Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your information

Paramount Structural Solutions Inc. ("Paramount", "we", "us"), of Ottawa, Ontario, operates Paramount Apps (the "Portal") and is responsible for the personal information collected through it. The person in charge of the protection of personal information at Paramount is the President of Paramount Structural Solutions Inc., who can be reached at info@paramountengineeringsolutions.ca (please put "Privacy" in the subject line).

This policy explains what we collect when you register for and use the Portal and the software provided through it, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what choices you have. It applies to the Portal only; our public website may have its own notice. It forms part of, and should be read with, our Terms and Conditions.

2. What we collect

Account information you give us: your name, work email address, company or organization, and phone number (optional). Your password is stored only as a one-way cryptographic hash; we never see or keep it in readable form.

Records the Portal creates while you use it: the version of the Terms and Conditions you accepted and when; which applications you have been granted or have requested; licence and trial requests you make for the desktop applications, with any message you add to them; feedback, bug reports and suggestions you send us; and a security log of account events — registration, email verification, sign-ins and sign-outs, password changes, application launches and downloads, access requests and the administrator actions taken on your account — each with the date and time and the network (IP) address the request came from (your sign-in sessions also keep the browser type). In the engineering calculators, the log also records each calculator you open and each time you print, save, copy or download its results: the calculator, the action, the time and your network (IP) address, never the values you enter.

Emails we send you (verification, approval, access, password-reset, feedback and account notices) are kept in an email log with their subject and text so that administrators can confirm delivery and help you if a message did not arrive.

Cookies: the Portal sets one session cookie that keeps you signed in and one short-lived cookie that carries a status message between pages. It uses no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies and no third-party trackers.

Application data kept for your account: some applications run on our servers (currently ParamountSKETCH). For those, the Portal keeps, under your account only, your application settings (for example the ribbon layout) and a rolling autosave of the drawing or project you last worked on, so that it can be restored after a lost session; where an application offers it, projects and export files you choose to save to your online workspace are kept there too. This data may contain whatever you put in your drawings and projects (for example a client name or a site address in a title block). It is visible only to your account and to the administrators who maintain the server, and is never used for any other purpose.

Desktop licence records: when a downloaded application is activated with a licence key, the Portal records, against that licence, a fingerprint of the computer (a one-way hash derived from identifiers of the machine, from which the identifiers cannot be recovered), the computer name the application reports, the application version, the network (IP) address and the date and time of the latest activation and check (the application checks when it starts and about hourly while it runs). This lets us enforce the number of computers a licence covers and lets you see and release the computers your licence is active on. The application sends nothing about your models, drawings or other work.

What we do not collect: files you save or export to your own computer stay there. We do not profile you, we do not process your information with automated decision-making, and we do not use it to train artificial-intelligence systems.

3. Why we collect it

We use your information to create and administer your account and confirm that you control the email address you registered with; to decide, record and enforce which software you may use; to send you the service emails needed to operate your account; to keep the Portal secure, detect and investigate misuse and unauthorized access, and keep a record of who did what; to respond to your feedback and support requests and improve the software; to document your acceptance of the Terms and Conditions; and to comply with legal obligations and enforce our agreements.

We do not send marketing email through the Portal and we do not sell, rent or trade personal information.

4. Consent

By registering, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your information as described in this policy. Consent for the account itself cannot be separated from the service — we cannot run an account without an email address and a security log — but you can withdraw consent at any time by asking us to close your account (Section 8). Registration is intended for people acting in the course of their work; the Portal is not directed to children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

5. Who we share it with

Service providers acting on our behalf: a cloud hosting provider (currently Railway Corp.) hosts the Portal and its database, so everything in Section 2 is stored on its infrastructure; an email delivery provider (currently Resend, Inc.) transmits the emails we send you and therefore processes your email address and the content of those messages. Each provider may use the information only to provide its service to us, under its own security commitments.

Administrators: Paramount staff who administer the Portal can see account information, access records, feedback and the security log in order to approve accounts, assign software and support you.

Legal requirements: we may disclose information when required by law, court order or a lawful request by a public authority, or where necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Paramount, our users or others. If Paramount is reorganized or its business is sold, account information may be transferred to the successor, which will be bound by this policy.

6. Where your information is stored

Our hosting and email providers may store and process information on servers outside Canada, including in the United States and the European Union. While it is there, it may be accessible to the courts, law-enforcement and national-security authorities of that country under its laws. By using the Portal you acknowledge this cross-border storage and processing. We choose providers that offer contractual and technical safeguards for the data they hold for us.

7. How long we keep it

Account information, your Terms acceptance record and your software access records are kept for as long as your account exists. Sign-in sessions expire after 30 days of inactivity. Email verification and password-reset links expire after 48 hours or once used, and are then deleted.

Security-log entries are deleted automatically after 24 months. The email log keeps only the most recent 500 messages. Feedback stays until an administrator marks it handled and is deleted 24 months after that.

Application data kept for your account (Section 2) is replaced each time it is autosaved or re-saved, and anything not updated for 90 days is deleted automatically.

Desktop licence records are kept for as long as the licence exists; the record of a computer that has been released from a licence is deleted 12 months after its release.

When an account is deleted — at your request or by an administrator — the account, its sessions, its access records, its licences and their computer records, its feedback and its application data on our servers are removed immediately. Security-log entries that mention the account remain until they age out under the 24-month rule, and copies may persist for a limited time in routine database backups before those are overwritten.

8. Your rights and choices

You can see and correct your name, company and phone number, change your password and sign out other devices on the Account page at any time. You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete your account, or withdraw your consent, by emailing us at the address in Section 1. We will respond within 30 days, and we may need to confirm your identity first. Deleting your account ends your access to the software.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca). Residents of Quebec may also contact the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, and residents of other provinces their provincial privacy regulator.

9. How we protect it

All traffic to the Portal is encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are hashed with a modern key-derivation function (scrypt) and are never stored in readable form. Session cookies are marked HttpOnly and Secure; every form is protected against cross-site request forgery; sign-in attempts and registrations are rate-limited; the administration panel is restricted to administrator accounts; and the security log lets us detect and investigate unusual activity. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong, unique password and tell us at once if you believe your account has been compromised.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Portal or the law changes. The version and effective date appear at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you at your next sign-in before the change applies to you.

11. Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about privacy: info@paramountengineeringsolutions.ca, subject "Privacy". Postal address available on request and on our website.