Privacy Policy

Personal Information Protection and Privacy

Toronto International Film Festival Inc ('TIFF') understands how important your privacy is.  We are committed to protecting your privacy and any personal information we collect about you.  The purpose of this Privacy Policy is to inform you about what personal information we collect and how and why we collect it, to outline the steps we take to keep your personal information confidential, and to provide you with contact information for the person to contact at TIFF should you have questions or concerns about our personal information protection practices. 

What is personal information?

“Personal information” is personally identifiable information such as your name, residential address and e-mail address and includes information about your product and service subscriptions and usage, credit card information and billing records.  It does not include the name, title, business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization.  

What type of personal information does TIFF collect?

TIFF collects various types of personal information. We may collect any of the following:

• Your name, billing address, email address and credit card information, including card number, card type, cardholder name and expiration date, when you purchase products or services from us such as tickets for a TIFF event or for one of our festival partners’ events.  We also obtain this information from you when who become a TIFF member or patron. 
• Personal information you provide to us when you participate in any of our events, including when you submit films or other art for inclusion in any of TIFF’s events or programs, seek credentials, special access or privileges regarding a TIFF event or program.  This personal information might include your name, profession, e-mail address, phone number, photograph, answers to specific questions, password and computer information. 
• Personal information you provide to us when you participate in any of our on-line or other meeting spaces, blogs or forums.  This personal information might include your name, profession, e-mail address, phone number, photograph, answers to specific questions, password and computer information.  The personal information you provide to us when participating in our meeting spaces, blogs or forums may be used for marketing purposes.
• Personal information you provide to us when you participate in one of our contests, sweepstakes or surveys.  This information may include your name, email address and street address, and the answers to survey questions.  The personal information you provide to us when participating in these promotions, surveys and contests may be used for marketing purposes.
• Personal information you provide to us when subscribing to our newsletters or emails or when you use our web site, including, but not limited, to when you create a “My TIFF” list at www.tiff.net.  This personal information might include your name, member/buyer identification, e-mail address, phone number and, in the case of our web site, your password and computer information.
• Your personal information from our business partners and other third parties provided they have agreed to obtain your consent before disclosing your personal information to us.
• Photographs, motion pictures and videos taken of you in public areas at TIFF events, including at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
• Certain technical information from your computer each time you request a page during a visit to our web site www.tiff.net. This information is collected from your computer's Web browser to enhance your experience on our web site and may include your IP address, operating system, Web browser software, screen resolution, and referrer Web site.
• Personal information you may provide to us when applying for a job or volunteer position with TIFF. Once we have identified information that has been submitted to us for such an application, we store it in a secure environment that is not shared or used other than for our staffing and administrative purposes.

How does TIFF collect personal information?

We collect personal information that is voluntarily provided to us by our customers, members, sponsors, web site users and the public in general when they contact us via telephone, e-mail,  web browser, or in person. 

As mentioned above, we may also collect personal information from our business partners and other third parties who have agreed to obtain the consent of the person the information pertains to before disclosing the information to us.

TIFF may also collect personal information through the following means:

• Photographs, Motion Pictures and Videos.  Photographs, motion pictures and videos taken in public areas at TIFF events including at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
• Cookies.  A cookie is a piece of data stored on a web site user's computer hard drive containing information about the user. When someone signs in at our web site as a TIFF member, we record their Member ID and name on the member account in a cookie file on their computer. We may also record their password in this cookie file if they checked the box entitled "Save this password for automatic sign-in."  The user’s Member ID, password, and the name on their member account is stored in the cookie file as encrypted data, to prevent unauthorized persons from viewing the information it contains.  Cookies automatically delete this information from our computer storage system after 24 hours, but permanent cookie files remain on the user’s computer's hard drive until they manually delete the file.  TIFF can use cookies to deliver content specific to your interests and to save your password so you don't have to re-enter it each time you visit our web site. Cookies, by themselves, cannot be used to disclose your individual identity. A cookie will identify your browser, but not you, to our computer servers when you visit our web site. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can set your browsers to refuse cookies. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may be limited in some areas of our web site.
• Web beacons.  To assess the effectiveness of promotional and marketing e-mails we send, we may attach a web beacon to the email that provides us with confirmation when the recipient opens the e-mail. This only occurs if the recipient’s computer supports such technology.

Why does TIFF collect your Personal Information?

TIFF may collect personal information about you and use it for the following reasons:

