Who this policy covers
யார் மீது பொருந்தும்
Puthiya Kural Media Inc. publishes Puthiya Kural (புதிய குரல்), a Tamil-language newspaper for Tamil Canadians, from our head office at Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In this policy, "we", "us" and "the paper" mean that company; "you" means anyone who reads, subscribes, advertises or gets in touch.
This policy applies to:
- the website at puthiyakural.ca and any subdomain of it;
- our free mobile apps for iOS and Android, however you obtained them;
- print and digital subscriptions, including home delivery;
- advertising accounts and enquiries from businesses;
- email newsletters, contest entries, event listings and letters to the editor.
It does not apply to other companies' websites, apps or social media pages that we link to, and it does not apply to the way we handle information for journalism — that is covered separately in section 08.
We handle personal information under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and under provincial privacy laws where they apply, including Quebec's Law 25.
What we collect
சேகரிக்கும் தகவல்
Information you give us
- Contact form and newsroom email: your name, email address, the topic you selected, your province or territory, and whatever you write in your message.
- Subscriptions and home delivery: your name, mailing address, phone number, email, delivery instructions and subscription history.
- Payments: handled by our payment processor. We receive a confirmation, the amount, the date and the last four digits of the card. We never see or store your full card number.
- Advertising accounts: business name, contact person, billing details, artwork and booking history.
- Letters, tips and event listings: anything you choose to send us, including photographs and documents.
- App account (optional): if you create one, an email address and a password we store only in hashed form.
Information collected automatically
- Server logs: IP address, date and time, pages requested, referring page, browser and operating system version. Kept for security and traffic measurement.
- Device and app data: device model, OS version, app version, language setting, crash reports and a random app instance identifier.
- Usage data: which articles and editions were opened, time spent, and whether an ad was displayed — reported to us in aggregate.
Information from others
- Our printing and mailing house, for delivery confirmations and returned mail.
- App stores, which give us anonymous install, crash and rating statistics — never your Apple or Google account details.
- Anyone who gives us your address to buy you a gift subscription.
We do not knowingly collect your immigration status, religion, caste, political affiliation, health details or ethnic origin as reader data. If you volunteer any of that in a letter or a story tip, we treat it as newsroom material under section 08 — not as marketing data.
Our mobile apps
செயலிகள்
The Puthiya Kural apps are free and do not require an account to read the paper. This section is the app-specific detail that Apple and Google require us to publish, and it matches the data disclosures on our App Store and Google Play listings.
Permissions we ask for
| Permission | Why we ask | If you decline |
|---|---|---|
| Notifications | Breaking news alerts and a note when a new edition is out. | The app works normally; you just won't get alerts. |
| Storage / files | To save an edition for offline reading and to let you download a PDF. | You can still read online. |
| Camera / photos | Only when you attach a photo to a story tip or a classified ad. | You can email attachments to the newsroom instead. |
| Network access | Required to load the paper. | The app cannot function offline-only. |
We do not request access to your contacts, microphone, calendar, SMS messages, call logs or precise GPS location. If a future version of the app needs a new permission, the app will ask you at the time and this policy will be updated first.
Identifiers and tracking
The apps use a resettable advertising identifier (the IDFA on iOS, the Advertising ID on Android) and an app instance ID for analytics and crash reporting. On iOS we will only use the IDFA for tracking if you allow it through Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt — if you decline, we do not track you across other companies' apps and websites. On Android you can reset or delete the Advertising ID in Settings → Privacy → Ads.
Push notifications
Alerts are delivered through Apple Push Notification service and Firebase Cloud Messaging. We store a device push token so we can send them. Turning notifications off in your device settings, or in the app's own settings screen, stops them immediately and we delete inactive tokens. TODO: confirm which push provider ships in the build.
Deleting your app data
Uninstalling the app removes locally cached editions and offline downloads from your device. If you created an app account, you can delete it from Settings → Account → Delete account inside the app, or by emailing privacy@puthiyakural.ca. We complete account deletions within 30 days.
How we use your information
பயன்பாடு
We use personal information only for the purposes we identify when we collect it:
- to print, deliver and account for your subscription;
- to answer your message, tip or letter, and to follow up on it;
- to book, produce, publish and invoice advertising;
- to run the website and apps, keep them secure and fix crashes;
- to measure readership so we can tell advertisers, honestly, how many people read the paper;
- to send newsletters and alerts you have asked for;
- to meet legal, tax, accounting and audit obligations.
If we ever want to use your information for a new purpose, we will ask you first. Under Canada's anti-spam law (CASL), commercial email goes only to people who have consented or who have an existing business relationship with us, and every message carries a working unsubscribe link.
Advertising and analytics
விளம்பரம்
Advertising pays for the paper. Most of our advertising is sold directly to Tamil-Canadian businesses and is placed by us — those ads do not track you at all.
Where we use third-party services, they may set their own cookies or receive your device identifier and approximate location (usually the city, derived from your IP address). The services we use are:
- Analytics: TODO — e.g. Google Analytics 4, Plausible, Matomo. Delete this line if you use none.
- Ad serving: TODO — e.g. Google AdSense / Ad Manager.
