Your privacy at Utilities Kingston
Introduction
Utilities Kingston wants to make sure your privacy is protected at all times. It is important to us that you understand why we collect information about you, what we do with it, how we look after it, and how we dispose of it when we no longer need to have it.
We also have a Privacy Officer, whose job is to make sure that all employees at Utilities Kingston, and any third parties we have hired to work for us, follow the same privacy rules and protect your privacy at all times.
To see all the ways we use your information, and for further details on our privacy commitment to you, please visit our privacy policy.
What we collect
When you open an account with us, we will ask you for different kinds of information about you. These include:
- Your name and address
- Your phone number and email address
- Address where service is needed (if different from the address where you live)
- Your date of birth
- Your mother’s maiden name
- Your driver’s licence number
- Banking information
We ask for your name and address, phone number and email address so we can send you bills for the services we provide and so we can get in touch with you if we need to.
We ask for your date of birth to make sure you are old enough to legally open an account with us.
We ask for your mother’s maiden name to use as a “shared secret” when you call or email us. To protect your privacy, we need to be sure that we are not sharing details about your account with someone who should not have that information. So we ask you for a piece of information that only you would know.
We ask for your driver’s licence number as a piece of ID to prove your identity. And we ask for banking information if you want to sign up for a pre-authorized payment plan.
How we use your information
Once we have these facts about you, we open your account. The only people at Utilities Kingston who see your information are those employees who need to see it to do their jobs. All employees who work with customers’ information have been trained and understand the privacy rules and why they are important.
Your information is protected while it is with us. If we have paper files about you, they are stored in locked filing cabinets. If the information is electronic, it is protected by security firewalls. Employees who need to see it must log in with a user name and a password.
If we hire an outside company to do work for us, we make sure that company understands our privacy rules and why they are important. Anyone doing work for us who does not work at Utilities Kingston has to sign a contract that includes our privacy rules as part of the agreement. Those companies and organizations only see the information they need to do the job we have hired them to do.
For example, we work with the City of Kingston to provide services to you. The City of Kingston provides our customer service so when you call our customer service centre about your account, you are actually speaking to a City of Kingston employee. The same privacy rules apply to both the City of Kingston and Utilities Kingston and our agreement with the City includes those privacy rules.
To see all the ways we use your information, and for further details on our privacy commitment to you, please visit our privacy policy.
Disposing of personal information
If you close your account with us, we have to keep the information about your file for a number of years, as set out by our energy regulator. Once that time is up, we dispose of your information in ways that mean no one else can see it or use it again. Paper files are shredded securely; electronic files are disposed of in compliance with our security policy.
If you have any questions about these privacy standards, or about your information in particular, please contact our privacy officer:
- By telephone to 613-546-1181 extension 2492
- In writing to Privacy Officer, Utilities Kingston, P.O. Box 790, Kingston ON K7L 4X7
- By email to yourprivacy@utilitieskingston.com