The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of the Government of Canada has determined that the Tim Horton’s geolocation function on the Company app was capable of tracking the location of users even when not activated.  Users of the app were led to believe that tracking was only possible when in use.  In effect, location of users was continually tracked, although it is unclear to what purpose Tim Horton’s may have used the data.  Continual tracking ceased in 2020 after an investigation by the Government of Canada.  It is however believed that some form of surveillance continued based on services provided by a U.S. third-party company.

In the official statement, Daniel Therrien, Privacy Commissioner stated, “Tim Horton’s clearly crossed the line by amassing a huge amount of highly sensitive information about its customers.  Following people’s movements every few minutes of every day was clearly an inappropriate form of surveillance.”