0
Mobile
Internet
TV
Home phone
Billing
FAQ
Bell Privacy FAQs
Introduction
The Bell Code of Fair Information Practices (the Code) spells out the commitments of the Bell Companies and the rights of customers regarding personal information. It fully complies with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and details how we implement the principles of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Code.
These FAQs are meant to act as a reference tool for customers who have questions about the Code and its application to personal customer information. The FAQs also include information about privacy-related "hot topics" such as the use of "cookies" and the practice of "phishing".
To read the full text of the Code of Fair Information Practices, please click here.
- To whom does the Bell Code of Fair Information Practices apply?
- What is personal information?
- What are the purposes for collecting personal information?
- Do the Bell Companies share personal information with each other?
- Do the Bell Companies share personal information with third parties?
- Do the Bell Companies record customer calls?
- Do the Bell Companies store customer information in other Jurisdictions?
- How can I access my personal information kept by the Bell Companies?
- Why am I being asked to confirm personal information when I call the Bell Companies?
- What is Pre-texting and Phishing?
- How do I know if an email is really from Bell?
- Does Bell Internet monitor my service?
- Does Bell Internet block access to certain sites?
- What are Cookies and do the Bell Companies use them?
- Is bell.ca a secure Web site?
- What is Spam Filtering?
- How do the Bell Companies ensure the protection of children on-line?
- What privacy enhancing services do the Bell Companies offer?
- What is the Voice Identification service from Bell?
- What is Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and what does it have to do with Internet traffic management?
- To whom does the Bell Code of Fair Information Practices apply?
The Bell Code of Fair Information Practices applies to the Bell Companies, including Bell Canada, Bell Mobility, Bell TV, Bell Distribution Inc. (i.e., Bell World and Espace Bell stores), as well as the Ontario and Québec operations of Bell Aliant.
Any time you do business with any of these companies, or with anyone acting as an agent on our behalf, you are protected by the rights and safeguards contained in the Code.
The Code also governs the behaviour of our employees and agents acting on our behalf. All of our employees who have access to personal information have been trained on handling such information and new employees receive training on privacy as a fundamental part of their initial company training. All of our employees must review and commit to the Bell Code of Fair Information Practices annually. Non-compliance with the Code may result in an employee's disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal.
In addition to the Bell Code of Fair Information Practices, the Bell Companies may also be subject to the requirements of applicable legislation, tariffs and regulations and the orders of any court or other lawful authority.
- What is Personal Information?
Personal Information is information about an identifiable individual. This includes information about the products to which you subscribe such as your Smart Touch services or your Bell TV programming package; your service usage, such as your personal telephone or cellular call records, long distance usage or internet surfing habits, as well as account information such as the status of your account or your method of payment, including credit card or bank account numbers for those customers on pre-authorized payments.
- What are the purposes for collecting personal information?
The Bell Companies collect information during the application process, when communicating or transacting business with you, and when providing you with service. We also collect information about you from third parties that have the right to disclose such information to us.
The Bell Companies collect information only for the following purposes:- To establish and maintain responsible commercial relations with you and provide you with on-going service;
For example, we may collect information to confirm your identify or to establish credit worthiness. - To understand your needs and preferences and to determine your eligibility for products and services;
We retain records of your purchases and your use ofBellproducts and services and may ask you, from time to time, for additional information to serve you better such as an eMail address to quickly send you help desk and user guide information. - To recommend particular products & services to meet your needs;
We may periodically review your product and service profile in order to determine if otherBellproducts and services might better meet your needs. For example, if you currently subscribe to 2 or moreBelllines of business, you may be eligible for service bundle savings. - To develop, enhance, market or provide our products and services;
We continually review and analyze customer use and purchase behaviour in order to ensure that our products and services respond to customer needs and desires. - To manage and develop Bell's business and operations, including personnel and employment matters;
For example, we monitor usage volumes in order to plan and provision our communications networks and product sales results and to determine the success of features, promotions and pricing. - To meet legal and regulatory requirements.
For example, we may be required to collect information by a court order or to demonstrate compliance with a CRTC requirement.Your personal information will not be used for any other purpose without your consent.
