Privacy policy for scottferguson.com.au

This Privacy Policy applies to the activities of Scott Ferguson - IT & Business, Consulting, Support, and Services (ABN 600 463 614 27) (Sole trader). It explains how I handle personal information and comply with the requirements of privacy law ¹ .

If you have further questions relating to this policy please contact admin@scottferguson.com.au

NOTE:This information policy applies to the Services (main) and Clients Sections of this website. The privacy policy for the Community Section of this website is shorter as the information captured is less.

Your privacy is important to me. You have a right to control how your personal information is used and collected.

Collecting information about you

I collect personal information from customers, clients, employees, contractors, other individuals. I only collect this information when it is necessary for business purposes.

The main types of information I collect includes the contact details of customers such as email address, name, address, date of birth and gender. I may also collect information about work I will or have done for you, and about the equipment and IT systems you use.

I collect most of this information directly from individuals, such as when you register for services. Sometimes information about I may be provided to my by a third party, for example, your telecommunications service provider.

I always retain your service details in secure customer management systems, all critical details are kept encrypted. This is so that I have a record of past jobs so that I can diagnose problems faster.

If you contact me, I may keep a record of that contact, including making audio recordings of conversations you may have with my or I. You will always have the option to ask us not to make such recordings.

Using and disclosing your personal information

My purpose in collecting information about you is to provide you with services that you request, to operate my business efficiently. I do not routinely disclose personal information or use or disclose any information about you without your consent, unless:

• required by law
• I believe it necessary to provide you with a service which you have requested
• to implement my terms of service
• the use or disclosure is permitted by this policy
• to protect the rights, property or personal safety of an employee, another client or customer, any member of the public or myself
• some or all of the assets and operations of the business are or may be transferred to another party by way of sale of some or all of my business.

When you provide your personal information to me, I will give you the choice as to whether or not you wish to receive further information about special offers, promotions, and changes to my products and services. If you indicate that you do not wish to receive these, I will not contact you further for these purposes ².

If you do not indicate such a preference, you will be taken to have consented to my contacting you to provide further information that may be of interest to you relating to my products and/or services. This consent will be taken to apply until such time as you inform me that you do not wish to be contacted further.

Disclosing your personal information

I do not disclose information about you to advertisers. Instead, advertisers give me advertisements and tell me the kind of audience they wish to reach. I then take the advertisements and display them to users who are most likely to have an interest in the product or service.

I recognise the trust you place in me when you give me personal information. In order to operate my website, my contact centre or deliver a service, I may sometimes share your personal information with a contractor or employee such as a designer or a telecommunications provider. I also may share your personal information with third parties who referred you to us, such as your telecommunications provider.

I may share non-personal, de-identified and aggregated information for research or promotional purposes, however I will never identify or disclose individual customer information for these purposes.

Under no circumstances will I sell your details to marketing agencies.

I will not otherwise disclose your personal information to other companies without your explicit consent.

Service providers

I use a range of service providers to help me maximise the quality and efficiency of my services and business operations. This means that other individuals and organisations, such as programmers and other consultants, will sometimes have access to personal information held by me and may use it on my behalf. I require that service providers adhere to strict privacy guidelines and not to keep this information or use it for any unauthorised purposes.

Email subscription lists

I offer an email subscription newsletter providing information relevant to my customers and any offer/information I feel is relevant to our customers. If you do not wish to subscribe to this newsletter, you will be given an option to opt-out upon registration for services and you may unsubscribe at any time by notifying me at admin@scottferguson.com.au

I will not 'spam' you

I may contact you at the email or other address which you provide to me in order to:

• Provide you with updated information about products and services
• Provide you with other information about products and services which you may have an interest in

If you are receiving promotional information about me and do not wish to receive this information any longer, you may remove your name from our list either by utilising the unsubscribe button at the end of the email or e-mailing me at admin@scottferguson.com.au or calling me on 043 225 3228 and asking to be removed from my mailing list ³.

Storage and security of your personal information

I will endeavour to take all reasonable steps to keep secure any information which I hold about you, and to keep this information accurate and up to date. Your information is stored on secure servers that are protected in controlled facilities. I require my employees and data processors to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by me. Where ever possible your information is kept encrypted.

Illegal content

In the course of performing my services, I may come across or need to deal with information or data stored on your computer. Whilst I respect the privacy of your information, I am also required to observe laws which require the reporting of certain serious offences. Consequently, I may be required by law to report certain content to the relevant authorities.

Remote access

I may provide services to you by accessing your computer system remotely (ie. accessing your computer system externally without being on your premises). In order to effect this remote access, I may supply you with the necessary software which you will need to install on your computer. By installing this software, you consent to me accessing your computer system remotely.

This remote access facility will enable me to provide you with more timely and effective service. As with other work involving access to your system, remote access will allow me to access information stored on your computer. This Privacy Policy will continue to apply to remote access.

I will also record our sessions with you involving the use of the remote access facility. This may involve keeping a video or recording images of my interactions with you during these sessions.

What to do if you have a problem or question

If I become aware of any ongoing concerns or problems concerning my privacy practices, I will take these issues seriously and work to address these concerns. If you have any further queries relating to my Privacy Policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact me at admin@scottferguson.com.au

Future changes

From time to time, my policies will be reviewed and may be revised. I reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time and notify you by posting an updated version of the policy on this website.

The amended Privacy Policy will apply between us whether or not I have given you specific notice of any change.

I retain information about pages visited, browsers used, dates and times, and, cities and countries visitors come from - but except in the instances described above, the IP addresses are not kept.

Cookies and Web Bugs

I do use cookies to store information, such as which pages you've been to (so the back links will work on the pages) and to store your authorisation information if you are a client and have logged into the private clients section of the site.

I also use third party advertisements. Some of these advertisers use technology such as cookies and web bugs when they advertise on my site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing information relevant to your location, for example).

DoubleClick DART cookies

I also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookie is used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about chook juggling, you may see advertisements about dating sites for chook jugglers when viewing another site, such as on a site about poultry breeding). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical address, telephone number, social security numbers, bank account numbers or credit card numbers. For more information see Google's Advertising Privacy Policy page.

How NOT to leave personal information on my site

Use a VPN, proxy, and spoof a browser agent.

You can choose to disable or selectively turn off my cookies, or third-party cookies in your browser settings. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with my site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to certain areas of this site, or your client account.

Deleting cookies does not mean you are permanently opted out of any advertising program. Unless you have settings that disallow cookies, the next time you visit a site running the advertisements, a new cookie will be added.

How NOT to see the ads on my site

I only advertise products I personally use and believe will be useful, and good value, to visitors. I also (may) receive money for advertising (usually only when a lot of people buy the advertised product by following a link from my site).

This information will be expanded on soon.

You can access the information I keep about you

If at any time you want to know exactly what personal information I hold about you, you are welcome to request access ⁴ to your record by e-mailing me at admin@scottferguson.com.au

Changing and deleting the information I have about you

If at any time you wish to change personal information that is inaccurate or out of date, please contact me by e-mailing admin@scottferguson.com.au and I will amend this record. If you wish to have your personal information deleted, please let me know in the same manner as referred to above and I will take all reasonable steps to delete it unless I need to keep it for legal reasons.

Make a complaint about a breach of your Personal Privacy

Should you be unsatisfied with how I handled your private information, you can make a formal complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

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