Start Local Privacy Policy

16/03/2011 Changes - #9, #11 updated.

1. Our Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy forms part of the Terms of Use and governs the collection, storage, use and dissemination by Start Local Pty Ltd of any Personal Information (as defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)) that you provide on our site: www.StartLocal.com.au.

We are bound by the National Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) in relation to the handling of Personal Information.

Start Local Pty Ltd has been awarded TRUSTe's Privacy Seal signifying that this privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with TRUSTe's program requirements including transparency, accountability and choice regarding the collection and use of your personal information. TRUSTe's mission, as an independent third party, is to accelerate online trust among consumers and organizations globally through its leading privacy trustmark and innovative trust solutions. If you have questions or complaints regarding our privacy policy or practices, please contact us at Start Local Pty Ltd on 1300 785 706. If you are not satisfied with our response you can contact TRUSTe here. The TRUSTe program covers only information that is collected through this Web site, and does not cover information that may be collected through software downloaded from the site.

2. What Personal Information we collect

1. Users - We collect information from Users including username, e-mail address and information regarding your activity on the Site and Site password.
2. Local Businesses - We collect information from Local Businesses including names, phone numbers, email addresses, identification details, Site password and other information you choose to provide. If you choose to upgrade to a Featured Listing we will ask for credit card information in a secure environment in order to process your monthly payments.
3. Other - We may collect and use certain non-personal information such as the identity of your Internet browser, the type of operating system you use, your IP address and the domain name of your Internet service provider to optimise our goods and services to you.
4. We may also acquire business information from other sources, such as from other companies and from other public documents in order to provide users that are searching the site with the most complete and up-to-date information.

3. Your access to the Site

The Personal Information we collect from you enables us to operate the Site and provide the content. If you do not provide us with this Personal Information, we may not be able to provide you with full access to the Site.

4. What we will not do with your Personal Information

We will keep all Personal Information we receive from you confidential and will not sell or knowingly divulge such Personal Information to any third parties, unless:

1. the Personal Information is received from a Local Business as a Listing and the Local Business has requested it be published on the Site;
2. we are required to share your Personal Information with a third party in order to comply with the law or to comply with a court order or subpoena;
3. we receive a claim from a third party that you have breached any law;
4. it is necessary to enforce our Site rules;
5. it is necessary to provide it to our third party service providers and contractors, if any, such as data storage providers or direct debit providers who will be subject to strict contractual privacy obligations; or
6. it is necessary to protect the safety and security of our Users and our Site.
7. in the event Start Local Pty Ltd goes through a business transition, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personally identifiable information will likely be among the assets transferred. You will be notified via email of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.

5. What we will do with your Personal Information

The Personal Information collected by Start Local will be used for providing Users with information. We use the Personal Information collected to provide our services to you in the following ways:

1. to enable us to provide you with personalised content;
2. to enable us to send you email announcements and information on updates to the StartLocal system; and
3. to enable us to offer you links to other websites. When clicking on links to other websites, we encourage you to read their own privacy policies. Their standards may differ from ours.
4. To enable us to send a confirmation email to Users who wish to post User Recommendations.
5. Send transactional and service related emails to our Local Business customers and process payments for those Local Business customers who have elected to upgrade to a Featured Listing.

6. Agents/Service Providers

We use other third parties such as eWay as a credit card processing company to bill Local Businesses for services and Kampyle to make it easy for users to provide feedback. We will share only what personally identifiable information is necessary for the third party to provide that service.

7. Links to Other Web Sites

Our Site includes links to other Web sites whose privacy practices may differ from those of Start Local Pty Ltd. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is governed by their privacy statements. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy statement of any Web site you visit.

8. User Recommendations

If you choose to post a recommendation for a business it will appear on our site along with your first name. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. If you wish to have a recommendation you have added removed you may call us at 1300 785 706 or contact us through this form.

9. Public Forums

Our Web site offers publicly accessible blogs or community forums. You should be aware that any information you provide in these areas may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personal information from our blog or community forum, contact us by calling us on 1300 785 706 or contact us through this form. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.

10. Keeping Personal Information secure

We strive to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of your Personal Information. We will use a variety of physical and electronic security measures including restricting physical access to our offices and firewalls and secure databases to keep your Personal Information secure from misuse, loss or unauthorised use or disclosure. The transmission of sensitive information collected on our order form is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL). Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Web site, you can contact us through this form.

11. How you can access, change or delete your Personal Information?

The Personal Information we hold about you (such as your name and email address) is kept so that we may correctly identify you.

You can update this Personal Information at anytime by logging onto the Site. Alternatively, upon your request, we will correct or delete inaccurate or incomplete Personal Information we hold about you by contacting us through this form.

You have a right to get a copy of the Personal Information we hold about you. To request access, please use the contact form provided. 

We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. We will retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

12. Cookies

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer's memory or hard disk for record-keeping. We use cookies only to the limited extent of recognising you when you visit the Site, to track usage patterns and deliver customised content to you.  However, this information is not linked to any Personal Information that you may provide and cannot be used to identify you.
If you do not want information collected through Cookies, most internet browsers allow you to deny or accept Cookies.

Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Start Local.

Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to our Users based on their visits to Start Local and other sites on the Internet.

We also use third party companies (such as Google Analytics) in order to collect non-personally identifiable information to compile aggregated statistics for us about visitors to our site.

Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

13. Dispute

If you reasonably believe that there has been an unauthorised disclosure of your Personal Information, please contact us by using the contact form provided or by mail at Suite 505, 815 Pacific Hwy, Chatswood, NSW, 2067.

14. Changes to Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy statement to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.