- To establish and maintain responsible commercial relations with you and provide you with on-going service;
- Do the Bell Companies share personal information with each other?
The Bell Companies may share, from time to time, information with other Bell companies to help identify your information, communication and entertainment needs and provide you with relevant information, advice, and solutions to meet those needs.Click here to opt in.
If you don't want your information shared among the Bell companies, click here, call 310-BELL or contact us by email to "opt out."
- Do the Bell Companies share personal information with third parties?
While our general policy is not to provide personal information to any party outside of the Bell Companies, there are limited circumstances in which it is necessary for us to do so. When we provide personal information to third parties, we provide only that information that is required under the particular circumstances. That information is used only for the purpose stipulated and is subject to strict terms of confidentiality. Employees of the companies to whom we may provide information must adhere to our privacy standards. These third parties may include:
An agent acting on behalf of Bell, such as a company hired to perform installation work on our behalf;
Another communications service provider, in order to offer efficient and effective communications services (e.g., to provide wireless service while roaming in another company's coverage area) or as required by law;
A collection agency, for the express purpose of the collection of past due bills;The Bell Companies may also collect, use or disclose personal information without knowledge or consent if seeking the consent of the individual might defeat the purpose of collecting the information, such as in the investigation of a breach of an agreement or a contravention of a federal or provincial law, or to comply with a subpoena, warrant or other court order.
The Bell Companies may also use or disclose personal information without knowledge or consent in the case of an emergency where the life, health or security of an individual is threatened.
Please note that, pursuant to federal legislation, publicly available information, including a directory listing of your name, address, telephone number and electronic address, may be collected, used and disclosed without your consent. If you prefer not to have your listing information provided to select organizations, Contact Us to have your information removed from such lists or call 310-Bell.
- Does Bell record customer calls?
As Bell is committed to continually improving its customer contact experience, some customer calls may be recorded and used for the ongoing training and development of our employees. Consistent with federal privacy legislation, customers are informed by a pre-recorded message that their call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes. After hearing this message, should you decide to continue with the call, your consent to record the call is implied. Otherwise, you may contact a Bell Customer Service Representative by email or by visiting a Bell World store in your area.
The Bell Companies may also record outbound calls placed to our customers for similar purposes.
- Does Bell store customer information outside of Canada?
In some cases, personal information collected by the Bell Companies may be stored and processed outside of Canada, by agents acting on our behalf, for the purpose of providing you with your service or to support the Bell Companies' operations. This information may include account information, such as your billing details and preferred language, or product information, such as the types of services to which you subscribe. The information is provided pursuant to detailed contractual provisions and may only be used for the purposes of providing the service in question and is safeguarded accordingly. The use of customer information in such circumstances continues to be governed by the Bell Code of Fair Information Practices.
Personal information collected by the Bell Companies may be stored and processed in Canada or other jurisdictions and may be subject to the legal jurisdictions of these countries. - Can I obtain access to my personal information held by the Bell Companies?
As a customer, you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that the Bell Companies have collected about you. Such requests must be made in writing to the Bell Privacy Ombudsman at:
The Office of the Bell Privacy Ombudsman
160 Elgin Street
19th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario
K2P 2C4or by email to privacy@bell.ca
Please note that your right to access personal information is not unlimited. In particular, your right to access is limited to your "personal information" which is defined as information about an identifiable individual. Should you request access to your personal information and the documents requested also contain non-personal information which does not pertain to you, that information will be omitted from the original document. Such non-personal information may include the Company's internal practices, policies, organizational structure or network architecture and operations, or personal information concerning a third party such as employee numbers.
- Why am I being asked to confirm personal information when I call the Bell Companies?
In order to protect your personal information from being disclosed to an unauthorized third party, you may be asked to confirm personal information already found on your account or to provide information that only you, as the account holder, would know. Such information may include details of your payment habits, service usage or identification that you would have previously provided when originally requesting your service. We continually strive to strike the appropriate balance between timely access your account information and the need to protect our customer's personal information from unauthorized disclosure. We therefore ask for your patience and understanding when you are asked to confirm or provide such information as this process has been established to protect your personal account information.
