Privacy Statement

Nova Scotia Power Incorporated (NSPI) recognizes the importance of protecting our customers’ privacy. The federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) governs how we collect, use and disclose our customers' personal information. By using our website or applying for our services, you accept the terms set out in this policy. This Privacy Policy applies to information about identifiable individuals. It does not apply to information about organizations and businesses.

What is Personal Information?

Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual, such as a person’s name, address, energy consumption history, or credit card information. It does not include the name, title, business address or telephone number of an organization or an employee of an organization. It also does not include information that has been aggregated or de-personalized, such that an individual’s information cannot be identified.

What we collect and why:

The type of personal information which we collect and maintain includes:

• Name
• Premise Address and Mailing Address
• Email address
• Telephone number
• Identifying information such as your date of birth and information from government issued identification, such as your driver’s license number
• Banking information and/or credit card information if you pay by credit card
• Credit history
• Transaction history, which includes a history of your power consumption and service requests
• Demographic and household information, such as the number of individuals per household and your household heat source
• Participation in Nova Scotia Power programs

We collect additional consumption information from customers who have smart meters. This information includes the amount of electricity used over specific intervals of time, as well as usage patterns. This information allows us to improve how we provide services and allows us to provide you with relevant energy related insights regarding your electricity consumption. 

When you correspond with us by email, we collect your email address, internet IP address, as well as the message included in your email in order to respond to your enquiry. If you visit our website, our servers collect information which allows us to maintain the security of our website and allows them to operate.

We ensure that the purposes for collection, use and disclosure are limited to purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances. Some of these purposes are:

• To provide products and services to our customers;
• To manage our business and operations;
• To create and maintain effective business relationships with our customers;
• To facilitate account, billing, credit, collections, and customer services;
• To contact you and respond to your inquiries and requests and/or to monitor and assess quality of service, which may include recording telephone calls with customer care agents for quality assurance and training purposes;
• To establish customer identity;
• To assess credit history to determine if a security deposit is required from a customer or to assess an application to receive certain products and services or participate in certain programs, which includes periodically exchanging information with credit bureaus in order to maintain the integrity of the credit reporting system;
• To collect and process past due accounts;
• To avoid and investigate fraud and/or identity theft;
• To address and respond to issues related to the usage of critical power dependent medical equipment during an outage;
• To offer personalized energy management and enhanced customer energy consumption feedback, enabled through the collection of hourly consumption data;
• To reduce energy and revenue theft which may include the collection of outage, voltage, load profile and consumption information;
• To further develop, enhance and market products and services we offer, which may include contacting our customers to offer them participation in pilots, rebates or other programs;
• To understand customer needs and preferences, which may include contacting our customers to ask them to participate in surveys regarding our products and services; and
• To meet legal and regulatory requirements.

If you visit the Site, our servers collect information which allows us to maintain the security of the Site and allows them to operate. NSPI or a third party may use cookies to collect personal information on our websites and mobile applications. These cookies are used to remember your location preferences, to provide social media features, to authenticate your identity, and to analyze traffic to and maintain the Site. For more information on our use of cookies please see our Cookie Policy.

Safeguarding your information

We use security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information. These safeguards include organizational, technological, physical and contractual measures. We audit our procedures and security measures on a regular basis to ensure that they are appropriate and are being administered properly

Sharing your information

We do not sell or rent our customers' personal information. We do, however, disclose personal information to certain third parties in accordance with the purposes listed above. These third parties may provide us with services that enable us to provide our products and services to our customers, for example to facilitate billings and collection of payments and to process and store data on our behalf, and to provide research services to allow us to understand customer needs and preferences. In other cases, we may disclose personal information to third parties who provide services to our customers on our behalf, for example efficiency and demand side management services. These third parties are given only the information that is necessary for them to perform the services that we have contracted them to provide.

In certain circumstances information that we share with third parties may be processed in a foreign country and may be accessible to law enforcement and national security authorities in that foreign country. 

Our website contains links to other websites. The privacy policies of those websites differ from ours, and we are in no way responsible for the content contained on those websites, or for your privacy should you click through to them.

Correcting and retaining your information

Please feel free to contact us at any time to update your personal information.

