HCS Privacy Policy

 

 

Halton Crime Stoppers collects information you send to us via our website or our 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) telephone number. It is essential that you do not provide any information that may disclose, or lead to the determination of, your personal identity. Maintaining tipster anonymity is of paramount importance to HCS. If any personally identifiable information is provided to HCS, that information will be considered unusable by Halton Crime Stoppers and discarded. Any submitted information may be stored indefinitely. Other than qualifying law enforcement we do not share your provided information with any other third party.

 

Your anonymity is our paramount concern. The information you submit to us may lead to prosecution or arrest of guilty individuals. This information you provide may be used within any judicial system to facilitate prosecution. You as the author of this information will never be called to testify, nor will your identity ever be disclosed. Your identity is specifically protected by the Supreme Court of Canada see (r vs Leipert 1997) http://www.justice.gov.nl.ca/just/prosect/guidebook/020.pdf
 

Yes. Cookies (small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer through your Web browser) enable site and/or service provider systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and for website traffic analytics. We do not use cookies to identify who you are. Cookies can be optionally deactivated within your web browser if desired.

 

When you contact Halton Crime Stoppers via any of our channels (phone or website), your identity is never requested. Even if you call us from an identifiable phone line, we will not document it – we do not subscribe to Caller ID. After submitting tip information to us, we will provide a unique identification code. Any future correspondence between you and Halton Crime Stoppers will be done referencing this unique code so you never have to disclose who you are.

 

Since we will never request any contact information from you, tip submitters must check in with us to determine the status of tip submissions. Again, all commination will be based upon the unique identification code provided when a tip was submitted. Please provide at least 4-8 weeks from initial tip submittal before requesting a status update.

 

If the tip information you provide to us leads to an arrest, your tip may entitle you to a financial reward. If you qualify for a reward payment, we will provide you a “Redemption Code” and specific instructions on how to collect the reward at selected local safe location without disclosing your identity.

 

Halton Crime Stoppers only provides submitted tips to law enforcement agencies. Halton Crime Stoppers reserves the right to supply analytics data and general crime information to any third party that it does business with. At no point will HCS provide any information you submitted to us, in detailed format, to any third party outside of qualifying law enforcement agencies.

 

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our website or via social media feeds. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of these third party links before proceeding. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

 

Halton Crime Stoppers utilizes industry standard (SSL certificate) encryption protocols between you and our website. The security status should be clearly displayed in your browser address line (varies by browser).

 

By using our site, you consent to our web site privacy policy.

 

Halton Crime Stoppers will not actively communicate changes to this policy – any policy updates will be published here as policy changes are approved and incorporated.