• To provide products and services to you, to inform you of screening changes and other relevant information pertaining to your purchase, to bill you when you make a purchase from us, to acknowledge your support or donation and to provide that information to the Canada Revenue Agency and to contact you when necessary for these purposes.
• To provide you with services or recognition you request. 
• To administer your submissions and applications for our programs and events.
• When you register to become a member of TIFF we use your information to create and manage your member account.     
• For marketing purposes. We may use your contact information to send you emails about promotions, surveys, contests and special events or providing other marketing information to you.  Promotional e-mails are intended to inform you of new or unique opportunities, events or special deals that are available from TIFF.  You can opt not to receive these emails from us by either clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email when you receive it or by sending an e-mail that includes your e-mail address and a request that you not receive our promotional e-mails.  In addition, we may send you postal mail notifying you of promotions, surveys, contests or special events or providing other marketing information to you.  You can unsubscribe from this postal mail service by sending an e-mail with "unsubscribe" in the subject line to [email protected] that includes your e-mail address and street address.  This information will only be used to remove your from our list of recipients of marketing emails and mail. 
• To improve the quality of your visit to our web site. We use electronic information such as “cookies” to improve your use of our web site.  We collect certain information (e.g., purchasing trends) based on your navigation of our web site to better understand and serve our customers, members and web site visitors.  This data allows us to streamline your ability to navigate our web site and develop featured programs and content that will be of interest to our customers and members and web site visitors. 
• To improve our service offerings.  We monitor and analyze the use of our service offerings in order to determine which services are popular and useful to our customers, members and web site visitors so that we can improve them.
• To better understand your interests. TIFF. also may prepare aggregated user statistics or information summaries to describe our services and their popularity to our business partners and prospective advertisers and for other lawful purposes. The aggregated user statistics and information will not contain any personally identifiable information.
• To provide a secure and safe environment for our visitors and employees.
• To co-operate with law enforcement and to protect against violations of criminal or civil laws.
• Photographic, video and film cameras are only used to (a) protect TIFF Inc., its customers and employees against security issues, including potential violations of civil and or criminal laws and (b) for our marketing purposes with respect to TIFF events and services.
• We may use your personal information to respond when you submit a question or suggestion to us, or when you request assistance with your membership, donations, viewing your purchase(s), logging on to www.tiff.net, or accessing your account from our web site.

The Disclosure of Personal Information

TIFF does not sell or rent any personal information we collect. TIFF may disclose some personal information we collect to service providers who help us provide personalised content and advertising to you.  TIFF Inc. takes steps to ensure that each of our service providers to whom we share personal information are committed to maintaining the privacy of such information as outlined in this Privacy Policy.  From time to time TIFF Inc. provides a service to our partner festivals by processing orders for tickets to their events.  We hold the personal information we collect while performing this service separate and only use it for purposes of performing these services.  We disclose this information to the partner festival for whom we performed this service, for their promotional and advertising use under their own publically available privacy policy.

How TIFF Protects Your Privacy

TIFF is committed to protecting your privacy. Security measures, such as locked filing cabinets, restricted access and the use of passwords and encryption have been adopted to protect your personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. Our employees have been trained to respect your privacy at all times.  Our employees who have access to your personal information are required to use it strictly in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable laws. 

All information submitted to our web site or email addresses is transferred to the TIFF Inc. computer servers.  During an on-line transaction, this information is submitted using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.  SSL-enabled web browsers employ a security protocol between the client and the server computer in order to ensure that information will be transferred to the intended recipient secured servers only. 

TIFF will keep your personal information only as long as it remains necessary or relevant for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or as required by law.

There are several places throughout our web site that may link you to other web sites that do not operate under TIFF's Privacy Policy.  When you click through to these web sites, TIFF's Privacy Policy no longer applies. We recommend that you examine the privacy statements of any third-party web sites you visit to understand their procedures for collecting, using, and disclosing your information.  TIFF makes no promises, warranties or representations about these third party web sites and bears no liability whatsoever for your use of them.

The internet is, by its nature, inherently open and subject to interception of information. We cannot guarantee that information you provide to us over the internet or otherwise will not be intercepted by third parties while it is being communicated by means that are outside of our control.

Your Consent

By choosing to provide us with your personal information you are consenting to its collection, use and disclosure in accordance with the principles outlined in this Privacy Policy.  If you are under the age of 18, you must not provide any personal information to us without the consent of your parent or guardian, or as otherwise provided for by applicable law. 

TIFF encourages you to review our on-line Privacy Policy on a periodic basis.  This Privacy Policy may be updated from time-to-time and your subsequent attendance at a TIFF event or TIFF Bell Lightbox, use of our services, or use our web site will be your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your information as set out in this Privacy Policy.

If you don’t want TIFF to collect, use or disclose your personal information as outlined in this Privacy Policy, please tell us at the time the information is requested or collected.  You can also contact TIFF’s privacy officer, Andree Zverina, at 416 934-5842 or by e-mail with any questions or concerns.

Verifying and Amending your Personal Information

TIFF tries to ensure that all personal information about you that is in our possession is accurate, complete and up-to-date.  To enable us to do so, please inform the person to whom you provided your personal information of any change to that information.

You can inquire about, access and review your personal information held by TIFF Inc. and make corrections to it.  Please contact our customer relations team at 416 599-TIFF or send an e-mail to Customer Relations for assistance with these matters.  If there will be any charge for responding to your request, TIFF will advise you in advance.  In some cases TIFF Inc. will be prevented from disclosing the requested information to you.  If any request you make for access to personal information is denied, we will provide you with an explanation.

Resolving Your Concerns

If you have any questions or concerns about TIFF's personal information collection, use and disclosure practices, please let us know and we will do our best to help you.  You can contact Andree Zverina, our Privacy Officer, for these purposes at 416 934-5842 or via email.