CHOICE™, publisher of CHOICE™ Magazine, CHOICE™ Online, CHOICE™ Books and other CHOICE™ consumer products and services including but not limited to group buying services, abides by Australia’s National Privacy Principles and is committed to respecting your right to privacy and your right to control the accuracy of your personal information.
- We are committed to protecting your privacy in all your dealings with us: when you contact us, visit our CHOICE™ main site, Online site, mobile “m” site, any downloadable applications (apps) and any other CHOICE™ platform and/or technology whether known now or created in the future (‘the Sites’), respond to one of our surveys or promotions, subscribe to one of our magazines or to our websites, buy something from us or share your experiences with us.
- We only collect personal information that is needed for or directly related to the functions and activities of CHOICE™— for example, to deliver the advice, goods or services you have requested or to communicate promotional offers.
- We protect your details through encryption, firewalls and computer security systems.
- We never share information about you with any other organisation beyond what is necessary to deliver the goods or services you have requested from us.
- You are welcome to review the information we hold about you.
- You have the right to opt out of individually addressed promotional mailings.
- We deal with complaints about privacy breaches promptly.
This policy covers information that identifies you as an individual. It also covers information from which your identity is apparent or could reasonably be ascertained (e.g., by matching different sets of data held by CHOICE™).
For more details about your privacy when using the Sites, see our Sites Privacy Policy.
We only collect personal information about you if:
- It is necessary to supply you with what you request or give you the access you need — for example, if:
- You subscribe to one of our magazines, websites or email newsletters;
- You respond to one of our promotional offers;
- You buy a book or other item from us;
- You ask us for advice in relation to a consumer issue; or
- You share your experiences regarding a product or service.
- You necessary to the research, planning, product development and marketing requirements of CHOICE™ — for example, to communicate promotional offers.
- It is necessary to protect the rights or property of CHOICE™, any CHOICE™ publication, any CHOICE™ subscriber or any member of the public.
- It is necessary to lessen a serious threat to a person’s health or safety.
- It is required by law.
We will only collect information by lawful and fair means and we will take steps to ensure that the information we collect does not intrude to an unreasonable extent on your personal affairs.
When we ask you for information, we will tell you:
- Who we are and how to contact us;
- What information we need and why we’re collecting it;
- How you can get access to the personal information you give us if you want to check or change it;
- Any law that requires us to collect it; and
- The main consequences (if any) if all or part of the information is not provided.
We will usually collect personal information directly from you.
Sensitive information is information that identifies an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record or health information. CHOICE does not intentionally collect sensitive information about you unless you specifically choose to volunteer it to us, for example in a letter to us about your experiences or concerns. When we collect information for research topicsthe information is usually collected anonymously and is always only used in the aggregate, for example to lobby the government for better services, unless you give your consent to being identified. You can, of course, always opt out of giving this kind of information.
Wherever it is lawful and practicable we will give you the option of not identifying yourself when contacting or dealing with CHOICE™. So, for example, you can visit the free parts of the Sites, respond to surveys, or ask us questions about consumer rights without identifying yourself. However, if you want to receive one of CHOICE’s subscription products or services, ask a question about the personal information we hold about you, buy a book directly from us, use the Sites, access via hand helds and mobile devices or participate in one of our prize draws you will need to give us certain personal information.
If you take part in an online, mail, mobile, text, email or phone survey the information we collect is usually anonymous and is only used in aggregated form unless we specifically tell you otherwise at the time we collect it. You may always choose not to participate. All information gathered in this way is kept strictly confidential. We may also collect general demographic data so we can check aggregated results against ABS statistics to ensure they’re representative, but the identification is no more specific than your postcode and is never used on an individual basis. Where you give us information about your experiences with products or services this may be interesting to others when we publish articles on those topics. If we wish to use your experience and you’ve provided it to us in a private communication (letter, fax, email, phone call, text, survey) we will always ask your permission before we publish it. You always have the right to refuse or to request anonymity.
