Canada’s privacy laws have ‘no teeth’: What I learned during an eight-month investigation into Tim Hortons’ data tracking

James McCleod provides an update on is investigation.

I had been impatiently waiting for a particular email to arrive for two months before it finally hit my inbox last week. I was hoping to learn something new about Tim Hortons’ location surveillance efforts by asking one of its technology partners what it had about me.

Back in June, I’d reported that the coffee chain had been tracking me and countless other customers through its mobile ordering app.

But Tim Hortons itself wasn’t doing the data analytics work to process GPS signals and figure out where I lived and worked, as well as whenever I visited one of its competitors. Instead, Tim Hortons’ parent company, Restaurant Brands International Inc., contracted that work out to New York-based Radar Labs Inc.