Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 18, 2026
HomeGadgets.ca is operated by Rodrigo Madriz, a sole proprietor based in Ontario, Canada. Questions about this policy? Contact us.
What We Collect
• Traffic data (pages visited, on-site search terms, clicks) via Google Analytics 4 • Product views and on-site searches, in our own database: the product you viewed or the term you searched for, the product you opened from the results (if any), the address of the page that sent you to us, whether you are on a phone or a computer, the time, and a random value that lasts only as long as your browser tab stays open. We use it to count one visit once. It holds no name, no IP address and no user-agent string, and we discard a search that looks like an email address or a phone number • Retailer click events: when you follow a buy link we record the offer, product, retailer and price shown, the HomeGadgets page you came from, a coarse browser family (for example "Chrome"), and a pseudonymous caller identifier (explained below) • A count of visits, kept under a rotating, unlinkable key with no IP address (see Visit Counting below) • The questions and requests sent to our MCP price tool, our public price API and our on-site AI Shopping Agent. These are logged; the next sections say exactly what is kept • No account registration, no passwords and no payment-card data. We never store your IP address or your full browser user-agent string
MCP Price Tool and Public Price API: What We Log
Our MCP price tool (mcp.homegadgets.ca, used by AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT) and our public price API answer price questions directly from the HomeGadgets catalogue. They do not use a language model, and nothing sent to them is passed to Anthropic or to any other AI provider. What you type into an AI assistant is governed by that assistant’s own privacy policy; this section covers what reaches us. We log the query text of every MCP tool call in our database (table hg_mcp_usage). Each record holds: the tool called; the search text or product identifier exactly as the assistant sent it; any category, brand, filters and location supplied (a location is stored as given, which can be a postal code); the province we resolved; whether the request was inside Canada; the number of results, the best price and its retailer; how long the call took; the time; and the pseudonymous caller identifier. Every request to our API, including MCP requests, is also metered (table hg_api_usage): the endpoint, an allow-listed set of query parameters (which includes the search text), the response status and size, the time, and the pseudonymous caller identifier. These logs contain no name, email address, account, IP address or full user-agent string: we never ask for any of them and have none to attach. The search text is stored as received, though, so please do not put personal information in a question. We use these logs to see which products and regions people ask about, to find gaps in our catalogue, and to enforce usage limits.
The Pseudonymous Caller Identifier
To enforce free-use limits and tell repeat callers apart without keeping IP addresses, we reduce each caller to a short identifier: a salted SHA-256 hash of the IP address, truncated to 12 hexadecimal characters (16 for the on-site AI Shopping Agent), combined with a coarse category of client software such as "claude", "openai", "browser" or "sdk". The IP address itself is never stored. Because the number of possible IP addresses is limited, someone holding our salt and a known IP address could check whether it matches an identifier. This identifier is therefore pseudonymous rather than anonymous, and we treat it as potentially personal information. We do not use it to identify anyone, and we do not combine it with other data to do so.
Visit Counting
We count visits to this site, our public price API, our MCP price tool and our browser extension with a rotating, unlinkable key, and we store no IP address. The key is a keyed hash of the IP address and the browser user-agent string under a secret that changes every calendar month. Each month’s secret is deleted 7 days after the month ends, after which nobody, including us, can recompute that month’s keys or link them to anything. For each key we keep only the day, which of those four it visited, a count of pages or requests, and whether the visit looked like a person or an automated client. This counting sets no cookie and changes nothing about how the site works.
HomeGadgets AI - powered by Shopbutler.ai
HomeGadgets AI, our on-site Shopping Agent at /ai, is different from the MCP price tool: it uses Anthropic’s Claude to write its answers. When you ask it a question, the text you type (and, if you supply a postal code for delivery filtering, the province derived from it) is sent to Anthropic to generate the answer. We store the first 200 characters of each question, together with the model used, token counts, cost, the time and the pseudonymous caller identifier, so we can improve the agent and control its cost. A separate per-day counter keyed to the same identifier enforces the free-question limit. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, Anthropic does not train its models on the questions we send it. The agent answers strictly from publicly sourced catalogue data: it cannot see any account, payment or identity information, because we hold none.
How We Use It
• To improve the site and understand which products and categories are most useful • To find products and regions people ask about that we do not yet cover • To measure traffic sent to retailers • To rate-limit and budget the AI Shopping Agent, the MCP price tool and the public API so they stay free to use • We do not sell your data to third parties
How Long We Keep It
Question, MCP, API and click logs are kept until we delete them; we do not currently delete them on a fixed schedule. If you want a record removed, use the contact form and tell us the question text and roughly when it was asked, and we will delete the matching records.
Barcode Scanning (Camera)
The barcode scanner is opt-in: it runs only on the Scan page, and only after your browser asks you for camera permission and you grant it. The camera image is processed on your device and never uploaded. Only the decoded number is sent to us. Video frames are read by code running in your own browser and are never transmitted, stored, or seen by us. What reaches our servers is the barcode number itself, which identifies a product and not a person. We keep a record of the numbers we could not find so we know which products to add to the catalogue. That record holds the number, the outcome of the lookup, and nothing that identifies you: no IP address, no device identifier, and no account. Closing the page or pressing Escape turns the camera off.
Cookies
This site uses cookies set by Google Analytics for anonymous traffic measurement. No advertising cookies are used.
Affiliate / Referral Links
Some links on this site are affiliate (referral) links. When you click through and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This does not influence our price comparisons or the AI agent’s answers: we show and rank all retailers equally on price and deliverability.
Sub-processors / Third-Party Services
We rely on the following service providers, each acting as a sub-processor for the limited purpose noted: • Anthropic: generates answers for the on-site AI Shopping Agent only (the MCP price tool and the public API do not use it) • Supabase: database infrastructure (catalogue, prices, and the usage logs described above) • Render: hosting for our backend API, the MCP price tool and the AI agent • Vercel: hosting for the website • Cloudflare: security, caching, and performance • Google Analytics 4: traffic measurement
Contact Form
When you use our contact form, we collect your name and email address solely to respond to your inquiry. This information is not used for marketing, not shared with third parties, and retained only as long as necessary to address your request.
Your Rights
Under Canada's PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25, you have the right to request access to or deletion of any personal information we hold. We hold no names, accounts or IP addresses for visitors or API callers. The logs described above hold question text and pseudonymous identifiers that we cannot link to you on our own, so the quickest way to find your records is to tell us the question text and roughly when you asked. For questions about this policy, or to make an access or deletion request, use the contact form at homegadgets.ca/contact.