We will not use or disclose or permit the use or disclosure of personal information that could be used to identify an individual except in the following circumstances:
- When you purchase something from us or respond to one of our promotions we will use the information you provide to deliver any information, goods and/or services you have requested. For example, if you subscribe to CHOICE™ Magazine, we will send you your magazines and renewal notices.
For customers we may also:
- Ask you for your email address so we can send you our e-newsletters — you can always opt out of these
- Tell you about related products or services that CHOICE™ provides. For example we may send you our next book catalogue.
- Invite you to participate in research to improve CHOICE™ products and services, for example, telephone you to ask about your interest in the latest issue of a magazine you subscribe to.
- Invite you to participate in surveys about consumer products or services, for example, send you a survey about your experiences with your bank.
- Invite you to participate in our Home Tester or similar involvement programs.
- Invite you to access the Sites.
We may use information about you that was collected by another organisation to send you promotional offers on CHOICE™ products or services. In this case we will take all reasonable steps to make sure you gave informed consent for the information to be used in this way and we will give you the option not to receive further contact from CHOICE™.
We will from time to time use the information we hold about you to send you promotional offers either individually addressed or promoted within existing products. These offers are to do with other CHOICE publications and services. We will always give you the option not to receive any further individually addressed promotional contact from CHOICE™.
If you give us your email, text and/or Twitter or equivalent technology address to be alerted when a new report is published, we will contact you by email, text and/or Twitter or equivalent technology.
When we send you an e-newsletter, text,, tweet or equivalent technology we may collect information about opening and click through rates. We will only use that information in aggregated form.
Where personal information you give us is disclosed to an agent of CHOICE™ (for example to data processing, data analysis, printing, or mailing contractors) it will only be disclosed to the extent necessary to enable them to undertake the specific task we’ve contracted them to do and we will require them to operate under conditions of confidentiality, which will be specified as a term of the contract between CHOICE™ and the agent. Such an agent will be required to return all original records to CHOICE™, return or securely destroy any copied records and ensure that its employees are familiar with their obligations of privacy and confidentiality. Personal information collected by CHOICE™ will not knowingly be given, sold or rented for use by any other organisation or for any other purpose. Any partners of CHOICE™ are also required to abide by Australia’s National Privacy Principles. CHOICE™ does not knowingly transfer personal information about individuals to anyone else or any other organisation in a foreign country.
We will take all reasonable steps to ensure all personal information we hold about you is relevant, not excessive, accurate, complete and up-to-date. Each time we contact you we will give you an opportunity to correct or update details and you may contact us at any time during business hours if you wish to check or change your personal information — see Access: How to check or correct your personal information for details.
Our customer records are protected by a range of security measures: encryption, firewalls and/or computer network security systems, restricted access and building security systems. Personal information about former customers is retained for a period of time after the customer relationship ceases as required by law — for example, financial records must be kept for 7 years — and as part of CHOICE’s intellectual property base. During this time we may contact you to tell you about CHOICE products or services or to ask you why you left CHOICE™. You can request not to receive further contact from us either by indicating so on the material we send you or by contacting us directly (see How to opt out for details).
CHOICE™ employees are trained in and abide by this privacy policy. Adherence to the policy is reviewed annually by CHOICE™.
If you do not wish to receive further promotional material from CHOICE you can:
- Ring us on 1800 069 552
- Fax us on (02) 9577 3355
- Write to us at Privacy, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville NSW 2204
You will need to give sufficient information for us to identify you, for example, your name and address plus your subscriber number if you subscribe to a magazine or your ‘clue question’ answer if you subscribe to one of the Sites.
If you are a subscriber or other customer of CHOICE™ you may request access to your personal information on the CHOICE™ database. We encourage you to contact our customer service section if you have any concerns about the personal information we hold about you.
