Last updated: February 28, 2025
This Privacy Notice has been prepared by SampleSource Incorporated for Canadian visitors and SampleSource USA Incorporated for US visitors (collectively, "SampleSource", "we", "us" or "our"), and it sets out the manner in which SampleSource collects, uses, discloses and otherwise manages personal information. This Privacy Notice applies to the privacy practices on our websites located at www.samplesource.com and www.samplesource.ca (the "Website").
The term "personal information” means information about an identifiable individual, including but not limited to full name, address, email address, and other information relating to an individual.
We may collect personal information when you:
• Make a request on the Website to receive samples;
• Participate in our contests, sweepstakes or promotions;
• Check the status of your order;
• Complete a survey available through our Website;
• Sign up to receive promotional email and other communications;
• Contact us with a comment, question or complaint.
Request Samples: When you register to request samples on our Website, we collect certain personal information such as your name, mailing address, username and a password. When you register, you will have the opportunity to provide certain demographic information, such as your gender, marital and employment status, household income, number of children, whether you own pets, and shopping habits. This additional demographic information is optional, however, please note that product manufacturers frequently limit sampling opportunities to individuals who fall within certain demographics. As a result, if you decide not to provide additional optional demographic information, you may not be able to take advantage of all of our sampling offers.
Contests, Sweepstakes and Promotions: When you enter a contest, sweepstakes or participate in a promotion, we may collect your name, address, phone number, email address, and other information you provide. We use this information to administer your participation in the contest, sweepstakes or promotion. At the time you enter the contest, sweepstakes or promotion, we may obtain your consent to send you future promotional communications. If a contest, sweepstakes or promotion is jointly sponsored by us and one or more sponsors, your personal information may be shared with such sponsors, as specified at the time of collection of your personal information. We do not control the use, disclosure or security of your personal information by other sponsors, and recommend you review their respective privacy notices or statements.
Trusted Partners: When you make a request to receive samples through our Website, you may choose to opt-in to receive additional offers from our trusted SampleSource partners. These offers may be sent by direct mail and/or e-mail from our trusted partners or directly from us on behalf of our partners. If you opt-in, we may share the personal information you provide to SampleSource (including your name, mailing address, and optional demographic information) with our partners.
Check the Status of Your Order: We offer you the opportunity to provide your email address to check on the status of your order on our Website. We use this information to track your order.
Surveys: From time to time, we may offer you the opportunity to participate in one of our surveys. The information obtained through our surveys is used in an aggregated, de-identified form to help us understand our users and to enhance our Website. We may also use the information you provide to offer you additional information, products or services related to your responses.
Email and Other Communications: If you request to receive marketing communications, we may collect your email address, phone number, and mailing address to send you communications about products, services, promotions or events relating to SampleSource or its trusted partners that may be of interest to you. You can opt out of receiving marketing communications from us by doing one of the following:
• If you have received an email, you can follow the opt out or "unsubscribe" instructions provided in your email.
• Contact us by clicking on the "Contact" page on our Website or using the contact information set out below.
Please note that you may continue to receive transactional or account-related communications from us.
Our policy is to not disclose your personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes unless we first obtain your opt-in consent.
You can opt-out of receiving promotional email from us by doing one of the following:
• If you have received an email, you can follow the opt-out or "unsubscribe" instructions provided in your email.
• Contacting us by clicking on the "Contact Us" page on our Website or using the contact information set out below.
Contact Us: When you contact us with a comment, question or complaint, you may be asked to provide personal information (such as your name, address, email address and a phone number) along with additional information we need to help us promptly answer your question or respond to your comment or complaint. We may also retain this information to assist you in the future and to improve our customer service, product and service offerings, and events and promotions.
Our policy is that we will not disclose, trade, rent, sell or otherwise transfer your personal information, without your consent, except as otherwise set out herein.
Service Provider Arrangements: We may transfer (or otherwise make available) your personal information to third parties who provide services on our behalf. For example, we may use service providers to authorize and process sample orders, host our Website, operate certain of its features, serve advertisements on our Website, send emails or other communications, or run our contests and promotions.