- Crash reporting: TODO — e.g. Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry.
Each of those companies handles data under its own privacy policy, and we link to them from this page. We do not give them your name, address, phone number or email.
We have never sold, rented or traded reader, subscriber or advertiser lists, and we will not. If that ever changes, we will ask for your consent first — not bury it in an update.
Journalism and our sources
பத்திரிகைத் துறை
We are a newspaper, and PIPEDA does not apply to personal information collected, used or disclosed for journalistic purposes. Reporting on public life necessarily involves publishing information about people, and this policy does not give anyone a right to have accurate journalism taken down.
What that means in practice:
- Notes, recordings, correspondence and research held for a story are newsroom material, kept separately from subscriber and advertising records.
- If we promise a source confidentiality, we keep that promise. We will resist demands for source material to the full extent the law allows.
- Requests to access or delete information under section 12 do not extend to newsroom material.
- If we have published something about you that is factually wrong, that is a correction, not a privacy request. Write to the editor and we will investigate and correct the record.
Where your data is stored
சேமிப்பு
We aim to keep subscriber and reader data on servers in Canada. Some of our service providers — particularly hosting, email and app infrastructure — process data in the United States or elsewhere. TODO: name your host and its region.
When information is held outside Canada it is subject to the laws of that country, and foreign courts and law-enforcement agencies may be able to obtain access to it. We use providers who commit by contract to protections comparable to Canadian standards, and we assess the risk before sending personal information out of the country. You can ask our Privacy Officer where a particular category of your information is held.
How long we keep it
காலம்
| Information | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Contact form messages | 24 months after the matter is closed |
| Subscriber records | The subscription, plus 7 years for tax and accounting |
| Advertising and billing records | 7 years |
| Newsletter list | Until you unsubscribe |
| Web server logs | 12 months |
| App analytics and crash reports | 14 months, in aggregate |
| Published material and archives | Permanently — it is the historical record |
When a retention period ends we securely delete the information or render it anonymous.
How we protect it
பாதுகாப்பு
We protect personal information with safeguards appropriate to how sensitive it is: encrypted connections (HTTPS) across the website and apps, passwords stored only as salted hashes, access limited to the staff who need it, and physical security for the subscriber files kept at our Scarborough office.
No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that information sent over the internet is completely safe. If a breach occurs that creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the law requires, and we will keep a record of the breach.
Your rights and choices
உங்கள் உரிமைகள்
You can ask us to:
- Show you what we hold about you, and tell you how it has been used and who it has been given to;
- Correct anything inaccurate or incomplete;
- Delete your information, where we are not required to keep it;
- Withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits — note that withdrawing consent to hold your address means we cannot deliver the paper;
- Stop marketing — unsubscribe from any newsletter, or turn off push alerts in your device settings;
- Take your data with you in a structured, commonly used electronic format, where the law provides for it.
Write to privacy@puthiyakural.ca. We will confirm your identity, respond within 30 days, and tell you in writing if we need more time or if we have to refuse part of a request — with the reason and how to challenge it. There is no charge for a reasonable request.
Children
குழந்தைகள்
The website and apps are made for a general adult audience. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and our apps are not directed to children or listed in any children's category.
Young people do appear in the paper — in school, sport, temple and community coverage. Where we publish a photograph or name of a minor outside a public event, we seek a parent's or guardian's consent. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we hold information about your child that we should not, contact our Privacy Officer and we will delete it promptly.
Other sites and services
வெளி இணைப்புகள்
Our pages link to other websites — advertisers, government services, community organisations, news sources and our own social media accounts on Facebook, X and YouTube. Once you follow a link, or interact with us on a social platform, that company's privacy policy governs, not ours. We have no control over what they collect. Read their policies before sharing anything with them.
Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia
மாகாண சட்டங்கள்
Quebec. If you live in Quebec, Law 25 gives you additional rights: to be told at the time of collection why we need the information and who will use it; to ask that information about you be de-indexed or that its circulation stop where the law allows; to receive your data in a portable format; and to be told before we use any technology that identifies, locates or profiles you — and to switch that function off. We do not use automated decision-making to make decisions about readers. Our Privacy Officer, named in section 17, is the person responsible for protecting personal information for the purposes of Law 25.
Alberta and British Columbia. Each province's Personal Information Protection Act gives you broadly the same rights of access and correction described in section 12, and complaints may be made to the provincial Information and Privacy Commissioner.
Changes to this policy
திருத்தங்கள்
We update this policy when our practices, our apps or the law change. The effective date at the top always tells you which version you are reading. For a change that materially affects how we use your personal information, we will post a notice on the home page and in the app, and where the law requires it, ask for your consent again. Continuing to use the website or apps after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Contact our Privacy Officer
தொடர்பு
Questions, requests and complaints about privacy all go to the same place, and a real person answers.
Puthiya Kural Media Inc.
TODO: Privacy Officer name
Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
TODO: street address and postal code
Phone
If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to your provincial commissioner — the Commission d'accès à l'information in Quebec, the OIPC in Alberta, or the OIPC in British Columbia.
Complaints about what we have published — accuracy, fairness or a correction — go to the editor at news@puthiyakural.ca, not to the Privacy Officer.