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Published by The Business News Company of Toronto Inc.
Effective date: February 1, 2026 Last updated: July 19, 2026
We think you should be able to understand what we do with your information without a law degree. Here's the summary. The full policy follows.
We are a news publisher, not a data broker. We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information.
Advertisers never receive your personal information. Sponsors who buy ads in our newsletters get aggregate performance reporting only — total opens, total clicks, and similar figures. They do not get your name, your email address, or any list of who read or clicked.
We do not add you to anyone else's mailing list without your consent.
We track opens and clicks in our newsletters. This is standard for email publishing and it's how we know which stories land. You can limit it by turning off image loading in your email client.
We use Google Analytics, and Meta and TikTok advertising pixels on our websites. These help us understand traffic and reach new readers. You can decline them through our cookie banner.
You can unsubscribe at any time, from any email we send, using the link at the bottom.
You can ask us what we hold about you, correct it, or ask us to delete it. Details in section 10.
This Privacy Policy explains how The Business News Company of Toronto Inc. ("The Peak," "we," "us," "our") collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information.The Business News Company of Toronto Inc. 68 Claremont St, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Privacy Officer: Brett Chang
Email: [email protected]
Our Privacy Officer is accountable for our compliance with this policy and with applicable Canadian privacy law. If you have a question, a request about your information, or a complaint, that address is the fastest way to reach a person who can act on it.
This policy applies to:
readthepeak.com and its subdomains, including money.readthepeak.com (Peak Money) and games.readthepeak.com (Peak Games)
Our email newsletters, including The Peak Daily, Peak Money, and the Premium Weekend Edition
Peak Premium, our paid subscription
Our podcasts, videos, and audio-narrated articles
Our mobile application, when released
Our events, surveys, contests, referral programs, and reader correspondence
Together we call these the "Services."
What this policy does not cover. Third-party platforms we publish on — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X — operate under their own privacy policies. When you interact with us there, that platform's policy governs, not ours. We also link to third-party websites in our journalism and in advertisements. We do not control those sites.
When you subscribe to a newsletter Name When you create an account or subscribe to Peak Premium Account credentials When you register for an account Billing information When you subscribe to Peak Premium (see 3.4) Mailing address When you claim a referral prize, contest prize, or annual subscriber gift Content preferences and newsletter selections When you set or update them Survey and poll responses When you choose to respond Contest and referral entries When you enter Correspondence When you email us, reply to a newsletter, or contact support Submissions When you pitch or submit work through "Write for us" Event registration details When you register for an eventYou do not have to give us any of this. But some of it is necessary for parts of the Services to function — we cannot send you a newsletter without an email address, or ship you a prize without an address.
From our newsletters. We record whether an email was delivered, whether it was opened, and which links were clicked. This is done through a small tracking pixel and tagged links, which is standard practice in email publishing. We use it to measure which stories readers value, to report aggregate engagement to advertisers, and to identify inactive subscribers so we can stop emailing people who have lost interest.If you would rather not be counted, most email clients let you disable automatic image loading, which prevents the open pixel from firing. Link tracking only records clicks you actually make.From our websites and app. IP address, approximate location derived from IP (typically city-level), browser and device type, operating system, referring page, pages viewed, time spent, and interactions such as games played or articles read. For the mobile app, this may also include device identifiers, app version, crash diagnostics, and — if you enable them — push notification tokens.
We use cookies and similar technologies for four purposes:
Strictly necessary — keeping you logged in, remembering your cookie preferences, securing the site. These cannot be switched off.
Analytics — Google Analytics 4, to understand how people find and use our sites.
Advertising — the Meta pixel and the TikTok pixel, which let us measure the performance of ads we buy on those platforms to grow our readership, and reach similar audiences.
Functional — remembering preferences such as saved game progress.
You can accept, decline, or customize non-essential cookies through the banner shown on your first visit, and change your choice at any time at [COOKIE PREFERENCES LINK]. You can also block or delete cookies through your browser settings, though strictly necessary cookies are required for logged-in features to work.Note that the Meta and TikTok pixels are advertising tools operated by those companies. Information they collect through the pixel is also subject to their own privacy policies and, to a degree, is used for their own purposes. If you decline advertising cookies, we do not load them.
