We will be closed for the Christmas / New Year Period from 5p, 19th December 2024, re-opening 13th January 2025. The Foreshew Family and the Team at The 1888 Co. wish you a Merry Christmas and safe start to 2025.
Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Information privacy is concerned with promoting and respecting the protection of information that identifies who you are, what you do and what you believe. In the property industry, and for strata management specifically, consumers or clients are constantly dealing with a strata agency. Some of the clients that an agency deals with include:
• Lot owners, inclusive of the strata committee members
• Owners corporations who have signed a Strata Management Agency Agreement to sell their property
• Property managers
• Tenants residing in a strata plan
• Prospective purchasers of properties inspecting a property or enquiring about that property and requesting information in relation to the strata plan and the by-laws
The general distinction between prospective and actual persons is made above because the relationship with prospective owners (who are considering the purchase of a lot in a strata scheme), lot owners, strata committee members is at a general ‘Consumer’ level, whereas the relationship changes when a person signs an Agreement with the Agency and becomes a ‘Client’.
While the legislative obligations concerning Privacy may not change for either relationship, the expectations of the individuals may be a little different when they transition from being a ‘consumer’ to a ‘client’.
Typically, agencies will collect and hold more information about clients, and so in principle, there is more risk to that information for a longer period of time.
It should be noted that the Act is applicable to government organisations as well as any organisation that has an annual turnover of more than $3M, as well as some other specific organisations that are documented. Hence, medium or large agencies are fully obligated under the Act, while smaller Agencies may not be.
Even if an agency is small, then it must be aware of the principles that the Act establishes as well as their client expectations. They cannot simply ignore any obligations concerning Privacy, or they do so at some level of risk to their business.
The thirteen (13) Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) set out how private sector organisations should collect, use, keep secure and disclose personal information.
The principles give individuals the right to know what information an organisation holds about them and a right to correct that information if it is wrong.
APP 1 – Open and Transparent Management of Personal Information applies and links closely with the requirements of the Property and Stock Agents legislation.
The Property and Stock Agents Regulation 2022 requires Agents to apply ethical standards to their behaviours.
The general Rules of Conduct are contained in Schedule 1 of the Regulations, with the following applying to, or referring directly to Privacy:
Section 1 – Knowledge of the Act and Regulations
An agent must have a knowledge and understanding of the Act and the regulations under the Act, and such other laws relevant to the category of licence or certificate of registration held (including, laws relating to residential tenancy, fair trading, competition and consumer protection, anti-discrimination and privacy) as may be necessary to enable the agent to exercise his or her functions as agent lawfully.
Section 7 – Confidentiality
An agent must not, at any time, use or disclose any confidential information obtained while acting on behalf of a client or dealing with a customer, unless:
(a) the client or customer authorises the disclosure, or
(b) the agent is permitted or compelled by law to disclose the information.
Using Personal Information
The diagram below details the sort of information (data) that an Agency deals with on a day-to-day basis:
The type of information that will be discussed, recorded, used in other documents and in other processes with respect to real estate business operations may include:
Mainly - Identification Information (which is defined in the Privacy Act 1988 as):
• the individual’s full name; or
• an alias or previous name of the individual; or
• the individual’s date of birth; or
• the individual’s sex; or
• the individual’s current or last known address, and two (2) previous addresses (if any); or
• the name of the individual’s current or last known employer; or
• if the individual holds a driver’s licence - the individual’s driver’s licence number.
Very occasionally, an agent may get information based on the following when they speak with a client, or attend a routine inspection or appraisal, which is categorised as Sensitive Information and defined as such under the Act:
• information or an opinion about an individual’s:
o racial or ethnic origin; or
o political opinions; or
o membership of a political association; or
o religious beliefs or affiliations; or
o philosophical beliefs; or
o membership of a professional or trade association; or
o membership of a trade union; or
o sexual orientation or practices; or
o 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; or
• biometric information that is to be used for the purpose of automated biometric verification or biometric identification; or
• biometric templates.
