Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 8, 2026 · Cold-Store Benchmark

Cold-Store Benchmark — how we handle personal information under PIPEDA.

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

This Privacy Policy explains how Cold-Store Benchmark (ThermoNeural (Cold-Store Benchmark), a sole proprietorship trading as R7AD) handles personal information. Cold-Store Benchmark is operated by R7AD (Yahia Riad Hanniz), sole proprietor, 570 Hood Road, Unit 14 #1596, Markham, ON L3R 4G7, Canada, and we are subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, where applicable, provincial privacy legislation. It is written against the fair information principles in PIPEDA: accountability, identifying purposes, consent, limiting collection, limiting use and disclosure, accuracy, safeguards, openness, individual access, and challenging compliance.

It applies to this website and the Cold-Store Benchmark service.

2. What we collect

Information you give us: your name, email address, and account credentials if you create an account; the details you enter when you contact us or ask for a quote, report or subscription; and, for business customers, the organisation you represent.
Payment and billing information: the plan or report you ordered, your subscription status and billing/transaction history. Card payments are processed by Stripe (see stripe.com/privacy), and the charge appears as COLDSTORE on your statement. We do not receive or store your full card number or security code.
Service and usage data: the requests you submit and the resulting output (for example the market or facility parameters you run), together with usage counts, so we can operate the Service, enforce plan limits and improve it.
Technical and log data: IP address, browser and device type, referring page, timestamps, and error/diagnostic logs created automatically when you use the site.
Cookies and similar technologies: used to keep you signed in, remember preferences and understand basic site usage. You can block cookies in your browser, though parts of the Service may then not work. Page views are also counted with a first-party, cookieless beacon: no cookies, no identifiers — only the page path, the referring host and a daily-rotating hash, used in aggregate.

We do not knowingly collect more than we need for the purposes below, and we do not collect sensitive information (such as health or biometric data) or data about children.

3. Why we collect it (identifying purposes)

to provide and operate the Service, including generating the output you ask for;
to create and administer your account and process payments, subscriptions, renewals and refunds;
to provide support and respond to your questions, quote requests and complaints;
to protect the security and integrity of the Service (abuse, fraud and attack prevention);
to maintain business, tax and accounting records as required by law;
to improve and develop the Service, using aggregated or de-identified information where practicable;
to send service messages (receipts, renewals, material changes to these terms) and, where you have consented or where permitted, occasional commercial messages you can unsubscribe from at any time.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use your information to make automated decisions that have a significant legal effect on you.

4. Consent

We collect, use and disclose personal information with your knowledge and consent. Consent may be express (for example when you create an account, subscribe, or tick a box) or implied (for example when you email us and we reply). By subscribing or using the Service you consent to the collection, use and disclosure described in this policy.

You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, by contacting us through the channel in section 9. If you withdraw consent for information we need to run your account, we may not be able to keep providing the Service to you. Commercial electronic messages we send comply with Canada's anti-spam legislation and include an unsubscribe mechanism; unsubscribing does not affect service messages.

5. Service providers and disclosure

We share personal information only as needed to run the Service:

Payment processing: Stripe (payment processing and subscription billing) handles card charges, subscriptions and renewals. Your card details are provided directly to that processor under its own privacy policy.
Hosting, infrastructure and data storage: our website, database and backups are hosted by third-party cloud providers.
Communications and support tooling: email delivery and support/helpdesk providers.
Analytics and diagnostics: providers that help us understand site usage and find errors.

These providers process information on our behalf under contract, only for the purposes above, and are required to protect it. Some of them operate servers outside Canada, including in the United States; your information may therefore be processed in another country and may be accessible to its courts, law enforcement and regulators under its laws.

We may also disclose information where required by law, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the safety of any person, and to a purchaser or successor in the event of a sale or reorganisation of our business (subject to this policy).

6. How long we keep it (retention)

We keep personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes above or as required by law, then delete or anonymise it. In practice:

account and contact records: while your account is open, then for a reasonable wind-down period;
billing, tax and transaction records: retained for the period required by Canadian tax and accounting rules;
usage and output records: trimmed or deleted on a rolling basis once no longer needed;
logs: kept for a short operational window for security and diagnostics.

Purchase and model-run records tied to a report are kept so the work can be reproduced and supported.If you ask us to delete information we hold about you, we remove it from active systems and it ages out of backups on our normal backup cycle.

7. Safeguards

We use safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information: encryption in transit (HTTPS), access controls and least-privilege access for our own tooling, secret-managed credentials, and providers selected for their security posture and bound by contract. No system is perfect; if a breach of security safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as required by law.

8. Access, correction and deletion

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct anything that is inaccurate or incomplete, or ask us to delete it (subject to records we are legally required to keep). To make a request, contact us through the channel in section 9 and tell us the account or email address involved; we may ask for enough information to verify your identity before acting.

We will respond within 30 days as PIPEDA requires, at minimal or no cost to you. If we refuse a request we will tell you why and how you can challenge the refusal. Some account details can be updated by you while signed in. If your organisation bought a report, requests should normally come from the address used to buy it.

9. Questions and complaints (challenging compliance)

Write to us first with any privacy question, access request or complaint: hello@thermoneural.com (the contact address published in the footer of this site)

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada — online at priv.gc.ca or by telephone at 1-800-282-1376 — and, where provincial privacy law applies to the activity in question, to the privacy commissioner of your province or territory.

10. Children

The Service is intended for business and adult professional use. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes in our practices or the law. The revision date above will change and material changes will be posted on this page. Continued use of the Service after a change means you accept the updated policy.