Peak Premium payments are processed by Stripe, through our publishing platform beehiiv. Your full card number never reaches our systems and we do not store it. We receive a record that a payment succeeded or failed, the subscription plan, the billing period, and a partial card identifier (such as the last four digits and card brand) for support purposes.
We do not seek out sensitive personal information — health, biometric, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or similar. Please don't send it to us in correspondence or survey responses. If you do, we will treat it as confidential and delete it when it no longer serves the purpose you sent it for.
We use personal information to:
Deliver the newsletters, podcasts, games, and articles you signed up for
Create and maintain your account, and authenticate you across our properties
Process, renew, and support your Peak Premium subscription, and fulfil subscriber benefits
Measure which of our journalism resonates, so we can make the publication better
Produce aggregate audience and campaign reporting for advertisers
Buy advertising to reach new readers, and measure whether it worked
Run contests, referral programs, giveaways, and events, and deliver prizes
Respond to your questions, complaints, and submissions
Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, spam signups, referral gaming, and security incidents
Comply with our legal obligations, including record-keeping under Canada's anti-spam legislation
We will not use your personal information for a materially new purpose without telling you and, where required, obtaining your consent.
Under Canadian law we generally need your consent to collect, use, or disclose your personal information, and under Canada's anti-spam legislation (CASL) we need consent to send you commercial email.How we get it. You give express consent when you enter your email address and subscribe. We keep records of when and how you subscribed, as CASL requires.How to withdraw it. Every email we send contains an unsubscribe link. It works, it takes effect promptly, and you do not need to give a reason or contact anyone. You can also email [email protected].Withdrawing consent for marketing email does not end your Peak Premium subscription, and it does not stop transactional messages — receipts, renewal notices, password resets, and material changes to these policies. Those are not commercial electronic messages under CASL and you cannot opt out of them while you hold an active account or subscription.Withdrawing consent may mean we can no longer provide parts of the Services. We will tell you if that's the case.
Our free newsletters are supported by advertising. Because this is the part readers most often ask about, we want to be specific.Advertisers receive: aggregate campaign metrics — the number of emails delivered, the aggregate open rate, the total number of clicks on their placement, and comparable site-level metrics. These are counts and percentages. They describe an audience, not a person.Advertisers do not receive: your email address, your name, your IP address, any subscriber list, any subscriber-level engagement data, or any means of identifying who opened or clicked. We do not sell, rent, licence, or trade subscriber lists.We do not send dedicated or standalone emails on behalf of advertisers. Sponsored placements appear inside our own newsletters, written and sent by us.We do not subscribe you to third-party newsletters or partner lists without your consent. If we ever offer a recommendation feature that shares your email address with another publisher, it will require your affirmative, informed opt-in at the moment of sharing.Sponsored content is identified as such. Advertisers do not review or influence our editorial coverage.
We disclose personal information in four situations, and no others.
We use third parties to run the business. They may process personal information on our behalf, under contract, only for the purposes we specify, and they may not use it for their own purposes.Provider What they do beehiiv Newsletter publishing, website hosting, subscriber management, subscription billing Stripe Payment processing Google (Analytics) Website analytics Meta, TikTok Advertising delivery and measurement for ads we buy [PODCAST HOST] Podcast hosting and distribution [EMAIL / SUPPORT TOOL] Responding to reader correspondence [EVENT PLATFORM] Event registration and ticketing [FULFILMENT / SHIPPING] Delivering merchandise and prizes[Confirm and complete this table before publishing — an inaccurate vendor list is worse than a general description.]
We may disclose personal information where required by law — a court order, subpoena, warrant, or regulatory demand — or where we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to investigate suspected illegal activity, protect our legal rights, or prevent harm. We apply a straightforward standard: we require lawful authority, we disclose the minimum necessary, and we do not volunteer reader information.
If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. Any acquirer would remain bound by this policy in respect of information collected under it unless and until you are notified and, where required, consent to a change.
If you ask us to share your information — for example, by entering a contest run jointly with a partner — we will, and we will tell you who receives it before you commit.