All the above constitutes personal information under the Act and in addition:
Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:
(a) whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
(b) whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
Most property transactions will not record or document sensitive information, but there may be conversations with Clients or facts that become known, or opinions shared or that are derived from interacting with Clients or general consumers - and these should be considered confidential.
In addition, agencies will handle financial information that relates to Owners levies, arrears and occasionally bank account details etc, which are all at particular risk of being shared or used for fraudulent purposes, such as applying for credit or bank fraud. This data must be stored securely and used only for its authorised purpose.
Where to keep you Privacy Policy ?
Most agencies place their Privacy Policy on their website, so any member of the public wishing to access the policy, can do so easily. This is most maintained as a link included in the footer of the website.
The Privacy Policy for The 1888 Co.
Amend the following draft policy to fit your agency.
What is 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, email address and profession or occupation. If the information we collect personally identifies you, or you are reasonably identifiable from it, the information will be considered Personal Information.
What type of Personal Information does The 1888 Co. collect and hold about you?
The 1888 Co. may collect any of the following information about you if you are a current or prospective vendor, purchaser or landlord of real estate or if you visit our website or make an enquiry with us via another method:
• contact details (including, name, address, telephone number and email address);
• driver’s license number;
• current property ownership and title details;
• desired property ownership details; and
• details of properties sold or acquired by you
If you are a current or prospective tenant for a rental property, The 1888 Co. may collect the following additional information from you:
• contact details (including, name, address, telephone number and email address);
• driver’s license number;
• employment details such as your employment status, employer, salary, length of employment;
• other sources of income; and
• personal and financial referees whom we may contact about your application.
Sometimes <<insert name of agency>> may also need to ask you for other forms of Personal Information to enable us to provide services to you.
How does The 1888 Co. collect Personal Information about me?
The 1888 Co. collects your Personal Information directly from you unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so. When collecting Personal Information from you, The 1888 Co. may collect in various ways, including emails, letters, telephone calls.
The 1888 Co. may collect information about you from the following third party sources:
• databases in the public domain such as telephone indexes, Australia Post database, Titles Office or other property databases; and
• referrals and recommendations from existing clients of The 1888 Co.
As part of the process of entering into lease or rental agreements with you, The 1888 Co. may disclose your information to authorised credit or tenant checking agencies.
What happens if we can’t collect your Personal Information?
If you do not provide <<insert name of agency>> with the Personal Information described above, some or all of the following may happen:
• we may not be able to provide our services to you, either to the same standard or at all; or
• we may not be able to provide you with information about services that you may want, including information about new properties that are available for lease or purchase;
Why does The 1888 Co. collect, hold, use and disclose your Personal Information?
The 1888 Co. collects information for a range of purposes including:
• enable our agency to provide you with the services and/or products you may require;
• to comply with local, state and federal legislation or regulations, and those specifically related to real estate property sales, rental and administration;
• to enable our agency to assist you with related services, as required;
• for our internal administrative, marketing, planning, product development and research requirements;
• to update our agency’s records and keep your contact details up to date;
• to deal with your queries or customer service issues promptly, whether by email, telephone or mail;
• to conduct relevant business processing functions; and
• to process and respond to any complaint made by you.
Your Personal Information will not be shared, sold, rented or disclosed other than as described in this Privacy Policy.
How does The 1888 Co. use the Personal Information held about you?
Any Personal Information about you that our agency collects and records will only be used or disclosed by our agency for the purpose of:
• compliance with obligations under real-estate regulations and laws applicable for all states in Australia;
• for our agency’s administrative, planning, product or service development, quality control and research purposes; and
• complying with any other relevant laws or regulations.
The 1888 Co. may also use or disclose the information it collects for any other purpose specified to you at the time of collection.
Direct marketing?
Our agency may send you direct marketing communications and information about our services that we consider may be of interest to you. These may include:
• offering to provide you with products or services provided by our agency and third party providers; or
• sending you news and other information about our agency’s activities and general promotional material which we believes may be of interest to you.
