OAIC Website Privacy Policy - November 2010

Scope of this Privacy Policy

This policy applies to personal information collected by the website of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

On 1 November 2010, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) became part of the OAIC. A full Privacy Policy for the OAIC is currently being developed, and will be posted on this page when complete.

For the full Privacy Policy of the OPC, click here. For the condensed OPC Privacy Policy,click here.

Important information

The OAIC is bound by the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) in the Privacy Act 1988. The IPPs set out how Australian Government agencies such as the OAIC should collect, use, store and disclose personal information and how individuals can access records containing their personal information. This website complies with the IPPs. 

This website also follows the Privacy Commissioner's Guidelines for Federal and ACT Government Websites.

Personal information

It is our usual practice to collect personal information directly from you. The personal information we collect from you through our website is very limited. It occurs when you use the website's Subscribe page to sign up to get emails, or the Feedback page to give us website feedback. From these pages, you are able to enter personal details such as your name, email address or phone number in order to get a reply.

Sometimes we collect personal information from a third party if you have consented or would reasonably expect us to collect the information in this way, for example from publicly available sources such as websites or telephone directories.

We do not collect personal information about you if you only browse this website.

When you browse the web site, our web server makes a record of your visit and logs the following unidentified information for statistical purposes:

• the user's server address
• the user's top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc)
• the date and time of visit to the site
• the pages accessed and documents downloaded
• the previous site visited
• the type of browser used.

We record this data to maintain our server and improve our services. Additional generic unidentified traffic data is also collected to establish behavioural trends of visitors to our site.

Uses and disclosures

We only use your personal information for the purposes for which you give it to us and for related, internal management purposes.

Personal information that is collected through the website's Subscribe and Feedback pages is used by the Australian Human Rights Commission IT Services for the purpose of managing the mailing list program used for those web pages.

We do not give information about you to other government agencies, organisations or anyone else unless one of the following applies:

• you have consented
• you'd expect us to or we have told you we will
• it is required or authorised by law
• it will prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to somebody's life or health
• the disclosure is reasonably necessary for law enforcement or for the protection of public revenue.

Your choices

You may access personal information that we hold about you or you can ask us to correct personal information we hold about you. 

If you are on our email list, you may opt out of further contact from us by clicking the unsubscribe option in all emails sent to our email lists.

How to contact us

For further information, contact us.