Several of our service providers, including beehiiv, Stripe, and Google, are located in the United States, and some may process or store data in other countries. When personal information is held outside Canada, it is subject to the laws of that jurisdiction, and courts, law enforcement, and regulatory authorities there may be able to compel access to it under their own legal processes.We contract with our providers to require protections comparable to those we apply ourselves. But we cannot override foreign legal process, and we would rather say so plainly than bury it.If you have questions about our cross-border practices, contact our Privacy Officer.[Internal note: Quebec's Law 25 requires a privacy impact assessment before communicating personal information outside Quebec. Confirm these are documented for beehiiv, Stripe, Google, Meta, and TikTok.]
Information Retention Newsletter subscription and email address While you are subscribed, plus [X] months after unsubscribe Record of consent and unsubscribe Minimum 3 years after the relevant message, as CASL record-keeping requires Account information While your account is active, plus [X] months Peak Premium billing records 7 years, as required by tax and accounting rules Newsletter engagement data [X] months, then aggregated or deleted Website and app analytics Per Google Analytics retention settings, currently [X] months Contest entries [X] months after the contest closes Correspondence [X] months after the matter is resolvedWhen information is no longer needed, we delete it or irreversibly anonymize it.
You have the right to:
Access the personal information we hold about you, and be told how it has been used and to whom it has been disclosed
Correct information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date
Withdraw consent, subject to legal and contractual restrictions
Delete your information, subject to our legal retention obligations
Receive a copy of the computerized personal information you gave us, in a structured, commonly used technological format, and ask us to transmit it to another organization
Complain to us, and escalate if you are not satisfied
How to exercise them. Email [email protected]. We will respond within 30 days. If we need more time, we will tell you why and when to expect an answer. We may ask you to verify your identity — we are not going to hand over someone's reading history to whoever asks for it.There is no charge for a reasonable request. If a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, we will tell you before doing anything, and explain why.If we say no. We will tell you in writing, give our reasons, and explain how to challenge the decision.
We use automated processes for routine operations — segmenting subscribers by engagement, personalizing which stories appear on our sites, detecting fraudulent signups and referral abuse.We do not make decisions based exclusively on automated processing that produce legal effects for you or otherwise significantly affect you. If that ever changes, we will inform you at or before the time of the decision, and you will have the right to submit observations and request a review by a person.
We protect personal information with measures appropriate to its sensitivity, including encryption in transit, access controls limiting staff access to what their role requires, multi-factor authentication on administrative systems, and vendor due diligence.No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise. 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 — and the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec where Quebec residents are affected — as the law requires, and we will maintain records of breaches as required.
The Services are intended for adults and are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact [email protected] and we will delete it.
If you reside in Quebec, Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (as amended by Law 25) applies to you, and you have these rights in addition to the ones above:
Confidentiality by default. Any account or profile settings we offer provide the highest level of confidentiality by default, without any action required from you.
De-indexation. You may request that we cease disseminating your personal information, or de-index any hyperlink attached to your name, where dissemination causes you serious injury to reputation or privacy, and where ceasing does not exceed what is necessary to prevent that injury. Note that this right is subject to freedom of expression and to the public's interest in access to information — as a news publisher, we assess these requests carefully and may decline where the information is of legitimate public interest.
Portability. You may request the computerized personal information you provided to us in a structured, commonly used technological format.
Complaints. You may complain to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec.
Our Privacy Officer, Brett Chang, is the person responsible for the protection of personal information under Law 25.
The Peak is a Canadian publication written for a Canadian audience, and this policy is built around Canadian law. If you access the Services from outside Canada, your information will be processed in Canada and the United States.If you reside in a jurisdiction that grants you additional privacy rights, contact [email protected] and we will consider your request in good faith and comply where we are legally required to do so.
Contact our Privacy Officer first — most issues are resolved quickly that way. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to:Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada priv.gc.ca — 1-800-282-1376Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec (Quebec residents) cai.gouv.qc.ca — 1-888-528-7741Residents of Alberta, British Columbia, and other provinces may also contact their provincial privacy commissioner.
We may update this policy. If we make a material change, we will update the "Last updated" date, post a notice on our websites, and — where the change affects how we use information you have already given us — email you before it takes effect.Continuing to use the Services after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy.
Questions: [email protected]