Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 1, 2026

ArtSites.ca (the "Service") is operated by Lustrio Media Inc. ("we", "us", "our"), a company based in British Columbia, Canada. This policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have. It applies to the ArtSites.ca website, the artist websites we host, and our administration tools.

We comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy legislation. Our members include artists in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere; wherever you live, we handle your personal information as described in this policy.

Information We Collect

Account and registration information. When you sign up, we collect your name, email address, password, and the name of your website. We store passwords in hashed form and cannot read them.

Billing information. We collect the information needed to bill you for the Service, including your country and, for Canadian members, your province, which we use to determine whether Canadian sales taxes apply and at what rate. Payments are made by PayPal, Interac e-Transfer, or mailed cheque:

  • If you pay by PayPal, your payment card and bank details are collected and processed by PayPal, not by us. We receive confirmation of payment and limited transaction details.
  • If you pay by Interac e-Transfer, we see the sender name and email address associated with the transfer.
  • If you pay by cheque, we receive the information printed on your cheque, including your name, address, and bank account details. Cheques are handled securely and deposited promptly, and we do not record your bank account details in our systems.

Your website content. Artwork images, text, event listings, and other content you upload to your website. This content is published publicly on your website at your direction.

Support communications. Messages you send us by email or through our support tools, including our live support chat, so we can respond and keep a record of past requests. The chat runs on our own software, on the same hosting infrastructure as the rest of the Service. It asks for your name and email address (or attaches them automatically if you are signed in to your administration panel), and shows our support agent technical context about your visit: your browser and operating system (name and version), the page you are viewing and the page you arrived from, your preferred language and time zone, your screen and browser window size, and an approximate location derived from your network (IP) address. Chat sessions are not stored on our servers: when a chat ends, the record kept is a transcript emailed to you and to us.

Technical and usage information. Like most web services, our servers automatically log information such as IP address, browser type, pages visited, and timestamps. We use this for security, troubleshooting, and aggregate statistics.

How We Use Your Information

We use your personal information to:

  • Provide, maintain, and improve the Service, including hosting your website and registering or managing your domain name
  • Process payments, calculate applicable taxes, and maintain billing records
  • Respond to support requests
  • Send you service communications such as billing notices, renewal reminders, and important technical or administrative updates
  • Send you our newsletter and other optional communications, which you can unsubscribe from at any time
  • Compile aggregate, de-identified usage statistics
  • Meet our legal obligations, including tax and accounting requirements

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your content or personal information for advertising purposes. We do not use your content or personal information to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models, and we do not provide them to third parties for that purpose.

Consent

By creating an account, you consent to the collection and use of your personal information for the purposes described above. You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions, though withdrawing consent for information we need to operate your account (such as billing details) may mean we can no longer provide the Service.

Newsletter and marketing emails are sent in accordance with Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing does not affect essential service communications like billing notices.

Who We Share Information With

We share personal information with service providers who help us operate the Service, and only to the extent needed for them to do their work. (Web fonts and JavaScript libraries loaded from Google's content networks are described under Cookies and Analytics below.)

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): hosting, file storage, content delivery, and email delivery. Some AWS infrastructure we use is located in the United States.
  • PayPal: payment processing.
  • Zendesk: our former support ticket system. We no longer use it for new support requests, but records of past support conversations remain there.
  • StatCounter: website visit statistics for our own pages.
  • Google Analytics: visit statistics for our own pages.
  • ImprovMX: for members using our free email forwarding service, forwards incoming email addressed to your domain name on to your own email address.
  • ClouDNS: DNS hosting — the system that points domain names at the websites we host.
  • ipapi.co: during a support chat, converts your network (IP) address into an approximate location (city and country) to give our support agent context. Only the IP address is sent; your name, email, and messages are not.
  • ip-api.com: converts a network (IP) address into an approximate location (country, region, and city). We use this to screen contact-form submissions on artist websites for spam, to show artists where a message came from, and to suggest your province when we need it for tax purposes. Only the IP address is sent.
  • Domain registrars: when you register or transfer a domain name through us, your registrant contact information is provided to the registrar and handled in accordance with ICANN requirements.

