Built for PIPEDA
PIPEDA-aligned
Distronode Corporation • Last Updated: October 8, 2026
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01. What "Built for PIPEDA" Means
District AI is built for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), the federal law that governs how private-sector organizations in Canada collect, use, and disclose personal information. Being "built for PIPEDA" means our design decisions map to the law's ten fair information principles, which we describe below.
A note on wording
There is no government body that certifies a product as "PIPEDA compliant," and no such certification exists. For that reason we do not describe District AI as "PIPEDA compliant" or "PIPEDA certified." We say "built for PIPEDA" and "PIPEDA-aligned" instead, because those describe what we actually do rather than implying an approval that no one issues.
Under PIPEDA, compliance is a shared responsibility. We handle personal information as a service provider on behalf of the businesses that use District AI, and each business remains accountable for its own use of the tool with its callers.
02. The 10 Fair Information Principles in Practice
PIPEDA is organized around ten principles set out in Schedule 1 of the Act. Here is how District AI implements each one.
| Principle | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| 01 Accountability | Distronode Corporation is a Canadian corporation, federally incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. We remain responsible for the personal information under our control, including information handled by the sub-processors that run the platform. Sean Dean, our founder and CEO, serves as the individual accountable for privacy and can be reached at legal@distronode.com. We sign written agreements with every sub-processor requiring comparable safeguards. |
| 02 Identifying Purposes | We collect personal information for clear, stated purposes: answering and routing calls, transcribing and summarizing conversations, keeping a business's contact records up to date inside its workspace, sending notifications, and billing. When a business connects District AI to a phone number, the purpose of the call handling is set by that business, and we process caller information only to deliver that service. |
| 03 Consent | Businesses author their receptionist's greeting, and a workspace setting has the assistant say at the start of every call that it is an automated assistant, so callers have meaningful notice before they continue. The setting is on by default for Canadian workspaces, and European workspaces cannot turn it off. The assistant confirms plainly that it is automated if a caller asks. Businesses control their own consent and notice settings, and account holders consent to our processing when they sign up. Consent can be withdrawn, subject to legal and contractual limits. |
| 04 Limiting Collection | We collect only what a business needs to run its receptionist: caller phone numbers, the call audio while a call is in progress (it is transcribed, not stored), transcripts, contact records, and the details a caller chooses to share. Lead enrichment that adds business firmographic data is opt-in per workspace, not on by default. |
| 05 Limiting Use, Disclosure, and Retention | Customer content stays inside the business's private workspace and is enforced at the database with row-level security, so one tenant cannot read another's data. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use your content to train public or foundational AI models. A call leaves a call record, a transcript, and an AI summary rather than an audio recording, and account data is deleted or returned on request. |
| 06 Accuracy | Contact and CRM records can be viewed and corrected by the business at any time from the dashboard. Where an account holder tells us a record is inaccurate, we correct it and, where relevant, pass the correction to the workspace that holds it. |
| 07 Safeguards | Data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2 or higher). Database storage is encrypted at rest by the provider hosting that region, and stored telephony and messaging credentials get a second layer through Google Cloud KMS. Tenant isolation is enforced by PostgreSQL row-level security, secrets live in a managed secret store, and rate limiting and firewall rules sit in front of authentication endpoints. Access to production is scoped and least-privilege. |
| 08 Openness | Our practices are written in plain language across this compliance area: the privacy policy, this page, the sub-processor list, and the data residency map. We tell you where data is stored and processed rather than rounding up to a claim we cannot stand behind. |
| 09 Individual Access | Individuals can ask what personal information we hold, request a copy, and ask for corrections. Account holders can export workspace data from the dashboard, and anyone can reach us at legal@distronode.com to make an access request. We respond within the timelines PIPEDA sets. |
| 10 Challenging Compliance | If you have a concern about how we handle personal information, contact legal@distronode.com and we will investigate and respond. You also have the right to complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and, for Quebec personal information, to the Commission d'acces a l'information. |
03. Where Your Data Lives
PIPEDA does not require Canadian servers. It holds an organization accountable for information wherever it is processed, through contractual and organizational safeguards; a vendor who says otherwise is misreading the law.
For a Canadian workspace, records (contacts, call records, transcripts and messages) are stored in Montreal on Amazon Web Services (ca-central-1). The language model runs in Montreal on every voice engine except the realtime one, which runs in the United States. New Canadian workspaces start on an all-Canadian engine, speech included. Other engines are labelled with the region every leg runs in.
Calls on the numbers we issue a Canadian workspace, and on any Canadian number we issue through Telnyx, are answered in Montreal both ways, though a call carried by Twilio passes through the United States first; a number on your own carrier account is answered in the United States. Support requests sit on our desk in Canada. Registration documents for regulated countries stay in your region, and go to the carrier's compliance service in the United States when submitted.
We never claim that your data never leaves Canada, because it would not be true.
04. Exercising Your Rights
Under PIPEDA you can ask what personal information we hold about you, request a copy, ask us to correct it, and withdraw consent subject to legal and contractual limits. Account holders can export workspace data directly from the dashboard. For anything else, email us and we will help.
If your personal information was collected by a business through its own District AI receptionist, that business controls the record. We will route your request to the right workspace or tell you who to contact.
05. Accountability & Contact
The individual accountable for privacy at Distronode Corporation is Sean Dean. To make an access request or raise a concern:
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