Privacy

The site’s one form is the search box. The search runs on our server, so what you type goes in the page’s address (approvaltrail.ca/search?q=…). That address stays in your browser’s history, reaches our host’s request logs, and is part of what Google Analytics receives (below): a product, ingredient or company you search for reaches Google Analytics. A DIN, NPN or licence number goes straight to its product’s page. To look something up without searching, browse Drugs, Natural products, Ingredients or Companies, or block Google Analytics as below.

We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read and which links are followed. It sets cookies and receives your IP address, browser and the address of each page you view, which Google processes under its own privacy policy. On a site about health products, the pages you read and the words you search for can say something about your health; Google Analytics receives them as it would on any other site. You can block it with Google’s opt-out browser add-on or your browser’s privacy settings. The site works without it.

The site may show ads from Google AdSense, labelled “Advertisement”, after a record or list. Google picks the ads, not us. Advertisers have no say in any record, and an ad next to a product is not a sign that it is approved: the record is. Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. Google’s advertising cookies let it and its partners serve ads based on those visits. You can opt out of personalized advertising in Google’s Ads Settings, and out of other vendors’ cookies at aboutads.info. How Google uses information from sites that use its services.

The site is hosted on Vercel, whose servers log requests (including IP addresses and page addresses) for security and operation.

The product, approval and recall records are Health Canada’s public databases. Licence holders who are people, not companies, are not named (how that is decided), and adverse reaction reports, which describe people, are left out.