Poultry Hub:Privacy policy
From Poultry Hub
Last updated: 26 June 2007
Version: 1
Jurisdictional background
Poultryhub is an Australian website. It abides by the ten national privacy principles for private businesses in the Privacy Act 1988, which is legislation of the Australian Government. You can find the legislation at www.austlii.edu.au or at www.comlaw.gov.au
Collection of personal information
Poultryhub works in a similar way to Wikipedia. It permits logged in users to add or modify text or graphics which relate in some way to poultry. Just like on Wikipedia, once an article is added to our site, it becomes available to anyone who visits. Under ordinary circumstances, anything you add will remain permanently available on our site.
Poultryhub does not deliberately collect “personal information” about people. However, personal information can appear on our site if included as part of an article on poultry, for example. Alternatively, a research scientist’s name and contact details may be found in text discussing a recent discovery concerning poultry, for example.
“Personal information” is defined in the Privacy Act 1988:
“personal information means information or an opinion (including information or an opinion forming part of a database), whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained, from the information or opinion.”
“Personal information” is an extremely broad concept, covering facts like a phone number (even if the number is out-of-date) to opinions, for example, a person’s opinion about a particular politician. It includes, but goes far beyond, a person’s name, contact details or profession.
Personal information can be added by the person themselves or by another person who creates or modifies an article on our site. Poultryhub does not contact anyone to collect personal information about any person.
As Poultryhub grows through the contributions of users, it is impossible for us to monitor any of our webpages. This means that we are not able to guarantee that personal information is not included on our site without the knowledge or consent of the person concerned.
Although we will not contact you to inform you that your personal information is on our site, you will:
- find our contact details on our site, to enable you to ask us to modify or “delete” (see text under the heading Backups) the personal information; or
- be able to log on and modify or delete the information yourself.
If we are required by any law to collect personal information, we will do so according to law.
Use and disclosure of personal information
If we do have your personal information on our site, we may contact you about poultry related conferences or other activities that we reasonably believe may be of interest to you. We will not pass your details onto direct marketers or spammers.
If we do contact you, you can ask us:
- not to contact you again; or
- to modify or “delete” (see text under the heading Backups) any personal information about you on our site.
We will also make sure that any communications with you include our contact details.
Data quality
If we become aware that personal information on our site is wrong, deficient or out-of-date, we will take reasonable steps to ensure it is accurate, complete and up-to-date.
Data security
Owing to our dependence on contributions from users, Poultryhub is unable to guarantee that any personal information about you on our site is protected against misuse and loss as other people may log and modify or “delete” (see text under the heading Backups) it.
Access and correction
While we will ordinarily allow you to access and correct your personal information, there may be circumstances in which we will not do so. These include but are not limited to where:
- the request for access is frivolous or vexatious; or
- providing access would be unlawful (or denying access is required or authorised by law).
For other circumstances in which we will not allow you to access or correct your personal information, please see the Privacy Act 1988.
Poultryhub does not charge for access to personal information, although you may be subject to usual charges applying to your use of the web.
Anonymity
If possible, we will permit you to create or modify an article on our site without using your personal information. This may be done through your creation of a pseudonym as your username. However, we reserve the right to modify or delete any article on our site.
Identifiers
Poultryhub will not adopt as its own “identifier” of a person an identifier of the person that has been assigned by another person or organisation. An “identifier” may be a number or code word assigned to identify a person. If you create an “identifier” for yourself, such as a pseudonym, we may make use of that “identifier”.
In the privacy principle dealing with “identifiers”, an “identifier” is defined as including a number assigned by an organisation to an individual to identify uniquely the individual for the purposes of the organisation’s operations. However, an individual’s name or Australian Business Number (as defined in the A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Act 1999) is not an “identifier”.
Transborder data flows
Other than being available on our site, Poultryhub will not usually transfer personal information about you to someone outside of Australia. Be assured that we will not do so unless we reasonably believe that the recipient is subject to a law, binding scheme or contract which upholds principles for fair handling of the information or that are substantially similar to Australia’s national privacy principles (which are similar to privacy protection measures adopted in the European Union and the United States).
For more information on the circumstances in which we may undertake a transborder data transfer, please see the Privacy Act 1988.
Sensitive information
Poultryhub does not deliberately collect sensitive information about you. If we detect sensitive information on our site, we may delete it.
“Sensitive information” is defined in the Privacy Act 1998:
“sensitive information means:
- information or an opinion about an individual’s:
- racial or ethnic origin; or
- political opinions; or
- membership of a political association; or
- religious beliefs or affiliations; or
- philosophical beliefs; or
- membership of a professional or trade association; or
- membership of a trade union; or
- sexual preferences or practices; or
- criminal record;
that is also personal information; or
- health information about an individual; or
- genetic information about an individual that is not otherwise health information.”
For more information on how we will handle sensitive information about you, please see the Privacy Act 1988.
Cookies
A “Cookie” is a message transferred to your web browser from our server that is returned to the server whenever you access a webpage from the server. Cookies are used by us to enable our server to note your computer’s Internet Protocol or “IP” address. No personal information is transferred through our use of Cookies.
You will be required to accept Cookies from our server to properly access our website. If we consider you to have vandalised our site through additions, modifications or deletions of an article that we consider to be malicious, we may use information obtained from a Cookie to block your access to our site.
Passwords
As with other websites, we strongly encourage you to select a unique password, regularly change it and never share it with other people. In this way, the chance of someone misappropriating your username and password to cause malicious damage to our site is reduced.
Backups
Our site is subject to regular backups, to preserve information if there is a disruption to our server or the internet generally. In addition, as is the case with Wikipedia, removing an article from the site does not permanently delete it, as any user can look up an earlier version of the article and read it.
It is possible for us to delete the information directly from our server but this is not something that we usually would do unless, for example, we were ordered to so do by a court. Accordingly, personal information about you may continue to exist despite being “deleted” from an article.
Links
Our site has links to other sites that are not controlled by Poultryhub. If you use the links to access other sites and pages on them, please be aware that Poultryhub takes no responsibility for personal information which you choose to place on other sites.
Changes to Poultryhub privacy policy
Our Poultryhub privacy policy, and all of our terms and conditions of operation for Poultryhub, may be deleted or modified without our or your permission through judicial or governmental processes.
We also reserve the right to change our Poultryhub privacy policy without notice at any time. If possible, we will contact you about changes to our policy.
