The Locals Agency Pty Ltd, (trading as Local Peoples and Matters Journal) and its related bodies corporate (we, our, us) recognise the importance of protecting the privacy and the rights of individuals in relation to their personal information. This document is our privacy policy and it outlines how we collect and manage your personal information (yes, we collect some), including how we may use that information, who we may disclose the information to, and the security measures taken to protect your personal information.
We respect your rights to privacy under the Privacy Act 1988 (as amended) (Commonwealth) (Act) and all regulations made under the Act including the Australian Privacy Principles and we comply with all of the Act’s requirements in respect of the collection, management and disclosure of your personal information.
If you have questions or concerns about any aspect of this policy, please feel free to contact our Privacy Policy Coordinator, Giuseppe Demaio at giuseppe@localpeoples.com.
Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. You can access the policy anytime at www.localpeoples.com/privacy. Your use or access (and/or registration) of this website will constitute your agreement to this Privacy Policy. This policy does not cover information collected elsewhere, including, without limitation, offline and on websites linked to or from this website.
What is your personal information?
When used in this Privacy Policy, the term “personal information” has the meaning given to it in the Act. In general terms, it is any information that can be used to personally identify you. This may include your name, address, telephone number, and email address. If the information we collect personally identifies you, or you are reasonably identifiable from it, the information will be considered personal information.
What this policy covers.
This policy covers our treatment of information that we obtain when you visit our website. This policy does not cover the privacy practices of third parties that we do not own or control, such as our partners, property developers, sales agents or advertisers. In addition we may provide links to other services and on occasion links to other sites that may interest you. All of these sites are owned independently of us and have their own privacy and security practices. For your best online experience, we encourage you to review their privacy policies before submitting personal information to them.
Information we gather.
We collect personal information about you so that we can perform our business activities and functions and to provide best possible quality of service.
Information that we gather generally falls into two categories: (1) personally identifiable information, which is gathered with your specific knowledge and consent, for instance when you enter a contest, complete a survey, make a purchase, subscribe to our publication(s), or register for any portion of our services, you are asked to provide information such as your email address, phone number, name and demographic information, and (2) non-personally identifiable information collected through technology, which includes tracking information collected as you navigate the website including use of browser “cookies” – please see section 3.2.2 below.
3.1. How do we collect your personal information?
We collect your personal information directly from you. When collecting personal information from you, we may collect in ways including:
3.1.1. Registration or subscription through our website. When you register your interest or subscribe through our website, you supply certain personally identifiable information including, in most cases, a unique email address and demographic information.
3.1.2. Registration for our website via third-party tools. You may choose to log-on, create, or enhance your profile with the Facebook Connect feature on our websites (including but not limited to Matters Journal and Local Peoples). By doing this, you are asking Facebook to send us registration information from your Facebook profile. We treat that information as we do any other information you give us when you log-on, register, or create a profile.
3.1.3. User Generated comments and public activities (including comments and Facebook and Twitter sharing). We may offer you opportunities to engage in public activities on our website. “Public Activities” are any actions you take on our website, Twitter, Facebook and other social media that are designed to be visible to other users on the website, including comments and posting to Facebook or Twitter and other social media. Any information you disclose in your Public Activities, including your screen name, any image or photo, becomes public and may be used by us for online and offline promotional or commercial uses in any and all media. If you chose to engage in Public Activities, you should be aware that any personally identifiable information you choose to submit can be read, collected, and used by other readers of these areas, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the personally identifiable information you choose to submit in these forums and we have no responsibility to publish, take down, remove or edit any Public Activities.
If you have signed up for an account with us, we will track and aggregate your Public Activities on the website. If you choose to participate in Public Activities, you are electing to share and display such Public Activities on our website. Also, Public Activities may be included in RSS feeds, APIs, and made available to other websites in other formats. As a result your Public Activities may appear on other websites, blogs, or feeds.
3.1.4. Contests and special offers. We may collect information from you in connection with contests and special offers. If this information is shared with a third party, we will notify you at the time of collection, and if you do not want any personal information shared, you may always decline to participate in the contest, or special offer.
3.1.5. Surveys, panels, and market research. We may collect personal information from you in connection with voluntary surveys. Unless we notify you at the time of collection, the information you provide in response to optional survey questions may be shared, but only in aggregate, with our advertisers and partners.
3.2. Non-personally identifiable information collected using technology.
3.2.1. Device Information. We may collect information about the computer, mobile telephone, smart phone, or other device you use to access this website.
3.2.2. Cookies and web beacons. When you access our website, we may send a “cookie” (which is a small summary file containing a unique ID number) to your computer. This enables us to recognise your computer and greet you each time you visit our website without bothering you with a request to register. It also enables us to keep track of products or services you view so that, if you consent, we can send you news about those products or services. We also use cookies to measure traffic patterns, to determine which areas of our website have been visited and to measure transaction patterns in the aggregate. We use this to research our users’ habits so that we can improve our online products and services. Our cookies do not collect personal information. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them.You will not be able to access certain areas of the website if your computer does not accept cookies from us. We may log IP addresses (that is, the electronic addresses of computers connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website, track users movements, and gather broad demographic information.
