The game, in plain English

Privacy Policy

Your @ and your city show up in the game by default once your house is created, by a comment on our post or by a direct message. You can withdraw your consent and ask us to remove them at any time. We never publish the text of DMs, and we don't sell your personal information.

Who runs the game

Canada Brick by Brick is run by Nicolas Kai, an individual based in Brazil, who is accountable for your personal information and is the person in charge of its protection (our privacy officer). The game's Instagram account is @canadabrickbybrick. Our servers are outside Canada, in the United States. Questions and requests: email [email protected] or send a direct message (DM) to @canadabrickbybrick. Last updated: November 12, 2026.

We follow Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and, for people in Quebec, the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as amended by Law 25.

What we collect and why

• Public comments on our posts: your @, the account and comment IDs, the text and the time. We use them to find your city, build your house, count points and avoid counting anything twice. If a comment includes an email address or a phone number, we strip it out before saving the text.
• Stories in comments: if a comment tells a story, we may keep it to retell it in a video. See Stories.
• DMs: we receive messages with your city and province, requests about your data and support messages. We use the content and your @ to answer and to identify your participation in the game. The text of a DM isn't published on the site or in videos.
• Story mentions of our page: we record only that the mention happened and its date, for scoring, without collecting photos or story content.
• Follower count: background information for game integrity. It gives no points and isn't published.

This information comes from Instagram (Meta), from what you post. We read comments through Instagram's official tools. When needed, we check them again or import them by hand. We keep the history to check scores, fix errors and prevent abuse.

We don't collect passwords, email addresses (unless you write to us by email), phone numbers, photos, device location or the list of accounts you follow. Our web server sees your IP address to deliver the page; our logs don't keep it. Your city comes from your comment on a post or from the city and province you send by direct message, not from GPS. If you DM us, we use your @ and your message to handle your house, data or support request. How long we keep it is in “How long we keep things”.

Your consent

When you comment your city on one of our posts or DM it to us, you agree that we use your @ and your city to build your house and show them in the game, as this policy explains. Commenting doesn't mean you agree to every use: we use your data only for the purposes listed here, and we ask again before any new purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time by asking us to delete your data (see Delete my data); your house then leaves the game.

Instagram data we read

You never log in to Canada Brick by Brick with Instagram. We use Meta's official tools, with the permissions shown in our app settings, only on our own Instagram account:

• Comments on our posts: your @, your Instagram account ID, the text and the time.
• Direct messages you send to our account: your @, your ID and the message.
• Mentions of our account in your stories: only that the mention happened, and when. We don't keep the photo or video.
• Basic public data about our own account and posts.

We don't read your feed, your followers or following lists, your other messages, or stories that don't mention us. We use this data only to run the game as described here. We don't sell it, we don't use it for advertising, and we don't give it to data brokers. If you ask us to delete your data, we do. Meta's own policies apply to what Meta holds.

What other people can see

The site and the game's videos can show your @, your city, your province, the city's Statistics Canada code (its census subdivision), whether your house is settled, your house level, your total points, this week's points, this week's points by category, the founder badge, your office, your leaderboard positions and the date you joined. This data also makes up the public files that feed the map. If you share a story in a comment and we approve it, a video can also retell it with your @ (see Stories).

We never publish internal or Instagram IDs, the text of comments or DMs, who voted for whom, who you tagged and who tagged you, your old @s, the exact time you joined, points of people who don't have a house yet, the full history of point categories, spam or fraud flags, whether an account is suspended, why someone was hidden as a minor or deleted, story photos or videos, whether you follow our page, or the internal record that keeps a deleted account from coming back. Your original comment stays subject to Instagram's rules and settings.

Stories

Some comments on our posts tell a story: on a post where we ask for stories, with #mystory, or in a longer comment. We may retell some of these stories in animated videos on our social media accounts, with your @. A person reads each story before it goes into a video, and we don't retell stories of anyone under 18.

By sharing your story in a comment, you allow Canada Brick by Brick to retell it in an animated video with your @. You can ask us to remove it at any time.

What we keep

• the text of the comment and your @;
• the comment ID, the post ID and the date of the comment;
• whether you have a house on the map, and its city;
• whether you follow our account, which we check by hand;
• the status of our review and an internal note.

The text, your @ and the note stay in our private panel. They don't go to the site or to the public files that feed the map.

How long we keep it

• Waiting for review: if we don't review a story, we delete it ninety days after the comment.
• Declined: we delete the text, your @ and the note within thirty days. We keep only the comment ID, so the same comment doesn't come back to the queue.
• Approved or made into a video: kept for up to twelve months after we approve it.

Removing your story

Email [email protected] or DM @canadabrickbybrick and ask us to remove your story. It leaves the queue and any future video right away. Your stories are also deleted if you withdraw your consent, if you ask us to delete your data (see Delete my data) or if you're under 18.

