Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 13, 2026

Blotter ("Blotter", "we", "us") provides an incident-reporting service for the private security industry, available at getblotter.com (the "Service"). This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we use, store, and protect it, and the choices and rights you have. It is written to align with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and its ten fair information principles, and with substantially similar Canadian provincial privacy legislation.

1. The two kinds of people this policy covers

Because of what Blotter does, personal information reaches us in two distinct ways:

Our customers and their personnel. Security companies that subscribe to Blotter, and the guards, supervisors, and administrators they authorize to use it. For this information, Blotter is the collecting organization.
People described in incident reports. Reports written by our customers' personnel may describe third parties — subjects, witnesses, or others — including physical descriptions, statements, and photographs. This information is collected by the security company in the course of its duties, not by Blotter. The customer is the organization accountable for the lawful collection of that information; Blotter stores and processes it strictly on the customer's behalf and on the customer's instructions, and does not use it for any other purpose.

2. What we collect

Account and business information

Company name, and the branding (name, tagline, logo) a customer chooses to display on its report PDFs
Names and email addresses of guards, supervisors, and administrators
Passwords, stored only as salted cryptographic hashes — we cannot read them

Report content

Structured incident details (dates, times, locations, categories, officer name and ID)
Narrative text describing what happened, and follow-up addenda
Evidence photographs attached to reports, with captions and timestamps
Electronic signatures (typed name), attestation, and timestamps applied when a report is finalized, reviewed, or closed

Technical information

Standard server logs generated by our hosting infrastructure (such as IP address, request time, and pages requested), used for security and operations

We deliberately collect no more than the Service needs. We do not run advertising trackers or third-party analytics on the Service, and we do not buy, sell, rent, or trade personal information. Ever.

3. Why we collect it (identified purposes)

To operate the Service: generating, storing, retrieving, and exporting incident reports
To authenticate users and control access by role (guard, supervisor, administrator)
To maintain the integrity of the record: signatures, timestamps, and append-only follow-ups
To provide customer support and respond to inquiries
To bill for the Service and administer accounts
To protect the Service and its users: detecting abuse, misuse, and security incidents

We do not use your information for purposes beyond these without first obtaining consent.

4. AI processing — and what it does not do

When a report is generated or a follow-up is reviewed, the text provided by the author is processed by a large language model operated by Anthropic (the maker of Claude) through its commercial API, to rewrite the text into objective language or to identify missing facts. Three commitments matter here:

This processing is transient — it is used to produce the draft and is not part of our stored record beyond the resulting report text.
Under the API terms we rely on, content submitted this way is not used to train AI models.
The AI never adds facts. It rewrites what the author wrote or asks the author questions; the author reviews and certifies the final text.

5. Where your information is stored

The Service is hosted on infrastructure operated by Netlify, with data stored in a managed PostgreSQL database (Neon), currently located in the United States. AI processing by Anthropic also occurs in the United States. This means personal information handled by the Service is stored and processed outside Canada and may be subject to the laws of the jurisdictions where it is held, including lawful access by authorities in those jurisdictions.

We use contractual and technical safeguards with our service providers to require a level of protection comparable to this policy. Customers who require Canadian data residency should contact us at support@getblotter.com to discuss options.

6. Who we share information with

We share personal information only with the service providers required to run the Service:

Netlify — application hosting and managed database infrastructure
Anthropic — transient AI text processing, as described above
Google Fonts — our public marketing pages load typefaces from Google's servers, which receive standard web-request data such as your IP address

Beyond service providers, we disclose personal information only if required by law (for example, a court order or other lawful demand), or with consent. Within the Service itself, report content is visible according to role: report authors see their own reports, and supervisors and administrators of the same company see their company's reports.

7. Retention — and why reports are different

Incident reports exist to serve as reliable records, sometimes years after the fact. Finalized reports are therefore append-only by design: their content is locked at signature, and later information is added as attributed, timestamped addenda. We retain report records for as long as the customer's account remains active, because premature deletion would defeat the evidentiary purpose for which customers use the Service.

Customers may export their complete report history at any time.
On account closure, we will provide a full export on request and then delete the customer's data from the active Service within a reasonable period, except where we are legally required to retain it.
Account information is retained while the account is active and deleted after closure on the same basis.

8. Safeguards

All connections to the Service are encrypted in transit (TLS/HTTPS)
Passwords are stored as salted scrypt hashes, never in readable form
AI processing credentials are held server-side only and are never exposed to browsers
Access to report data is segregated by company and controlled by role
Finalized records cannot be silently edited — changes are structurally impossible; additions are attributed and timestamped

9. Breach notification

If a breach of security safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to an individual, we will notify affected customers and individuals as soon as feasible and report to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, as required by PIPEDA's breach-reporting provisions, and we will keep records of all breaches.

10. Your rights: access, correction, and withdrawal of consent

Customers and their personnel may request access to, or correction of, their personal information by contacting us at support@getblotter.com.
Individuals described in an incident report should direct access or correction requests to the security company that authored the report, which is the organization accountable for that information. We will assist our customers in responding to such requests. Note that the correction of a finalized report takes the form of an attributed addendum, preserving the integrity of the original record.
Consent may be withdrawn subject to legal and contractual restrictions; withdrawing consent that is necessary for the Service may mean we can no longer provide it.

11. Cookies and local storage

The Service uses browser session storage to keep you signed in and local storage to save unfinished report drafts on your own device. We do not use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking.

12. Children

The Service is a business tool and is not directed at or intended for use by children.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will post the updated version here with a new "last updated" date, and for material changes we will notify customers by email before the changes take effect.

14. Contact and complaints

Questions, access requests, and complaints can be directed to our privacy contact at support@getblotter.com. We will investigate every complaint and respond. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

This policy describes our practices in plain language and is intended to align with PIPEDA. It does not constitute legal advice to you, and nothing in it creates rights or obligations beyond those in applicable law and our agreements with customers.