3.2.3. Analytics Technologies. We have hired third parties to provide us information, reports and analysis about the usage and browsing patterns of the users of our website. The non-personally identifiable information is collected on our behalf and used by such third parties to analyze trends, administer the site, track users’ movements around the site, and gather aggregate information about our user base as a whole. We do not tie this data to personally identifiable information.
3.2.4. Log files and reading history. We automatically log certain information about your use of the website. This information includes reading history of the pages you view. We may use this information to provide you with customized recommendations based on your reading history. We also use log files in aggregate usage of the website.
4. How we use the information we collect
4.1. Services you request. We generally use personally identifying information you supply to provide you with the service you have requested. For example, if you subscribe to our publications, we may use your email address to send you a confirmation notice and your mailing address to send you the publication. We may also use the information to communicate with you about new features, products, or services and/or to improve the services we offer by tailoring them to your needs.
4.2. Direct marketing for property sales. When you register your interest by submitting your personal information on our website we use your personal information by sharing it directly with third party sales agents, property developers or marketing companies in relation to the sale of a property. You can opt-out of communication or update your personal details by notifying us or the third party sales agent at anytime.
4.3. Analysis. We perform statistical, demographic, and marketing analysis of users of our website for product development purposes and to generally inform advertisers about the nature of our users. We also use this information to improve customer relationships.
4.4. Third party service providers. We will allow access to our database by third parties that provide services on our behalf, including credit-card and billing processing, shipping, email distribution, list processing, and analytics or promotions management. Our service providers are restricted from using any data in any way other than to provide services for us and they may not share or resell our data.
4.5. Affiliates and Partners. Unless otherwise specified elsewhere on our website, we may share personal information with our affiliates and with carefully selected partners.
5. Our email policy. We fully comply with applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Commonwealth). All of our emails include an easy to use unsubscribe facility.
5.1 Account Related Emails. We reserve the right to send you emails relating to your account status. This includes order confirmations, renewal notices, notices about credit cards problems, and other transactional emails and notifications about major changes to our business or our Privacy Policy.
5.2 Newsletters and promotional emails. We offer a number of email newsletters and may also periodically email you about products and services that we think may be of interest to you. If you no longer wish to receive a specific newsletter or promotion from us, please follow the “unsubscribe” instructions located at the bottom of each email. To manage your email preferences, please click on the unsubscribe link found at the bottom of any email you receive from us.
6. Legal Stuff.
6.1. Legal Requirements. We may also provide access to our databases to cooperate with official investigations or legal proceedings, including, for example, in response to subpoenas, search warrants, court orders, or other legal proceedings.
6.2. Acquisition or Transfer. As our business changes, we may buy or sell various assets. In the event that all or a portion of the assets owned or controlled by The Locals Agency Pty Ltd, (including any parent or subsidiary company) are sold, assigned, transferred or acquired by a third party, data collected from the users of our websites may be among such assets.
6.3. Other businesses, new entities. We operate a number of other businesses and may share your information with those businesses for the purposes of marketing the services and products offered by those businesses to you. If we determine to establish any new subsidiary company to operate those businesses (whether wholly controlled by us or otherwise) we may transfer or share your information and data to those new companies for the same purposes.
7. Do we disclose your personal information to anyone outside Australia?
We may disclose personal information to our related bodies corporate and third party suppliers and service providers located overseas for some of the purposes listed above. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information. We may disclose your personal information to entities located outside of Australia, including the following: our related bodies corporate, our data hosting and other IT service providers, located in foreign countries (some cloud service providers may store data in several countries) and other third parties who may be located outside of Australia.
8. How we keep your information secure 8.1. Network Security. We have implemented a variety of commercially standard encryption and security technologies and procedures to protect information, including your personal information, stored in our computer systems from unauthorized access. Please be aware that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, thus we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, but we cannot guarantee its absolute security under all conditions. We also cannot guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet. Accordingly, any personal information or other information which you transmit to us online is transmitted at your own risk.
8.2. Management Procedures. We also maintain standard physical and electronic procedural safeguards that limit access to your personally identifiable information to our employees (or people working on our behalf and under confidentiality agreements) who, through the course of standard business activities, need to access your personally identifiable information.
9. International Visitors. Our website is intended for and directed to users in Australia. If you are accessing the website from the European Union, Asia, the US or any other region with local laws or regulations governing personal data collection, use and disclosure that differ from Australian laws, please be advised that through your continued use of our website, is subject to this Privacy Policy and you are transferring your personal information to Australia and you consent to that transfer.
10. Updates to our Privacy Policy. Our services are evolving and developing. From time to time, we will review and make changes to our Privacy Policy. Any updated versions of this privacy policy will be posted on our website. This privacy policy was last updated on 20 November 2018.