To see what personal information we hold on you, please write to us requesting access to it:
- Fax us on (02) 9577 3355; mark your fax: Attention Privacy Officer
- Write to us at Privacy Officer, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville NSW 2204
Please include the following details so that we can identify you: your full name and address as they appear in our records, your daytime phone number and email address (if applicable), details of your subscriptions and your subscriber number (if you know it) and/or of your recent purchases from us. Because email is relatively insecure, we ask that you put this information in a letter or fax rather than in an email.
We will send you the personal information we hold about you within ten working days of receiving your request in writing. We will then work with you to alter or update any information that we both agree was inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date within a further five working days. In the unlikely event that we disagree with you about the changes you want made, we will explain why and, if you wish, add a note to your records stating that you claim the information is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date. There is no charge for this service.
To simply update your details you can:
- Ring us on (02) 9577 3333, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm EST weekdays
- Fax us on (02) 9577 3355; mark your fax Attention Consumer Services
- Write to us at Consumer Services, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville NSW 2204
You will need to give us sufficient information so that we can identify you — for example your name, address and phone number plus your subscriber number in the case of a subscription to CHOICE Magazine or your email address and ‘clue question’ answer in the case of a subscription to the Sites.
If our privacy policy changes, we will draw your attention to our new policy through the publications or services you subscribe to or buy or through the Sites.
We are committed to dealing quickly and appropriately with any complaint you make about your privacy in relation to CHOICE’s publications, services or practices, or any CHOICE™ joint partner. If you are concerned that this privacy policy may have been breached or that your privacy may have been compromised please contact us in writing immediately, setting out your concerns.
- Fax us on (02) 9577 3355; mark your fax: Attention Privacy Officer
- Write to us at Privacy Officer, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville NSW 2204
Please do not contact us by email to make a specific complaint, as it is relatively insecure.
Please include a daytime telephone number where we can contact you. We will use our best endeavours to get back to you within one (1) working day of receiving your complaint and will work with you to resolve your problem to your satisfaction within ten (10) further working days.
If you are not satisfied with our handling of your complaint you can refer it to the Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner.
The central office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner is located in Sydney at: Level 8, Piccadilly Tower, 133 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW 2000.
Contact details:
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Privacy Hotline 1300 363 992 (9.00am - 5.00pm EST Monday to Friday) (for the cost of a local call anywhere in Australia)
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TTY 1800 620 241
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Mail GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 1042
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Fax +61 2 9284 9666
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Email
privacy@privacy.gov.au
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Web
www.privacy.gov.au
Please note: Complaints should be made in writing to the Federal Privacy Commissioner at the above address. If you need help to make a complaint, you can phone the hotline for assistance.
The Australian Privacy Commissioner’s Website:
The Internet Industry Association website:
The Sites Privacy Policy
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Information we collect
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We may contact you
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We don't spam
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Cookies
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Your consent
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Changing your personal information
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The Sites partners
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Security of your information
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Security of access
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Links to other websites
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Tell us what you think
Information we collect
We do not include on our site any functionality allowing third parties to perform ‘reverse searches’ to identify individuals from email addresses.
We do collect information on site usage. This information is aggregated so we can track and analyse overall use of the Sites to help us improve the information, service and features you want. In addition, the number of times you access the site in a given period may be checked as part of our site usage monitoring. This information is kept strictly confidential, available only to selected senior CHOICE™ staff, and may be used to query what we determine is unusually heavy use of the site.
Your name and address and login email and password are stored in our system so that you can have access and so that you can change your details online. When you first join or register these details are sent to us in non-encrypted email.
When you first register on this site and if you use our 'Forgotten your password' facility, we will email your password to you. We provide this service largely as a result of customer demand, especially for out of hours use (our office is only staffed 9am - 5pm Mon - Fri). While email can be insecure we consider this action is low-risk: it's highly unlikely anyone will 'steal' your password provided your email address is secure, and the worst that could happen is that someone could access your ID and change your password. They can't access your credit card details online even with your ID and password, and they can't incur any costs for you. If someone did manage to change your password and so lock you out, you can ring us up and identify yourself with your 'clue question' and we will reset your password.