Because some of these providers store or process data in the United States or other countries, your personal information may be subject to the laws of those jurisdictions while in their care, including access by courts, law enforcement, and national security authorities under those laws. We use contractual and technical safeguards to require that our providers protect your information to a comparable standard.

We may also disclose personal information if required by law, such as in response to a court order or other lawful demand from a Canadian authority.

Visitors to Artist Websites

The websites we host belong to our artist members. If you contact an artist through a form on their website, sign up for an artist's mailing list (name and email address; a small number of artists also request a postal address for physical mailings), or otherwise provide them your information, that information is collected on behalf of the artist, who is responsible for how it is used, including any newsletters they send. We process it only to deliver the Service (for example, delivering a form submission to the artist by email, or storing the artist's mailing list). To reduce spam, we check the network (IP) address a form submission comes from against an IP geolocation service (ip-api.com) and use the approximate location as one signal in deciding whether a message is likely to be spam. The message itself is not sent to that service. Questions about an artist's use of your information should be directed to that artist.

If you buy an artwork through a purchase button on an artist's website, you are sent to PayPal to pay the artist directly. The sale is between you and the artist: we do not receive, process, or store your payment details, and we keep no record of the purchase.

Cookies and Analytics

We use cookies to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences. On our own website — ArtSites.ca — we use StatCounter and Google Analytics to collect visit statistics. The administration panel carries no visitor analytics. We do not use advertising cookies.

The artist websites we host carry no advertising or analytics trackers added by us. Pages load web fonts and common JavaScript libraries from Google's public content networks, which means Google receives the visitor's IP address and the page being viewed; these set no cookies. The social-media sharing links we provide are plain links: nothing loads from, and no information goes to, any social network unless you click one. A few artists have added third-party features to their own sites, which may load content from those providers.

Retention and Deletion

We keep your personal information for as long as your account is active and as needed afterward to meet legal, tax, and accounting obligations. Billing records are retained for the period required by Canadian tax law (generally six years).

If you cancel your account (or your trial ends without you becoming a member), or you ask us to delete your personal information, we will remove your account details from our active systems promptly. Your website content (such as artwork images and text) may persist for a longer period in offline backups, which we maintain for disaster recovery and archival purposes. Backup copies are not used for any other purpose and are not accessible through the Service.

Because we retain these backups, we may be able to recover your website content for you after cancellation if you ask. We have often been able to do this for former members, but we cannot guarantee recovery, and you should keep your own copies of your artwork and content. If you specifically request that your content be removed from our backups as well, contact our Privacy Officer and we will address the request to the extent reasonably practicable.

Safeguards

We protect personal information with safeguards appropriate to its sensitivity, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), hashed passwords, access controls limiting who at the Company can view your information, and secure handling of payment records.

Data Breaches

If a breach of our safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and report the breach to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, as required by PIPEDA.

Your Rights

You may:

  • Access the personal information we hold about you
  • Correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete
  • Withdraw consent to optional uses, such as the newsletter
  • Request deletion of your account and associated personal information, subject to our legal retention obligations

Most account information can be updated directly through your administration panel. For anything else, contact our Privacy Officer below. We respond to access requests within 30 days.

Children

The Service is intended for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of majority in the place where they live.

Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify account holders by email and update the date at the top of this page. Minor clarifications may be posted without individual notice.

Contact and Complaints

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for our compliance with this policy and with Canadian privacy law.

Privacy Officer
Geoffrey Meredith
Lustrio Media Inc.
Email:
Mail: PO Box 99900 VL 131 952, RPO Denman Place, Vancouver, BC V6G 0B4

If you are not satisfied with our response to a privacy concern, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca or 1-800-282-1376.

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