Privacy and consent
Privacy is a condition of participation, not a commodity to waive by default
BTG Bridge is intended to let individuals contribute permitted activity, but the Bridge's ability to retrieve information is not the same as permission to commercialize it. Search logs, social engagement and apparently public posts can still contain personal information.
Proposed control baseline
- Purpose-specific consent: separate collection, private analysis and commercial release permissions.
- Minimization: obtain only categories reasonably necessary for an explained purpose.
- Third-party protections: do not sell someone else's private communications merely because a participant holds a copy.
- Sensitive exclusion: exclude credentials, banking, medical, government identifiers and similarly sensitive records by default.
- Rights and requests: clearly explain inspection, correction, deletion and withdrawal procedures, subject to lawful retention and completed contractual obligations.
- Security: encrypt protected information, separate roles, avoid public access to raw data and test incident response.
- Disclosure-risk testing: aggregates can still leak identity; test re-identification risk before publishing research results.
- Provider restrictions: honor limits in platform export or API contracts, including applicable restrictions on derived data.
Consent example
A person might permit analysis of selected shopping comparisons for a consumer-demand study. That does not authorize BTG to disclose their account identity, reuse unrelated direct messages or transfer every search query to a buyer. Consent must be granular, recorded and withdrawn for future operations where applicable.
No hidden recordings
The proposed Bridge does not rely on clandestine microphone access, phone-call interception, stealth monitoring or bypassing device protections. Any recording feature would require a clear lawful basis and the applicable permissions of affected people.
Applicable legal review
Canadian privacy obligations vary by activity, jurisdiction, entity and subject matter. British Columbia PIPA and applicable federal privacy rules require professional, fact-specific analysis. Publication of this statement does not attest that every privacy control has already been deployed or independently assessed.