These communications may be sent in various forms, including mail, SMS and email, in accordance with applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). When our agency does this, we will provide you with the opportunity to opt-out from receiving any further communication from our agency.
You may at any time request not to receive direct marketing from <<insert name of agency>> by contacting our agency or by using opt-out facilities provided in the marketing communications and we will then ensure that your name is removed from our mailing list.
The 1888 Co. website
The 1888 Co. privacy policy also applies to our website at www.the1888.au
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. Our cookies do not collect Personal Information, although they do identify your browser. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them.
As our website is linked to the Internet, and the Internet is inherently insecure, we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of transmission of information you communicate to us online. 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.
Our website may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any third party website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third party website. Third party websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices.
What happens if I want to access or correct the Personal Information held about me?
You may request access to your Personal Information held by our agency, at any time by contacting us. We will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing your Personal Information (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you). We will respond to your request for access within 7 days and endeavour to provide the requested information within 21 days.
There may be instances where The 1888 Co. cannot grant you access to the Personal Information we hold. For example, we may not be able to provide access to information in the following situations:
• where in our opinion providing the information your request, may create a serious threat to the life or health of any individual or may be an unreasonable intrusion into the privacy of another individual;
• where your request for access is, in our agency’s opinion, frivolous or vexatious; or
• where providing access would be unlawful, may prejudice an investigation of possible unlawful activity, may prejudice enforcement of law, or denying access is specifically authorised by law.
If for any reason our agency does not allow you to access your Personal Information, we will provide you with reasons in writing for our decision.
If you believe that Personal Information that our agency holds about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request that we amend it. The 1888 Co. will consider if the information requires amendment. If our agency does not agree that there are grounds for amendment, then we will add a note to the Personal Information stating that you disagree with it.
To whom does The 1888 Co. disclose my Personal Information?
We may disclose your Personal Information:
• to employees of our agency and our contractors or service providers for the purposes of operation of our website or our business, fulfilling requests by you, and to otherwise provide services to you;
• if you are a tenant of any property that we are managing, to a National Tenancy Database;
• to suppliers and other third parties with whom we have commercial relationships, for business, marketing, and related purposes; and
• to any organisation for any authorised purpose with your express consent.
There are some instances when our agency may need to provide your Personal Information to third parties. The 1888 Co. may be bound by law to provide your details to government-related bodies, including the Titles Office or the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority.
The 1888 Co. does not sell your personal details to other organisations. We may however use the information about you to assist us with internal marketing and research.
We may disclose your Personal Information to entities located outside of Australia, including our data hosting and other IT service providers, who may pass information to secondary data hosting providers located outside of Australia.
How does The 1888 Co. keep my Personal Information secure?
The 1888 Co. will take reasonable steps to ensure information collected, used or disclosed is stored in a secure environment that is accessed only by persons authorised by our agency so as to prevent interference, misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
If the Personal Information is no longer needed for any purpose, our agency will take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify the Personal Information.
The 1888 Co. endeavours to provide a secure environment and a reliable system but you should be aware that there are inherent risks associated with the electronic storage and transmission of information (particularly via the Internet) which cannot be guaranteed to be 100% secure.
Who do I contact for further information?
Anthony Foreshew,. tony@the1888.au can assist you with any enquiries you have about the information that we hold about you.
What if I have a complaint or concern?
If you have a complaint or concern you can email, Anthony Foreshew,. tony@the1888.au or phone our agency. We will do our best to try and resolve your complaint within 30 days.
What if you are unable to resolve my complaint or concern?
If we are unable to resolve your complaint within this time, or you are unhappy with the outcome, you may refer your complaint to the Australian Information Commissioner. The Australian Information Commissioner can be contacted at the below details:
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 1042
Phone: 1300 363 992
E-mail: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
This privacy property was last updated on 23rd July 2024