The Canadian Institute for Exotic Science runs as a largely static publication. The one place it collects information from readers is the feedback form — the box that lets you flag an error, suggest something, or challenge how a claim is flagged. This note describes exactly what that form collects and what happens to it. It is written to meet the substance of Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), not merely to gesture at it.
What we collect
When you submit feedback, we store only:
- Your message and the kind of feedback you chose (issue, suggestion, praise, correction, or flag-challenge).
- For a flag-challenge, the claim reference you optionally provide — which claim, and what flag you think it should carry.
- The page the feedback was sent from, so we know which part of the path a comment is about.
- Your email address — only if you choose to enter it. It is optional, and used only to reply to you.
- A minimal, non-identifying referrer path (which internal page linked you here), when available.
What we deliberately do not collect
We do not store your IP address. We do not set analytics or advertising cookies, we do not use third-party trackers, and we do not build a profile of you. A short-lived, one-way hash of your network address is used only in the moment to rate-limit spam, and is never written to the database or logged. If you leave the email field blank, we hold nothing that identifies you.
Why we collect it, and your consent
The purpose is narrow and stated at the point of submission: to improve the site — to find where the learning path loses people, and to correct or re-flag claims readers challenge — and, if you supply an email, to reply to you. Submitting the form is your consent to store the message for that purpose. Providing an email is a separate, optional consent to being contacted. You are never required to identify yourself to send feedback.
How long we keep it
Feedback is retained only as long as it is useful for acting on it and tracking whether the underlying issue was resolved — as a rule of thumb, up to 24 months, after which entries are reviewed and cleared unless there is a specific reason to keep a given item. Email addresses attached to resolved items are removed at that review.
How to see or delete your feedback
You can ask us to delete feedback you sent, or tell us what we hold that is associated with your email, at any time. Write to connect@instituteforexoticscience.ca with enough detail to identify the entry (for example, the approximate date and the page it was about, or the email you used). We will remove it and confirm. Because we store so little, and no IP or account, honouring these requests is straightforward.
Where the data lives
Feedback is stored in a database hosted by Supabase, on infrastructure that keeps it private: the table cannot be read publicly, and readers have no direct write access to it — submissions pass through a single validating endpoint. Only the Institute can read the collected feedback. Data may be processed on servers outside Canada by that provider; by submitting, you consent to that transfer for the purpose above.
Changes to this note
If the Institute begins collecting anything beyond what is described here — for instance when reader accounts arrive in a later release — this note will be updated first, and the change described. Questions about privacy can go to the same address: connect@instituteforexoticscience.ca.