Privacy Policy — how Zevo handles your data

Scope

This policy applies to Zevo, Inc. ("Zevo", "we"), to the Zevo website at getzevo.ai, to Zevo's application review software for cities and counties (the "Software"), and to the land use planning services Zevo provides to real estate developers (the "Planning services"; together, the "Service"). It explains how we handle personal information under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), applicable provincial privacy legislation, and the federal and state privacy laws that apply in the United States.

Where a city or county uses the Software, the applications and permits it receives — including the personal information of applicants — are processed by Zevo as a service provider, on the city's behalf and under its instructions; the city's own privacy policy and public-records obligations govern that information. This policy does not apply to the data practices of municipalities, third-party portals, or other services you reach through links in the Service.

Information collected

We collect only what we need to operate the Service:

Account information: name, work email, organisation, role, and authentication identifiers for city staff, applicants, and developer users.
Contact form: whether you write for City Hall or for a developer, your name, work email, city, county, or company, role, the number of residents or units a year you give us, and your message.
Application content: the development applications, permits, plans, and studies a city receives through the Software, which may contain applicants' personal information, together with the findings, comments, and decisions recorded on them.
Project content: drawings, plans, reports, correspondence, and other documents a developer or its team provides for a site or an application, together with the metadata we derive from them.
Usage data: pages and features used, actions taken on a file, timestamps, approximate location derived from IP address, browser and device type.
Communications and billing: messages you send us by email or support channels, billing contacts, and invoice records. Card details, where applicable, are handled by our payment processor and never stored by Zevo.

Information usage

We use the information described above for the following purposes, and no others:

Provide, operate, and support the Software — checking applications and permits against plans and by-laws, the applicant pre-check, compliance reports, and the review dashboard — and the Planning services, including preparing, filing, and representing applications.
Authenticate users and secure accounts.
Answer contact form enquiries, and communicate about your account, engagements, service changes, and support requests.
Improve reliability and performance, and diagnose faults.
Meet legal, tax, and audit obligations, and enforce the Terms of Service.

On AI training. Customer content is used to serve that customer: a city's applications and findings serve that city's review, and a developer's project content serves that developer's files. Where Zevo improves its jurisdiction models, it does so from public regulatory sources and de-identified, aggregated outcome signals — never by exposing one customer's content to another. The controls behind this are described under Data privacy on the Security page.

Legal bases

Where consent is the basis for processing, we obtain it at or before the point of collection and you may withdraw it at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits. Where we rely on legitimate business purposes — securing the Service, preventing abuse, meeting legal duties — we limit processing to what those purposes require.

Sharing and service providers

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for advertising purposes. We disclose information only: to service providers who process data on our behalf under written agreements (hosting, error monitoring, email delivery, payment processing); to the reviewing city or authority, where we file or transmit an application on a developer's behalf as its authorised agent, including the compliance report that accompanies the filing; where required by law, subpoena, or a lawful request from a public authority; and in connection with a merger, acquisition, or financing, subject to equivalent protection of the information.

A current list of sub-processors is available on request from hello@getzevo.ai.

Data residency

Customer content and account data are stored and processed in cloud regions in the customer's country — Canada for Canadian customers, the United States for American customers — with backups held in the same country, unless an Order states otherwise. Where a service provider operates in another country, we assess the transfer, apply contractual safeguards, and limit the data involved. See the Security page for detail.

Retention

We retain content for as long as the customer's account or engagement is active and for the period required to meet legal, audit, and contractual obligations, including the export window described in the Terms of Service. A city's content is retained, returned, or deleted as its Order and its records obligations require. On written request we delete or de-identify a developer's project content, except where retention is legally required. Backup copies age out on our normal backup cycle.

Your rights

You may request access to the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct inaccuracies, withdraw consent, or ask about our practices. Residents of US states with privacy laws have the rights those laws grant. If your information reached Zevo in an application you filed with a city, address your request to that city; we will assist it. Otherwise, write to hello@getzevo.ai and we will respond within the timeframes set by applicable law. In Canada, if you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Cookies

The website uses a small number of cookies and local storage entries — those needed to operate the site, and those that remember your mode and theme preferences. We do not use third-party advertising cookies. See Cookies on the Security page.

Children

The Service is intended for cities, counties, and businesses, and is not directed to anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Security

We protect information with encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, least-privilege authorization, and audit logging. The Security page describes our controls in detail. No system is perfectly secure; we will notify affected customers and regulators of a material breach as required by law.

Changes to this policy

We will post any change to this policy on this page and update the effective date. Where a change materially affects how we handle personal information, we will give notice through the Service or by email.

Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: hello@getzevo.ai. Zevo, Inc., Greater Vancouver Area, British Columbia, Canada.