- What are Pre-texting and Phishing?
Pre-texting, often referred to as "social engineering", refers to the fraudulent and illegal practice of misrepresenting who you are in order to obtain access to information. The Bell Companies are aware that pre-texting, although illegal, has been a practice employed by unauthorized third parties trying to obtain access to personal information. The Bell Companies place great emphasis on the security of your personal information and have safeguards in place to ensure that it is not disclosed to an unauthorized third party which is why, when calling into any of the Bell Companies, you will be asked to confirm certain personal information regarding your account.
Phishing is the use of phoney email messages, pop-up windows and fraudulent Web sites designed to trick people into divulging personal and financial information. Brands of well-known companies are often used to capture usernames, passwords, credit card and bank account numbers, social insurance numbers, etc. Phishers have been known to circulate emails containing forms and links to Web sites that look as though they belong to popular companies.
Phishing is a growing concern and the number of large-scale scams is on the rise. E-commerce and online banking are generally safe and secure ways of doing business, but Web and email users should be somewhat sceptical of unsolicited requests for personal information.
For more information on Phishing, please click here and choose "Phishing" from the subheading "Hot Issues".
You can also visit the "Stop Spam Here" Web site for further information on Phishing by clicking here.
- How do I know if an email is really from Bell?
Because Bell communicates with customers through email regularly, we have rules about requesting personal information as well as what we include in attachments. As a Bell customer, it is important that you are aware of the types of information our email might contain or request so you can recognize a fraudulent message if you ever you receive one.
Genuine emails from the Bell companies may include:
- Links to pages related to Bell services
- Notification of changes to your service, and virus or security alerts. We'll always refer you to pages on www.bell.ca for more information
- Marketing and promotional offers, including contests
- Customer survey or a link to a customer survey site.
- A request for permission to send you information on Bell products and services and those of its third party business partners.
Our email will never include:
- Requests for personal information such as passwords, PIN numbers, banking or credit card information (unless we are responding to an initial email or telephone inquiry from you).
- Direct links to virus removal tools. Instead, we will direct you to internet.bell.ca for detailed instructions on how to remove a virus.
- Executable (.exe) file attachments (programs).
- Files you need to click to open, such as Microsoft Word documents or compressed (.zip) files (unless we are responding to an initial email or telephone inquiry from you).
- Does Bell Internet monitor my service?
BellBell Internet does not proactively monitor your use of the Service or the content of your emails.
However, Bell Internet, similar to other Internet service providers, reserves the right from time to time to monitor the service electronically. In the normal course of business, Bell Internet may be required to monitor certain aspects of your use of the Service, such as your bandwidth consumption or spamming in order to ensure the operation of the Service, or to ensure compliance with other provisions of our Acceptable Use Policy such as the harassment of other users, uploading, downloading or otherwise transmitting materials which are protected by copyrights or other intellectual property rights or to assist in the fraudulent use of telecommunications services.
A copy of the Acceptable Use Policy can be found at the end of your service agreement. To view a copy of your Bell Internet Service Agreement online, please click here.
- Does Bell Internet block access to certain sites?
Bell Internet is committed to the protection of children online and is a member of Project Cleanfeed Canada, an initiative involving Canada's largest Internet Service Providers who have teamed up with Cybertip.ca to protect their customers from inadvertently visiting foreign web sites that contain images of children being sexually abused and that are beyond the jurisdiction of Canadian legal authorities. As a member of Project Cleanfeed Canada, Bell Internet blocks access to a list of specific, foreign-hosted Internet addresses associated with images of child sexual abuse.
For more information about Project Cleanfeed Canada and Cybertip.ca, please visit Cybertip's Web site at by clicking here.
- What are Cookies and do the Bell Companies use them?
During user interaction with one of our Internet sites, we may use a browser feature called a "cookie" to collect information anonymously and track user patterns on our web sites. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies your browser - but not you - to our computers each time you visit one of our sites that uses cookies. Cookies tell us which pages of our sites are visited and by how many people. This helps us to enhance the on-line experience of visitors to our site.