Your personal information may be maintained and processed by our service providers in the US and Canada (including jurisdictions outside of Quebec). Our service providers are given the information they need to perform their designated functions, and we do not authorize them to use or disclose personal information for their own marketing or other purposes.
Ratings/Reviews: If you provide a product rating and/or review and choose to permit SampleSource and the brands whose products you try to use your feedback to help others make smart shopping decisions, SampleSource may use personal information you have provided such as your first name and last initial, city and province/state, gender, product rating or review, your public IP address at the time of submitting the Review, and other information you provide about your experience with the product (the "Review”) for the purposes of displaying the Review to the public. SampleSource may also provide this information to the brands whose products you have tried, and if applicable, their service provider. The public IP address is disclosed to the brand partner or their service provider for review fraud detection and mitigation purposes.
Sale of Business: We may transfer any information we have about you as an asset in connection with a merger or sale (including transfers made as part of insolvency or bankruptcy proceedings) involving all or part of SampleSource or as part of a corporate reorganization or stock sale or other change in corporate control.
Legal: SampleSource and our Canadian and US service providers may provide your personal information in response to a search warrant or other legally valid inquiry or order, or to an investigative body in the case of a breach of an agreement or contravention of law or detecting, suppressing or preventing fraud, or as otherwise required or permitted by applicable Canadian or US law or legal process, which may include lawful access by Canadian or US courts, law enforcement or other government authorities. We may also disclose personal information where necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims and to investigate or prevent actual or suspected loss or harm to persons or property, or as otherwise permitted by law.
Visiting our Website: Visiting our Website: In general, you can visit our Website without telling us who you are or submitting any personal information. However, we collect the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of visitors to our Website and other information about your visit, such as page requests, browser type, operating system and average time spent on our Website. We use this information to help us understand our Website activity, and to monitor and improve our Website.
Cookies: Our Website uses a technology called "cookies". A cookie is a tiny element of data that our Website can send to your browser, which is stored on your hard drive so we may later be able to recognize your computer or other device when you return. If you have registered with our Website, cookies may provide us and our service providers with information that we will use to personalize our Website in accordance with your preferences. Most Web browsers allow you to modify your settings to notify you when you receive a cookie or to reject cookies entirely. However, if you decide not to accept cookies from our Website, you may not be able to take advantage of all of the features of our Website.
Analytics: We may also use a third party such as Google Analytics to help us gather and analyze information about the areas that you visit on the Website (such as the pages most read, time spent, search terms and other engagement data) to evaluate and improve the customer experience and the convenience of the Website, and to help us evaluate some of the specific information related to your Website visits. These third parties may use cookies and other tracking technologies.
For more information about Google Analytics or to prevent the storage and processing of this data (including your IP address) by Google, you can download and install the browser plug-in available at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.
You can also obtain additional information on Google Analytics’ data privacy and security at the following links:
https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites and
https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/2919631
Tracer Tags & Web Beacons: Our Website may also use a technology called "tracer tags" or "Web Beacons”. This technology allows us to understand which pages you visit on our Website. These tracer tags are used to help us optimize and tailor our Website for you and other future visitors to our Website.
We may also use third parties to serve our advertisements on other websites. These companies may use tracer tags or web beacons to report certain information (but not your name, address, e-mail address or telephone number) about your visits to our Website and the websites which advertise and feature links to our Website, in order to measure the effectiveness of our advertisements.
Third party links: Our Website may contain links to other sites that SampleSource does not own or operate. Also, links to our Website may be featured on third party websites on which we advertise. Except as provided herein, our policy is that we will not provide any of your personal information to these third parties without your consent. We provide links to third party websites as a convenience to the user. These links are not intended as an endorsement of or referral to the linked websites. The linked websites have separate and independent privacy statements, notices and terms of use, which we recommend you read carefully. We do not have any control over such websites, and therefore we have no responsibility or liability for the manner in which the organizations that operate such linked websites may collect, use or disclose, secure and otherwise treat your personal information.
Children: Our Website is not intended for children under 13 and therefore we do not intend to collect personal information from children under the age of 13. If you are 13 or older, but under the age of majority in the jurisdiction in which you live, you must have your parent or legal guardian’s permission to use our Websites, register or participate in any promotional offers.
