Privacy policy

Last updated: September 23, 2026

The short version

• The chat assistant's ready-made answers are worked out in your browser. While you use them, nothing you type leaves your browser tab.
• Only if you tap "Ask the AI helper" does your question go to Google's Gemini service, with some personal details masked. On the free Gemini service we use, Google may use it to improve its products, and people at Google may read it. So please don't share personal, account or payment details in the chat.
• Our chat records hold a code that changes every day instead of your IP address, and never the text you type, apart from masked copies of questions sent to the AI helper, kept for 30 days.
• The conversation is kept in your browser tab and is deleted when you close it.
• You can ask us what we hold about you, or to correct it, at [email protected].

Who we are

Prep Buddies is an Amazon FBA prep center in London, Ontario, and runs this website, prepbuddies.ca. We are responsible for the personal information we collect through it.

For any question or request about your personal information, email [email protected], message us on WhatsApp at +1 (519) 697-1473, or call +1 (519) 697-1473. Our contact page has our hours.

What this policy covers

This policy covers our website, prepbuddies.ca, and the Prep Buddy chat assistant on its pages. The customer dashboard that our Log in and Sign up buttons lead to, at prepbuddies.prepbusiness.com, is a separate site. If you have a question about the information in your customer account, contact us.

Our website is for businesses, mostly Amazon sellers. It isn't meant for anyone under 18.

The chat assistant

Prep Buddy, the chat assistant in the corner of our pages, is an automated assistant, not a person. Its ready-made answers come from our published pages and are worked out in your browser. While you get ready-made answers, nothing you type is sent to us or to anyone else.

What you type only leaves your browser when you choose it: when you tap "Ask the AI helper" (see the AI helper), or when you tap the WhatsApp or Email button and send the message yourself (see WhatsApp, email and phone).

Before it offers the AI helper, the assistant may ask our server whether the helper is available right now. That request carries none of your text. Our server records it like any other chat request (see what our server records).

Please don't type personal, account or payment details into the chat.

The AI helper (Google Gemini)

When the ready-made answers can't help, the assistant may offer to pass your question to our AI helper. It is only used if you tap "Ask the AI helper". That tap is your consent for the rest of the conversation: later questions that the ready-made answers can't handle go to the AI helper too, until you tap Start over or close the tab. Answers from the AI helper are marked as AI-generated, and they can be wrong.

What is sent, and where

Your question goes to our server, which passes it to Google's Gemini API to write an answer. So that the answer fits the conversation, up to a few earlier messages from the same conversation go with it, along with the name of the page you're on and which ready-made answers you were just shown. Our server makes the request to Google itself, so Google receives our server's address, not your IP address.

What we mask first

Before anything goes to Google, our server replaces these with placeholders such as [email]:

• email addresses and phone numbers (other than ours)
• street addresses and postal codes
• Amazon order numbers, FBA shipment IDs, seller IDs and carrier tracking numbers
• names that follow phrases such as "my name is"

A message that contains a card number, a social insurance number, a password or something that looks like an access key is not sent to Google at all, and our server does not record it. Masking is automatic and can miss things, such as a company name or a name written another way, so please leave out personal, account and payment details.

What Google does with it

We use the free (unpaid) Gemini API service. Under Google's terms for that service:

• Google uses what we send, and the answers it generates, to provide, improve and develop its products, services and machine-learning technologies.
• Human reviewers at Google may read, annotate and process it.
• Google keeps it for 55 days to watch for misuse of its service. How long Google keeps it for its other purposes is set by Google, not by us, and once it's sent we can't take it back.
• Google may process and store it outside Canada, where it may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of other countries.

Google describes this in the Gemini API Additional Terms of Service and the Google Privacy Policy.

Who can use it, and where

The AI helper is for adults: Google's terms for this service require users to be 18 or older.

Google's free service may not be offered to people in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, so the AI helper isn't offered when our network reports that you're connecting from one of those places. The ready-made answers still work there. If our network can't tell where you're connecting from, the AI helper may still be offered, so if you are in one of those places, please don't use it.

