Tim Hortons federal privacy report confirms app tracked users’ location data

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Tim Hortons data privacy location data class action lawsuit overview:

• Who: The federal privacy commissioner issued a report on the Tim Hortons mobile app.
• Why: The app faces class action lawsuits for tracking customers without their consent.
• Where: The report was issued in Canada.

The Tim Hortons mobile app, which allows customers to order online, unnecessarily collected excessive amounts of data from users without their consent, the federal privacy commissioner found.

The commissioner’s report, published June 1, found that the coffee shop chain said it collected granular location data from customers for the purpose of advertising and targeting its products, but that it never used the data for those purposes. 

“Tim Hortons did not have a legitimate need to collect vast amounts of sensitive location information where it never used that information for its stated purpose,” the report states. “Furthermore, the consequences associated with the App’s collection of that data, the vast majority of which was collected when the App was not in use, represented a loss of Users’ privacy that was not proportional to the potential benefits Tim Hortons may have hoped to gain from improved targeted promotion of its coffee and associated products.”

Tim Hortons data privacy investigation launched 2 years ago

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada launched the investigation about two years ago in conjunction with similar authorities in British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta. 

It came after reporting from the Financial Post found the Tim Hortons app tracked users’ geolocation while users were not using the app, the report says. 

According to a presentation to investors shared in May, the restaurant chain’s app has 4 million active users.

The report says that those users did not receive an explanation of the consequences of having their location data tracked constantly even while the app was closed. 

According to the report, this meant a user’s data could be collected “as often as every few minutes, every day, everywhere they traveled, when their device was on.”

Tim Hortons stopped collecting location data in August 2020, the report found. Since the investigation concluded, Tim Hortons has agreed to delete all granular location data and to have its third-party service providers do so as well. 

It has also agreed to establish a privacy management program for its app and all future apps to ensure they are compliant with federal and provincial privacy legislation. 

The law governing privacy issues in Canada is known as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPEDA. The report found that the Tim Hortons app was not compliant with the privacy laws. However, it noted that the chain has since taken measures to resolve the issues.

Despite this, Restaurant Brands International Inc., the parent company of Tim Hortons, still faces several class action lawsuits alleging its mobile application tracked and monitored customers without their knowledge.

Did you download the Tim Hortons mobile app? What do you think about the Tim Hortons mobile app tracking class action lawsuit? Tell us your thoughts in the comment section below! 

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