This policy describes how Vestward, our Android application for managing a building’s intercom and access-control records, handles information. It supplements our general Privacy Policy, which continues to apply to our website and customers.

Vestward is published by Technical Infrastructure (TECI). It is used by the person who manages a residential building’s intercom or access-control system — typically a board member, resident manager, or property manager.

The short version

The information stays yours. We never take custody of it.

Resident records belong to the property’s owner — the condominium corporation, landlord, or owner of record — and to the residents the records describe. TECI does not own them, does not receive them, and does not hold them.

Vestward does not send your information, or your residents’ information, to TECI or to anyone else. The app communicates only with your building’s own intercom or access-control equipment, on your building’s own network. There is no TECI cloud in this picture — no TECI server, no cloud storage, no analytics, and no advertising. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.

Information the app handles

Resident records on your building’s equipment. To manage a building directory, the app reads and writes resident records held on your building’s intercom or access-control panel. Depending on the equipment, the records held there may include a resident’s name, unit number, telephone number, email address, intercom extension, and access card or fob number.

These records are owned by the property’s owner and by the residents they describe — not by TECI. They originate on your building’s equipment and stay there. Vestward is a window onto them: it displays and edits records in place.

What the app keeps on the device. So that it remains usable when the panel is briefly unreachable, the app caches part of the directory on the phone or tablet: resident name, unit number, the intercom dial target, and access card or fob number.

About the intercom dial target. Building panels generally hold a single field for what the intercom should call when a visitor selects a resident. Depending on how your building is configured, that may be an internal extension or a resident’s telephone number — the equipment does not distinguish between the two, and neither can the app. It caches and displays whatever that field contains. So where your building dials residents’ telephones, those telephone numbers are held on the device as part of the cached directory, and are written back to your building’s panel when you edit a record.

Email addresses are not stored on the device. Where your panel holds one, the app neither retains nor displays it.

An activity log. The app records what was changed, when, and by whom — the operator’s name and initials as entered on the device — so a building can see who altered access rights. It is stored on the device.

Diagnostic logs. Technical log files are written to the app’s private storage on the device to help diagnose faults.

Connection settings. The address and credentials needed to reach your building’s panel, stored encrypted on the device.

Where the information goes

To TECI: nothing. The app contains no code that transmits information to TECI.

To third parties: nothing. No analytics, advertising, crash-reporting, or other third-party service is present in the app.

To your building’s equipment. Resident records you create or change are written to your building’s intercom or access-control panel, over your building’s local network. This is the app’s core function.

To a file you choose. If you use the export or backup features, the app writes a file to a location you select on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere; you control that file afterwards.

Camera

The app uses the camera for one purpose: scanning a QR code to configure it for your building. Images are processed on the device as the camera runs and are not saved, and not transmitted anywhere. The app has no photo library access and stores no pictures.

Permissions

The app requests only Camera (to scan the configuration QR code) and Internet and network state (to reach your building’s panel on the local network). It requests no location, contacts, microphone, storage, or background permissions.

Security

Connection settings and operator identity are held in encrypted storage provided by the Android platform.

The resident cache, the activity log, and diagnostic logs are held in the app’s private storage. Other applications on the device cannot read them, and Android protects this storage with device-level encryption while the device is locked. They are not separately encrypted by the app at present; we are adding database-level encryption for the resident cache.

About the local network connection. The app attempts a secure (HTTPS) connection to your building’s panel and falls back to an unencrypted one when the equipment does not support it. Much building intercom equipment does not. Where that happens, information travels unencrypted within your building’s own local network. It does not travel over the public internet. We are working to remove this fallback; until then, treat your building network as you would any other part of the building’s security.

Retention and deletion

Information held on the device remains until you delete it. Uninstalling Vestward removes all of it — the resident cache, the activity log, diagnostic logs, and connection settings. You can also clear the app’s data from Android’s Settings, or clear the building configuration from within the app’s own Settings screen.

Resident records on your building’s panel are not TECI’s to delete. They belong to the building and are managed by whoever administers that equipment — including through Vestward itself.

See Vestward App — Data Deletion Requests for how to make a request and what can be deleted.

Children

Vestward is a building-management tool for adults. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly handle children’s information.

Your rights

Canadian privacy law — the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act — gives individuals rights to access and correct personal information held about them, and to complain about its handling.

Because resident records live on your building’s own equipment and under the property owner’s control, requests about them are usually best directed to your property manager or condominium board. We will help identify the right party and assist where the information is within our reach.

Changes

We will post any change here and update the effective date. Material changes affecting how information is handled will be reflected in the app’s Google Play listing.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about information handled by the Vestward app, can be directed to:

Technical Infrastructure (TECI)
Email: hello@technical-infrastructure.com
Phone: (587) 333-3377