Federal (Canada) Privacy Decisions

The OPC investigated Loblaw Companies Ltd. regarding complaints about the deletion of PC Optimum Loyalty Program accounts. The investigation found Loblaw contravened PIPEDA by taking an unreasonable amount of time to address deletion requests and by failing to ensure that retained purchase history data was sufficiently anonymized after account closures. Loblaw has agreed to take corrective actions, including a third-party assessment of its anonymization processes.

• Adequacy of Loblaw's processes for addressing individual privacy challenges regarding account deletion.
• Compliance with PIPEDA's retention principle regarding anonymization of purchase history data.
• Timeliness of Loblaw's response to customer deletion requests.
• Sufficiency of Loblaw's anonymization techniques for retained data.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) investigated Bell Canada after a complainant alleged Bell contravened PIPEDA by not responding to an access request within 30 days and denying access to cellphone logs. The OPC found Bell contravened PIPEDA by delaying its response to the access request and by denying the complainant access to his phone logs, which were determined to be his personal information. Bell also failed to be open about its policies regarding shared account information. Bell has agreed to provide the requested logs and implement recommendations to improve its procedures for handling shared account requests and its privacy communications.

• Timeliness of response to an access request
• Access to personal information held by a service provider on a shared account
• Definition of personal information in the context of phone logs
• Openness of an organization's privacy policies and practices