Unless you specifically advise us, we will not know who you are, even though we may assign your computer a cookie. We cannot use cookies, by themselves, to ascertain the individual identity of any site user, and we never combine information gathered by a cookie with personally identifiable information like your name, telephone number or even your email address without your consent.
You will find that most major web sites use cookies and most major browsers are set up to accept them. If you wish, you can reset your browser either to notify you when you have received a cookie, or to refuse to accept cookies. You do no need cookies to visit Bell sites. However, if you refuse to accept cookies, you may not be able to use some of the features available on our sites such as the personalization features.
- Is bell.ca a secure Web site?
Yes! The bell.ca Web site uses SSL encryption which protects your personal identifiable information when it is being sent via the Internet. SSL encrypts the data between the server and yourself so as to prevent anyone from reading the exchanged information.
- What is Spam filtering?
Spam refers to unsolicited bulk electronic messages. If you use email or other types of online communications, there is a good chance that you receive spam. Apart from being annoying, spam can potentially be dangerous to your computer and to your privacy. Most email programs have built-in filters that can help you separate spam from regular email. For more information about spam filtering, please click here choose "Protect yourself from junk email" under the subheading "Hot Issues".
You may also wish to visit the "Stop Spam Here" Web site for more information.
- How do the Bell Companies ensure the protection of children on-line?
As an added protection for children, on any of our commercial web sites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, we will obtain the permission of a parent or legal guardian before collecting, using or disclosing any personally identifiable information about a child (e.g., for participation in contests and promotions).
Parents who are concerned about the type of material which may be available to children on the Internet should inquire about parental control software. For more information, please click here and chose "Tips for Protecting your Children" under the "Hot Issues" subheading.
For more information regarding marketing to children, please visit the Canadian Marketing Association's Special Considerations in Marketing to Children guidelines, part of the CMA's Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice found online here.
Bell Internet is also a member of Project Cleanfeed Canada, an initiative involving Canada's largest Internet Service Providers who have teamed up with Cybertip.ca to protect their customers from inadvertently visiting foreign web sites that contain images of children being sexually abused and that are beyond the jurisdiction of Canadian legal authorities. Fore more information on Project Cleanfeed Canada, please click here to visit Cybertip's Web site.
- What privacy enhancing services do the Bell Companies offer?
The Bell Companies offer a number of services to help balance the privacy interests of customers and the people they call. You can find information about the Bell services (e.g., Call Privacy, Call Display, Call Blocking, Private Name and Number) in the introductory pages of the telephone directory, by visiting www.bell.ca or by visiting a Bell World store in Ontario or Espace Bell store in Québec. Bell Mobility offers digital wireless service and Call Display to provide additional privacy for your wireless calls.
- What is the Voice Identification service from Bell?
The Voice Identification service can verify a person's identity by using the unique characteristics of their voice. To register please call 1 888 383-6817. Registration is simple and free. Learn more
- What is Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and what does it have to do with Internet traffic management?
Deep packet inspection or DPI is a technology used in the industry to examine the types of traffic going across a network, but not the content. During peak periods, Bell uses DPI to identify peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing traffic which is less time sensitive than other real-time sensitive applications, such as web browsing or video streaming. Because P2P file sharing applications are less time sensitive, they can be slowed when Internet traffic becomes congested during peak periods without interrupting use of the service.
When Bell uses DPI as part of its traffic management measures during peak periods of Internet usage, we do not examine the actual content of traffic and we only collect for a limited time your IP address. For example, we do not know the content of your communications nor your search activities. However, for traffic management to work properly, we use DPI technology to assess traffic data along with each IP address to determine what type of traffic it is so that we can treat it accordingly (e.g. if it is P2P file sharing traffic, we may slow it down during times of peak Internet usage to support other activities like web browsing and video streaming). Once the traffic has been sorted by type for traffic management purposes, it is not retained as part of the usage pattern of any IP address.
For more information on Bell's Network Management Policy click here.
- © Bell Canada, 2010. All rights reserved.
- Store locator
- About Bell
- Jobs@Bell
- Legal
- Privacy
- Customer commitment
- Canada 411
- YellowPages.ca TM
- Accessibility services
- Contact us
- Site map