How long we keep things

• Active players: your house, @, points and history stay while you play.
• Deleted players: see Delete my data. We don't keep long-term backups; any backup copy is deleted within 30 days.
• Comments and DMs: the ones we use for the game stay while you play, until you ask us to delete them. Incoming messages we don't use are deleted within 24 hours.
• Stories: see Stories.
• Server logs: they don't record your IP address, your @ or your messages. Web server logs are deleted after about 15 days.

When we no longer need personal information for the purposes above, we delete it or make it anonymous.

How we use your data

We use the data to run the house you asked for, keep score, publish the results, retell the stories you share in comments (see “Stories”) and protect the game against abuse.

Site analytics and ads

The public site doesn't use analytics tools or ad pixels, and no third party sets cookies on it. If that changes, we'll update this policy before it happens and give you a way to say no.

We don't sell your data

We don't sell personal information. We never give Meta or Google your @, your comments or your DMs. We don't collect sensitive information such as precise location, government ID numbers or passwords.

We use service providers that handle data only for us and under our instructions: our hosting provider (servers in the United States). Instagram/Meta is the source of most of the data.

Storage, access and security

Private data lives in our database and event log, with access limited to the team. The public files sit with our hosting provider, on servers in the United States. Instagram/Meta is the source of the data and also publishes the original comment.

While you play, we keep what your participation needs. When you ask us to delete your data, the timeline is on the deletion page: we act within 30 days, usually much sooner. Copies someone else already downloaded are out of our reach. An internal record remains so the house doesn't come back. It keeps only the Instagram ID, the final status, the moment the exit took effect and a request code with no other data. Anyone who asked for deletion, or whose account Instagram deleted, doesn't come back. We protect the data with safeguards suited to how sensitive it is, but we can't promise absolute security.

If something goes wrong

We keep a record of every breach of security safeguards (a “confidentiality incident” under Quebec law) involving personal information. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and tell you as soon as we can. If it involves people in Quebec and presents a risk of serious injury, we also report it to the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec. We take steps right away to reduce the harm and stop it from happening again.

Cookies and storage

The public site doesn't set cookies, and no third party sets cookies on it.

The site saves a few small items in your browser (local storage), only to make it work for you:

• whether you've seen the first-visit tip;
• the @ you marked as “my house” and some numbers from your last visit, to show what changed;
• which @s we already celebrated on this device (up to 8);
• when you postponed the “install” prompt;
• for the current tab only (session storage), which new houses already appeared in the live view.

This stays on your device; we never receive it. You can clear it in your browser settings. Admin pages use security cookies (HttpOnly, session only); visitors don't get them.

Children and minors

Canada Brick by Brick is for people 18 and older and isn't directed to children. In Quebec, the law requires a parent's or guardian's consent to collect personal information about a child under 14; we don't rely on that consent, because the game isn't open to anyone under 18. If a comment or DM tells us the person is under 18, we never create a house for them. Within about 5 minutes we remove them from the site and delete their comment or message text, their @ and their history from our database. We keep only their numeric Instagram account ID, the date and a status flag, so they aren't added again, plus a one-way scrambled copy of their @ used only to recognize them if they comment again. At the same time we ask Instagram to hide the comments of theirs that we had already read on our posts. Hiding isn't deleting: after that, only they and our page can see those comments, and they can still delete them or report them to Instagram. We don't hide their DMs, comments by other people that mention them, or a new comment they post after that, which we discard when it arrives. Parents or guardians: email [email protected] or DM @canadabrickbybrick with the account's @ and we will delete what we hold.

Your privacy rights

Wherever you live, you can:

• Access: know what we have about you, where it came from, how we use it and who gets it, and get a copy.
• Correct: ask us to fix wrong or incomplete data, like a city matched by mistake.
• Withdraw consent: stop taking part at any time; we then delete your data as described in Delete my data.
• Stop showing your information: ask us to take your @ or city off the map and the public files.
• Portability: get the data you gave us in a structured, commonly used format.
• Complain: to us first, and then to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or, in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec.

Using these rights is free, and we won't treat you worse for using them.

How to ask

Email [email protected] or DM @canadabrickbybrick. We answer within 30 days. If we need more time, we tell you why before the deadline and how much longer it will take. We check it's you only as much as needed (for example, a DM from the account, or a reply to the email). Someone you authorize can ask for you. If you disagree with our answer, write back and a person reviews it.

Where your data is processed

Canada Brick by Brick is run from Brazil. Our servers are in the United States. Your data is stored outside Canada, in the United States, and also accessed by the operator in Brazil to run the game and answer requests. While it is there, it is subject to the laws of those countries, and their courts, law enforcement and national security authorities may be able to access it. We use the same protections described in this policy wherever the data is.

Changes to this policy

We'll post any changes on this page with a new date. Changes to why we use data or what we publish get a new review before they take effect.