The length of time we keep your information varies depending on the product or service in question and the nature of the information. We have retention standards that allow us to meet customer service, legal and regulatory needs. As a result, it may be necessary for us to keep some of your information on record even after the end of your relationship with us. When the information is no longer required, it is destroyed or anonymized.

Your Privacy Choices

Subject to certain legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, you can choose to refuse or withdraw your consent to the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information at any time. For example, you may choose to withdraw your consent to receive emails regarding new products or services, pilots, or surveys. You may also choose to opt out of having a smart meter. The withdrawal of consent in some circumstances may prevent us from providing you with certain products or services for which your personal information is necessary. We will explain your options and any consequences of refusing or withdrawing your consent and we will record and respect your choices.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about how we handle your personal information, please contact us at:

privacy.officer@nspower.ca

PO Box 910
Halifax, NS
B3J 2W5

Fax No.: (902) 428-6176

Changes to this Privacy Policy

This policy may be amended from time to time since NSPI regularly reviews and updates in policies and procedures.

Last updated August 20, 2021

What Are Cookies and Why Are They Used?

Cookies are small text files that are placed onto your computer by websites and/or mobile applications that you visit. They contain unique identification numbers which can be used to identify a user's browser, but not the user. Cookies allow information to be saved between visit to websites or mobile applications so that information can be saved between visits, such as login credentials or language preferences. Cookies may also be used to customize content, offer interest-based advertising, and to gain insights into users' needs and preferences.

What Kinds of Cookies Do We Use?

As with most websites, NSPI uses cookies to automatically collect data about how you use the Site and mobile applications, including the MyAccount portal (collectively, "the Site"). The information we collect from cookies allows us to tailor the Site, provide advertising, and to analyze traffic to the Site. We do not use cookies to identify you personally, except as described in this policy. We use the following kinds of cookies on the Site:

1. Necessary Cookies - necessary cookies enable you to use the Site and all their features, such as enabling access to secure areas of the Site. Without these cookies you may not be able to use all the features of the Site. These cookies do not identify a user personally.

2. Performance Cookies - performance cookies, also referred to as behavioural or we analytics software, collect information about how you use the Site so we can analyze how the Site is used and improve it. For example, performance cookies may collect information on which pages you visit most often and any error messages you may get.

We use a software called Hotjar to validate that the Site design and user experience are performing as expected and offer the best possible experience to users. This tool can record user movements on our Site to help us better understand our users' experience. Hotjar's tool masks any form entries that may contain personal information, so these will not appear in recordings of user behaviour. We also use this tool to perform surveys on pages and collect user feedback when a user has opted to share it with us.

The information collected by these cookies is anonymous and they do not collect any information that can identify you personally, except where a user has accessed account services via MyAccount prior to visiting our Site. In this case, Hotjar's recording may include a user's MyAccount log-in name. We only utilize recordings as part of our ongoing effort to improve site usability and they are not shared or distributed outside of Nova Scotia Power. In addition, Hotjar does not share user data and is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.

Hotjar respects any "do not track" setting that you might have set on your browser and users may opt out of Hotjar data collection. For more information, please see Hotjar's privacy policy.

3. Functionality Cookies - functionality cookies enable us to provide you with a more personalized experience when you visit the Site. They help us to remember data, such as your username and language preference, to save you having to enter them again the next time you visit. The information these cookies collect is anonymous. They cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.

How Can You Manage Your Cookie Settings?

You can delete or disable cookies in your browser's options at any time. However, if you do so you may not get the best experience when visiting the Site or your may not be able to use some features and services.

Protecting the privacy and security of customer information has always been a part of how Nova Scotia Power serves its customers. Today, our Privacy Policy and procedures are consistent with the Federal requirements set out in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, known as PIPEDA. As always, our employees will continue to collect, use, share and store personal information with your privacy and security in mind.

Nova Scotia Power’s Privacy Officer oversees our Privacy Policy and Procedures and may be contacted as follows:

E-mail: privacy.officer@nspower.ca

PO Box 910
Halifax, NS
B3J 2W5

Fax: (902) 428-4006

Safeguarding your customer information is a priority. If you have a privacy concern relating to one of the following situations, please report to us using this form. 

• personal information has been wrongly collected, used, disclosed, or retained; 
• refused access to your personal information; or 
• unreasonable delay in accessing your personal information.