The AI helper has daily limits and we can switch it off at any time. When it isn't available, the assistant offers WhatsApp, email or a phone call instead.

What our server records

The ready-made answers never contact our server. For each request the chat does make to our server (the availability check and questions for the AI helper), our server writes one record with:

• the time, the kind of request and how it was handled, for example answered, blocked or rate-limited
• a code made from your IP address with a secret key, which changes every day, so that we can apply limits to each visitor without keeping the address itself
• a code made from the chat's session number
• your country code, as reported by our network
• the page you were on, which AI model answered, how long it took and how much of Google's service it used

These records never contain your IP address itself or the text of your messages. Our server uses your IP address only while it handles each request, to apply those limits. The records are kept outside the public part of our website, for 30 days. Records of blocked or abusive requests are kept for up to 90 days to protect the service. Counters used for rate limits expire on their own within about a day.

Questions the ready-made answers couldn't handle

To write better ready-made answers, we may keep a copy of questions that were sent to the AI helper, masked as described above and cut to 200 characters, with how each was handled and the page it was asked on. We keep these copies for 30 days and use them only to improve the assistant.

Where our website is hosted

Our website, including these records, is run by a web hosting company whose servers may be outside Canada. Like almost every website, the companies that host our website and deliver it to you may keep standard access logs, which include IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting, for periods they set.

Your browser: storage and cookies

The chat keeps your conversation in your browser's session storage for that tab, so that it follows you from page to page. If the assistant has checked on the AI helper, a session code from our server (valid for 2 hours) and your answer to "Ask the AI helper" are kept there too. Your browser deletes all of this when you close the tab, although a browser that reopens closed tabs may bring it back with the tab. Start over clears it, and a conversation left idle for 30 minutes starts fresh. The chat doesn't use cookies or any longer-lasting storage.

Our pages don't set cookies of their own. Google Analytics, when it is switched on (below), sets Google's cookies. The companies that host our website and deliver it to you may set a cookie that is strictly needed for security, for example to tell people from automated traffic.

Our pages load their fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser connects to Google, which receives your IP address and browser details under its own privacy policy.

Google Analytics

Our pages are set up to use Google Analytics 4, Google's website statistics service. When it is switched on, it uses cookies and collects information such as the pages you visit, how you arrived, your device and browser and your approximate location, and gives us statistics about how our site is used. Google handles this information under its own privacy policy.

The chat assistant reports events to Google Analytics, such as the chat being opened, which ready-made answer was shown, which button was tapped and whether an answer was rated helpful, each with a random number for that conversation. These events never include what you type. Some other buttons and forms on our pages report that they were used, never what you entered.

To stop this, you can block cookies for our site in your browser settings, or use Google's opt-out browser add-on for Google Analytics.

WhatsApp, email and phone

The chat's WhatsApp, Email and Call buttons open WhatsApp, your email app or your phone. The WhatsApp and Email buttons start a message with your last question in it, up to 200 characters, with any card number, social insurance number or password taken out. Nothing is sent until you send it yourself, and you can change or delete the text first. WhatsApp, your email provider and your phone company handle these messages under their own terms and privacy policies.

When you contact us by WhatsApp, email or phone, we use what you send to answer you and, if you become a customer, to work with you.

How long we keep information

Your choices and rights

Under Canada's federal private-sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), you can:

• ask whether we hold personal information about you, what it is, how we have used it and who we have given it to
• ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete
• withdraw your consent: stop using the AI helper (tap Start over or close the tab), block Google Analytics cookies, or ask us to stop using information we hold about you

Email [email protected] and we will answer within 30 days, as the law requires. Because our chat records don't store your IP address or your name, and keep questions only in masked form, we usually can't tell which records are yours. If you tell us roughly when you used the AI helper and what you asked, we will look. Anything already sent to Google can't be recalled; Google handles it under its own terms.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Changes to this policy

When we change how we handle personal information, we will update this page and the date at the top.