We have implemented measures designed to help protect personal information in our custody and control. We maintain reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards in an effort to protect against unauthorized access, use, modification and disclosure of personal information in our custody and control. Unfortunately, no collection or transmission of information over the Internet or other publicly accessible communications networks can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, and therefore, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any such information.
We have personal information retention processes designed to retain personal information of our customers for no longer than necessary for the purposes stated above or to otherwise meet legal requirements.
As indicated above, you can opt-out of receiving marketing communications from us by doing one of the following:
• If you have received an email, you can follow the opt-out or "unsubscribe" instructions provided in your email.
• Contact us by clicking on the "Contact" page on our Website or using the contact information set out below.
Subject to applicable law, you may have the right to access, update, and correct inaccuracies in your personal information in our custody and control, and withdraw your consent to our processing of personal information. Depending on your jurisdiction, you may also request that we provide you with certain personal information in a commonly used electronic format and provide such information to a third party on request.
You may request access, updating and corrections of inaccuracies in personal information we have in our custody or control or withdraw consent by emailing or writing to us at the contact information set out below. We may request certain personal information for the purposes of verifying the identity of the individual seeking access to their personal information records.
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, California residents have additional rights and are entitled to additional information. In the preceding 12 months, we have collected information within the following defined categories of personal information:
• Identifiers, such as name, address, email address, and username.
• Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)), such as name, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, and employment status.
• Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law, such as gender and marital status.
• Commercial information, such as shopping habits.
• Internet or other similar network activity, such as browsing history, search history, information on a consumer's interaction with a website, application, or advertisement.
• Geolocation data, such as physical location.
• Inferences drawn from other personal information, such as a profile reflecting a person's preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.
In addition to the choices and rights listed elsewhere in this Privacy Notice, the CCPA provides California residents with the following specific rights regarding their personal information:
• Right to Know – California residents have the right to request information about the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected, as well as the categories of sources from which such information is collected, the purpose for collecting such information, and the categories of third parties with whom we share such information. California residents also have the right to request information about our sale or disclosure for business purposes of personal information to third parties.
• Right to Delete – California residents have the right to request the deletion of personal information, subject to certain limitations.
• Right to Opt-Out of Sale – California residents have the right to opt out of the sale, as that term is defined in the CCPA, of personal information to third parties. To exercise your right to opt-out, please click the Unsubscribe / Do Not Sell My Info link in the footer of the Website. We do not sell the personal information of minors under 16 years of age without affirmative authorization.
• Right to Non-Discrimination – California residents have the right to not be discriminated against for exercising any of these rights.
If you would like to exercise one or more of the above rights, you can contact us by email or mail using the contact information provided above. We may need you to provide additional information to verify your request, such as providing data elements so that we can confirm they match the information already maintained by us. We will not use this additional information for anything other than handling your request. Please note that you may designate an authorized agent to make a request under the CCPA on your behalf.
Additionally, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please email us with “Shine the Light” in the subject line of your request.
SampleSource is committed to protecting personal information and policies, procedures and practices that govern our treatment of personal information, including:
• Policies and procedures governing the protection of personal information, including safeguards designed to protect personal information against loss or theft and unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use and modification;
• A framework that contemplates the roles and responsibilities of our personnel in connection with the handling of personal information in our custody and control;
• Processes for responding to questions, requests and complaints regarding our handling of personal information;
• A framework for the retention and destruction of information that is designed to ensure compliance with our legal obligations.
This Privacy Notice may be updated periodically to reflect changes to our personal information practices. The revised Privacy Notice will be posted on this Website. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify you by posting a notice on the front page of this Website. We strongly encourage you to please refer to this Privacy Notice often for the latest information about our personal information practices. The Effective Date of this Privacy Notice is posted at the top of this page.
Please contact our Privacy Officer if:
• you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Notice,
• you wish to opt-out of marketing emails, or access, update, and/or correct inaccuracies in your personal information, or
• you otherwise have a question or complaint about the manner in which we treat your personal information.
By email to privacy.info@samplesource.com or
By mail to SampleSource, 385 Carlingview Drive - UNIT 3, Etobicoke, ON M9W 5G8.
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