Privacy Policy

We collect only what we need to run the program and the directory.

Information you give us

• Account details — name, email address, account type (entrant or homeowner), and password credentials handled by our authentication provider.
• Professional profile — company name, logo, discipline, location, website, phone number, years in business and company description submitted by entrants.
• Award submissions — project titles, descriptions, specifications, locations, award categories and photography you upload.
• Messages and enquiries — the content of enquiries sent between homeowners and professionals through the platform.
• Payment information — where entry fees apply, payments are processed by our payment processor. We receive confirmation and billing metadata; we never receive or store full card numbers.

Information collected automatically

• Activity such as which professional profiles and projects you view, and which professionals you save as favourites — this powers your homeowner dashboard.
• Technical data such as IP address, browser type, device type, referring pages and timestamps, used for security, abuse prevention and aggregate analytics.

• To create and secure your account and authenticate sign-in.
• To operate the awards program: intake, eligibility screening, judging, nominee and winner announcements.
• To publish professional profiles, submitted projects and award results in our public showcase and directory.
• To let homeowners save favourites, track viewed professionals, and send enquiries.
• To process entry fees and issue receipts.
• To send service communications such as submission status updates, judging results and account notices, and — only with your consent — program news. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link.
• To detect fraud, enforce our terms, and comply with legal obligations.

Our legal bases, where required, are performance of a contract with you, your consent, our legitimate interest in operating and securing the platform, and compliance with law.

The awards program is a public showcase. When you submit an entry, your company profile, project photography, project details, award categories and award status are intended to be published on the site and may appear in search engines and social previews. Do not upload material you are not permitted to publish, and confirm your client has consented to publication of their home before submitting it. Your account email address, password, payment details and private messages are never published.

If you sign in with Google, we receive only your basic profile information — name, email address and profile picture — through the scopes you approve on Google’s consent screen. We never receive your Google password.

Custom Home Awards’ use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We use that data solely to create and authenticate your account. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or allow humans to read it except with your consent, for security purposes, or where required by law. You may revoke access at any time in your Google Account permissions.

We do not sell personal information. We share it only as follows:

• With professionals you contact — your name, email and message are delivered to the professional you enquire with.
• Service providers — hosting, database, authentication, file storage, email delivery, payment processing and analytics vendors, each bound to process data only on our instructions.
• Judges — entry material is provided to our independent judging panel for scoring.
• Legal and safety — where required by law, or to protect our rights, users or the public.
• Business transfer — in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, subject to this policy.

We use strictly necessary cookies and local storage to keep you signed in and to secure the site. We also use limited analytics to understand aggregate traffic and improve the experience. We do not run third-party advertising trackers. You can block or delete cookies in your browser, but sign-in will not work without the essential ones.

Data is stored on managed cloud infrastructure and may be processed in Canada and the United States. Where personal information is transferred across borders, we rely on appropriate safeguards and require comparable protection from our providers.

We protect information with encryption in transit, access controls, row-level database security, and signed, time-limited URLs for uploaded media. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to limit and promptly address any incident, and will notify affected users and regulators where the law requires it.

We keep account and profile data while your account is active. Published award entries and results form part of the historical record of the program and may be retained indefinitely, though we will remove or de-identify your contact details on request. Enquiry messages are retained for two years, and financial records for as long as tax and accounting law requires.

Depending on where you live — including under Canada’s PIPEDA, Quebec’s Law 25, the California Consumer Privacy Act and the GDPR — you may have the right to access, correct, delete, port or restrict the processing of your personal information, to withdraw consent, and to object to certain uses. California residents may also opt out of “sharing” and have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights; we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA.

You can edit most profile and submission information directly in your dashboard. For anything else, email privacy@customhomeawards.com. We respond within 30 days and may ask you to verify your identity. If you are unsatisfied with our response, you may complain to your local data protection authority or, in Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

The platform is intended for business and adult use. It is not directed to children under 13 (or under 16 in the EEA/UK), and we do not knowingly collect their information. If we learn we have, we will delete it.

We may update this policy as the program evolves. We will revise the effective date above and, for material changes, notify account holders by email or an in-app notice before the change takes effect.

Questions, requests or complaints about privacy can be sent to privacy@customhomeawards.com. See also our Terms of Service.