We do not currently collect personal information about you from other sites.
This site uses ClickTale web analytics service. ClickTale may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, scrolling activity as well as any text you type in this website. ClickTale does not collect personally identifiable information that you do not voluntarily enter in this website. ClickTale does not track your browsing habits across web sites which do not use ClickTale services. We are using the information collected by ClickTale service to improve our site usability.
For more information see Privacy Policy for Information Collected by the ClickTale Web Analytics Service.
You can choose to disable the Service.
We may contact you
If you are a customer we may contact you to advise you of changes to our services or other important information. When you join one or more of the Sites you willreceive our newsletter with updates and news about the Sites and other CHOICE™ products. You may opt out at any time. Every email, text or equivalent communication we send you will have information on how to do this.
We don't spam
We don't spam and we never pass email or text addresses to third parties except where they act as agents for us and the information is required to deliver the goods or services you have requested from us.
Cookies
We use cookies in the following ways:
- We offer you the convenience of accepting a permanent cookie when you become a member or supporter of the Sites by ticking the Remember Me checkbox or equivalent technology. This will ensure you are greeted appropriately whenever you visit the CHOICE™ site and are permanently logged in so that you may browse the site unimpeded whenever you visit. You can decline this cookie or equivalent technology if you wish, or turn it off after you've accepted it, by clicking Logout in the Welcome box on the right hand side of every page.
- We use a temporary cookie or equivalent technology when you first become a member or supporter of the Sites, or during any session in which you change any of your membership information, as a convenience to you so you can avoid having to enter your username and password on every screen. This cookie disappears when you exit your browser.
- If you decline the Remember Me cookie, a temporary cookie or equivalent technologymay be used once during each visit to our site or app, if you are a site member or supporter, as a convenience to you, so you can avoid having to enter your username and password every time you access a member-only area on the site. This cookie disappears when you exit your browser.
- We use a temporary cookie or equivalent technology when you visit our shop, to track your purchases — e.g. the books you buy or the pay-per-view pages you request. This cookie or equivalent technology expires after 24 hours.
- If you vote in a poll on the site, a temporary cookie will be used to indicate that you have cast your vote. The cookie or equivalent technology does not contain any personal information and expires after 30 days.
You must accept the temporary cookies in order to gain access to the members-only area on the a site or to make a purchase from the shop. Note: If your browser is set to notify you when you receive a cookie, you'll be prompted to accept the cookie (Yes/No). Please select "Yes".
We may decide in the future to use cookies in other parts of our site to improve our service to you. If we do, we will post that information on these pages and notify you of it in any section that uses cookies when you first encounter it, with links to this page.
Warning
To keep your personal details secure if you're using a public computer, always Logout of the site after use or decline the Remember Me option.
Your consent
By using the Sites you consent to the collection and use of this information by CHOICE™.
Changing your personal information Members and/or consumers may alter their details at any time by clicking My Profile in the Welcome box on the right hand side of every page (you need to be logged in for this option to appear). If you change your details, please also let us know by telephone, email or letter, so we can update your details on our membership system. Email us at ausconsumer@choice.com.au, phone us on 1800 069 552 or write to us to do this.
Call us on 1800 069 552 during business hours (9:00 am to 5:00 pm Sydney time, Monday to Friday (to calculate Sydney time, go to the Australian White Pages world time calculator) or write to Customer Service, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville NSW 2204, Australia.
If you need to change your credit card details, please phone or write — do not use email as it is relatively insecure.
You will need to identify yourself by giving us your full name, your address, your email address and the answer to your Clue question.
If you wish to review your file, we will mail the information in it to you within ten (10) working days of receiving your request in writing.
If there are items you want corrected or deleted we will do so within five (5) working days of receiving your request to do so unless we need to contact you to clarify details.
