Privacy policy

The quote tool. Its first four steps ask for the first half of your postal code, the material you are throwing out, the bin size and the delivery and collection days. Those travel in the address bar so the page can work out an answer, and a full postal code is cut to its first three characters before the page loads. The site stores no copy of them beyond its ordinary server logs: they are sent to Big Bin with your details at the details step, and with a booking request if you send one; the analytics tools, whose reports Big Bin reads, see them in the page address. The first half of a postal code is asked for instead of a street address on purpose: it is enough to tell whether a job is in the delivery area, and it does not identify anybody.

The details step. Before the price is shown, the tool asks for your name and phone number. Both are sent to Big Bin by email, together with the postal-code area, the material, the bin size, the dates and the price you were quoted, so whoever picks it up already knows what you were looking at and who they are calling.

Why it is asked for. So the business knows who to ask for when it calls about the job. Not a mailing list, not sold or shared for anyone else’s marketing, not used to advertise to you. The lowest price, what a price includes and what can change it are all published with no form in front of them; the details step comes before your own price, not before those.

A booking request, from the price screen. If you choose “Email instead” on the price screen and give your email address, the site sends Big Bin a booking request by email: that address, the name and number from the details step if you gave them within the last hour, the postal-code area, the material, the bin size, the dates and the price. A reply to it goes to your address, and Big Bin will contact you within one business day to confirm the rental.

The optional email, after the price. Once the price is on screen you may give an email address to have that quote sent to you. It is optional, it gates nothing, and it is used for that one message; Big Bin is not sent a copy and sees the address only if you reply. That quote is the only thing this site ever sends to a customer.

Where it goes, and who else handles it. Every email the quote tool sends goes through Resend, a third-party email service, which processes each message in order to deliver it. Your details and any booking request arrive in Big Bin’s own inbox at bigbinservices@gmail.com, a Gmail account, run by Google. The site is set up so that Microsoft Clarity, Google Analytics and Ahrefs never receive your name, phone number or email. There is no database behind this website: what Big Bin keeps is in that inbox.

How long it is kept. Your name, number and email are kept for as long as Big Bin keeps those emails, which are a business record rather than a website one. Ask them to delete it, by phone or email, and they will. Nothing is retained by this website itself, because it has nowhere to retain it.

Cookies. The quote tool sets two of its own. The first is set once you have given your details, holds the single character 1, and stops the page asking for them again; it carries no name and no identifier, and expires within the hour. The second holds the name and number you typed, and expires within the hour as well. It does two things: if the form comes back with an error you can correct one field instead of retyping both, and if you choose “Email instead” on the price screen it is what puts your name against that request, so you are not asked for details you have already given. Neither is readable by scripts and neither goes to anyone but Big Bin. Where Microsoft Clarity and Google Analytics load, they set four more on bigbin.ca: Clarity’s _clck, a random visitor number kept for a year from your last visit, and _clsk, which joins pages viewed within half an hour into one recording and is kept for a day; and Google’s _ga and _ga_N22264WP3M, which tell a returning browser apart and keep track of a visit, kept for up to two years and renewed on each visit. Clarity also keeps a tab number in your browser’s session storage, gone when the tab closes, and Microsoft sets cookies of its own on its own websites, including one called MUID, which Microsoft says is “used for advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes.” Closing the cookie notice is remembered in your browser’s local storage, not in a cookie.

Counting visits. The site counts its visits with Ahrefs Web Analytics, a third-party service, for every visitor. When a page loads, a small script sends Ahrefs the page’s address and title, the page you came from, your browser’s language and your screen size. On the quote tool the address includes the choices in the form — the first three characters of the postal code, the bin size, the material and the dates — but never your name, phone number or email, which are emailed to Big Bin separately. The script sets no cookies and stores nothing in your browser. Ahrefs states that it discards your IP address rather than storing it, and that it recognises a returning visitor only within the same day, so it cannot follow you from one day, device or website to the next.

The weight estimator. It works out its answer inside your browser and asks for no address, email or sign-up. The measurements you type are not sent to Big Bin, Microsoft or Google. Where the analytics tools load, they record a visit to it like a visit to any other page.

Server logs. Like any website, the server that delivers these pages records ordinary request information — the page requested, the time, the browser, and the network address the request came from. That is a technical record used to keep the site working and to investigate faults. It is not combined with anything else and it is not used to build a profile of you.

Where it is kept. Resend, Google (for Big Bin’s Gmail inbox and for Google Analytics), Microsoft, Ahrefs and Vercel, which hosts the site, may store and process what they handle outside Canada, including the United States, where it may be accessible to the courts and authorities there.

To book a bin, phone Big Bin, or send a booking request from the price screen and Big Bin contacts you to confirm it. At that point you will give a name, a telephone number and a delivery address, because a truck cannot deliver a bin without them. That information is used to quote and to carry out the job, and to invoice you for it.

Big Bin does not sell customer information, and does not pass it to anyone except where it is needed to do the job — for example, a disposal facility recording the load, or an accountant preparing the books.

Under Canada’s federal privacy law you may ask what personal information a business holds about you, ask for it to be corrected, and complain if you are not satisfied with the answer. Ask by telephone on 416-458-4324 or by email at bigbinservices@gmail.com.

If you are not satisfied with the response, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada handles complaints about how businesses treat personal information.