably believe it's necessary to protect the safety of our users.

We do not sell your personal information, and we don't share it with advertisers.

How long we keep it, and deleting your account

You can export a copy of your own data, or permanently delete your account, at any time from Profile → Privacy inside the app.

Deleting your account removes your commute profile, notification settings, registered devices, and work-email verification record outright.

A few things are kept in a de-identified form rather than deleted outright, and this is deliberate, not an oversight: if we erased your account entirely, it would corrupt the ride-reliability history and reports of other people you rode with. Instead, your name and email are wiped and your account is anonymized, while the historical record other users' reliability scores depend on stays intact. Messages and safety reports are retained for a period to support any ongoing safety investigations.

Your rights

Under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA), you have the right to access the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, and withdraw your consent to our using it (by deleting your account).

If you believe we've mishandled your personal information, please contact us first at support@ihopon.com so we can try to resolve it directly. You also have the right to file a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Where your information is stored

Our servers are located in Canada. We don't transfer your personal information outside of Canada.

Security

We use industry-standard password hashing, cryptographic hashing for work email addresses, encrypted connections between your browser and our servers, rate limiting on sensitive actions, and internal audit logging of administrator actions.

No system is perfectly secure, but we've designed iHopOn so that even we can't see your plaintext work email or your exact home address — the kind of information that would matter most if something ever went wrong.

Children

iHopOn is not directed at children. Using it requires verifying an organizational work email address, which means it isn't intended for, or realistically usable by, minors.

Changes to this policy

If we make meaningful changes to this policy, we'll update the date at the top of this page and let you know in the app.

Contact us

Questions about this policy or your personal information? Email us at support@ihopon.com.