If your email address or texting number changes you can update this information on the site log-in pages, but please also email us at so we can redirect email newsletters you've requested to your new address.
The Sites
Some of the specific product- or service-CHOICE ™advice we offer through the Sites uses data provided by other organisations. For example, we get current product prices from Getprice.
Currently all such partnerships are based on bringing up-to-date data the Sites so that you can access it via our web pages or other technology. Information about you is protected by our firewalls and is not passed to any third party.
If in the future we form partnerships where we need to pass information you supply to another site, we will specifically state this on the Sites page or screen and we will only proceed with your explicit permission. If we do enter into such partnerships, we will require our partners to honour this privacy policy in full with respect to your personal information.
If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about your personal information in relation to CHOICE Online partners, please contact us in writing immediately, setting out your concerns.
- Fax us on (02) 9577 3355; mark your fax: Attention Privacy Officer
- Write to us at Privacy Officer, CHOICE, 57 Carrington Road, Marrickville NSW 2204
Please do not contact us by email to make a specific complaint as it is relatively insecure.
Please include a daytime telephone number where we can contact you. We will get back to you within one working day of receiving your complaint and will work with you to resolve your problem to your satisfaction within ten (10) further working days.
See Complaints for details about how we will respond.
Security of your information
The Sites will take all reasonable steps to ensure the personal information we have relating to you is correct and up-to-date.
CHOICE uses industry best-practice standards to securely collect and store credit card details. This service is provided by QValent, a subsidiary of Westpac. No credit card details are stored in the CHOICE™ system.
Check your browser security by looking for one or more of these ‘secure connection’ indicators:
- A security alert window tells you that you are about to use a secure connection. Some browsers let you choose whether to display this window.
- An SSL icon shows when you're in a secure connection. A symbol of an open padlock changes to a closed padlock when you're in a secure connection.
- A symbol of a ‘broken key’ icon is replaced by an unbroken key.
- A blue line runs across the top of the content window.
- The web site's address changes to one that begins with ‘https’ (check for the‘s’).
Security of access
Security checkpoints are set up as part of your subscription process. You are asked to establish a password and create a security check question (your "Clue question") that only you can answer.
IMPORTANT Keep your password secret and don't forget it! Use a different password to the one you use for banking.
If you do forget it, click on ‘Forgotten your password’ on the member login page, or telephone our Customer Service centre on 1800 069 552 during business hours (8:30 am to 5:00 pm Sydney time, Monday to Friday — to calculate Sydney time, go to the Australian White Pages world time calculator). You can also email us at ausconsumer@choice.com.au. You will need to identify yourself by giving us your full name, your address, your email address and the answer to your Clue question.
When you log in, you'll be asked to enter your password to protect the security of your subscription to the Sites. If you want to change your password or other subscriber information, you can do so by clicking My Profile in the Welcome box on the right hand side of every page (you need to be logged in for this option to appear). Please also contact us as above so we can update your details on our membership system. You'll be asked to answer your Clue question.
Please notify us immediately if you think there has been any unauthorised use of your password or account, by emailing us at privacy@choice.com.au.
Links to other websites
The Sites may provide links to other websites, sites and/or apps when we consider you may be interested in the content on those sites and/or apps. This in no way constitutes an endorsement of those sites and/or apps or their content and the Sites have no control over the conduct of the companies or organisations operating those sites or apps. Before you disclose any personal information to such a site, we advise you to check its terms and conditions, including its privacy and security policies.
Updating this policy
We review this policy regularly and update it in accordance with changes to the law or to the services we offer.
Tell us what you think
CHOICE™ welcomes your comments about our privacy policy. Please email us at privacy@choice.com.au.
Acknowledgements
CHOICE is a trade mark of the Australian Consumers Association Ltd, Get Price is a trade mark of Get Price Pty Ltd, White Pages is a trade mark of Telstra Corporation Limited, QValent is a trade mark of QValent Pty Ltd and ClickTale is a trade mark of Click Tale Limited