Find an Open CourtFrançaisPrivacy policy
Who operates this service
AAB operates Find an Open Court. For privacy questions, access or deletion requests, contact support@findanopencourt.ca. Updated September 13, 2026.
Browsing and location
You can open the directory and search for courts without granting location permission. City and park searches run on your device. A search for a postal code or street address is sent from your device to the Government of Canada’s Geolocator service (Natural Resources Canada) to find that location; for a postal code, only the first three characters are sent. That service can see your IP address, as any website you connect to can, and we do not add any identifier. If you choose to use your foreground location, the app uses a current device location to show courts within your selected radius and to sort results by distance. In read-only web directory mode, this calculation stays on your device and exact coordinates are not sent to us. If you submit a mobile availability report, your current coordinates, accuracy and timestamp are sent securely to our backend to check that the report is near the selected venue and recent. We do not use background location. Hosting and service providers may process IP addresses and technical logs to operate and protect the service.
Reporting and photos
Reporting is optional. If you choose it, anonymous Firebase authentication and app attestation help protect the reporting service. The mobile app captures a photo only after camera permission. The photo is sent securely to the backend and processed immediately by Google Cloud Vision to check whether it shows an appropriate court image. We do not save submitted photos in Firebase Storage or publish them. Image bytes are cleared after processing; the temporary camera file is deleted after it is read where possible. No camera access occurs in the read-only web directory.
What we store and why
To provide live availability and prevent abuse, Cloud Firestore stores limited reporting data: a pseudonymous Firebase identifier associated with a report and its abuse controls; short-lived report session state; accepted report metadata such as the venue, occupied count, timestamps, expiry, derived distance and accuracy, validation result, confidence and an exact-image duplicate-detection hash; short-lived consensus observations; and the current public venue status. Exact reporter coordinates are used for validation but are not written to report documents. Original photos are not stored.
How long we keep data
Scheduled deletion is asynchronous and depends on deployed Firestore TTL controls. Accepted report metadata and duplicate-detection hashes are scheduled for deletion after 90 days; report sessions after one day; identity rate-limit records after 30 days; hashed network rate-limit buckets after one day; and consensus observations after about one hour. Current venue status remains until replaced, but the app treats it as expired and shows unknown after 60 minutes. Edit suggestions are scheduled for deletion after 90 days. Anonymous Firebase account records, backups and provider technical logs require separate cleanup and retention controls, so no fixed app-controlled deletion period is claimed for them.
Suggestions and third parties
Edit suggestions include your message, venue, language, pseudonymous identifier and submission time and are visible only to authorized reviewers. Do not include sensitive personal information. Firebase services support authentication, database, functions and app attestation; Google Cloud Vision processes submitted report photos. Processing may occur outside Canada; a Canadian database region does not guarantee all processing stays in Canada. Opening directions or municipal source links is subject to those providers’ privacy practices.
Optional analytics and browser storage
Optional website analytics is off until configured and accepted in Privacy preferences. If enabled, Google Analytics receives page measurements and technical information and may use first-party analytics cookies. We do not intentionally send exact location, photos, search text, suggestion content or account identifiers to analytics. Essential browser storage may hold your privacy choice for six months, and the selected nearby-search radius until you change it or clear this browser’s storage. Refusing analytics does not prevent browsing.
Your choices
Use Privacy preferences to refuse or withdraw optional analytics. You can revoke location or camera permission in device settings. Contact us for access, correction or deletion requests; we may need information to verify your request. Do not email court photos or exact location unnecessarily. Because reporting uses a pseudonymous account, deleting an anonymous installation may make it impossible to identify prior records.
Children and changes
The service is not intended to collect information knowingly from children unable to provide meaningful consent. A parent or guardian can contact us about a concern. Material changes to collection or use will be explained before seeking any new consent required.