Friends of the Earth Australia is a grassroots network of local groups and affiliate member groups.
In order to campaign effectively with you, our supporters, and on your behalf, we need to collect different types of information, including personal data.
The main points in our privacy policy:
- We will only ever ask for what we really need to know.
- We will always respect your choices around the data that you share with us and the communication channels that you ask us to use.
- We will put appropriate security measures in place to protect the personal data that you share with us.
- We will never sell your data.
- You have the right to amend or withdraw your consent about the ways in which we hold and use your personal data at any time.
If you have any questions, please contact us.
Personal data
In some areas of our website, we ask you to provide personal information that will enable us to enhance your site visit, contact you with information you request or that may be of interest to you, e.g. when you subscribe to our newsletters, make a donation, take an online action or contact us via our website. Personal information we request is limited to your name, address, phone contacts and email address.
How is personal data used?
We will only email you information about our work where you give us your consent to do so. If you would like to check or change your email subscriptions you can visit this page
We may email you information we believe may be of interest to you. For example, when you consent to being contacted by email, we might email you to take action (such as sign a petition) or make a donation. You may also receive a welcome email letting you know about other ways to support us. Emails we send you will always give you the chance to opt out of receiving further emails. Alternatively, you can contact us to unsubscribe from our emails.
Sharing personal data
Friends of the Earth Australia will not share your personal information with third parties unless absolutely necessary.
For example, if you sign a petition which involves the petition being submitted to a government, it may be necessary to include your name on the petition submitted. These details will not be shared further. Otherwise, we will only disclose your data if we are obliged to do so by law.
If we are partnering with another organisation we will explicitly state how data will be used.
Security and management of personal information
Friends of the Earth will take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
The ways we do this include:
- Limiting access to the information we collect about you
- Using a payment gateway for secure handling of your billing information
- Requiring any third party providers to have accept security measures to keep personal information secure; and
- Putting in place physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in line with industry standards.
- By safely storing your information with security protection
Keeping your details up to date
The accuracy of your personal information is important to us. If you change email address or name, please contact us.
We aim to amend or delete any information we hold that is incorrect within one month or as soon as possible thereafter.
Security
The security of your personal information is important to us and we will take appropriate precautions to protect it.
We use trusted third party gateways, such as Paypal and Stripe, for handling donation payments. Friends of the Earth does not have access to your payment details. Please see Paypal’s privacy policy and Stripe’s privacy policy as we are not responsible for the way Paypal or Stripe handle data.
Even with all of our precautions, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. So, whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information which you disclose to us online and you must understand that you do so at your own risk.
We take steps to ensure that access to personal information is restricted to employees who need it. All Friends of the Earth employees and volunteers who handle personal information are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices and sign confidentiality agreements on commencement of their duties.
Use of cookies
In order to optimise our website, we use third party cookies. Cookies are small pieces of information sent by a web server to a web browser, which enable the server to collect information from the browser. Like many websites, Friends of the Earth’s site uses cookies to provide you with a personalised web service, which includes monitoring the performance of our web pages and data on which social media platforms people access our web pages from.
Currently Friends of the Earth’s site mainly uses third party cookies from NationBuilder, Google, Twitter and Facebook. We sometimes use cookies to enable other areas of our site to function well, for example a cookie might be used to track whether a user has already signed a petition.
We use Google Analytics to monitor and improve our website. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect non personal information, like your IP address, your browser, your location and the pages you visit. Please check Google Analytics for details on their cookies and their policies. We only use Google Analytics to analyse how users use our site, for example to find out how many people visit our site or an individual web page and from which social media platforms our visitors click through to view our website. We do not use Google Analytics information to identify visitors – all the information we access is aggregated and anonymous. And we only use this information to improve our content and our website.
We also embed content from other sites, such as social media websites or media outlets, and add buttons from social media platforms so that you can share our content. This can result in cookies being used by third parties such as Twitter and Facebook. You should check the relevant third-party website for more information about their cookies.
Cookies may be set by us or third parties. By continuing to browse our site you’re agreeing to our use of cookies. You may avoid the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. Please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our website.
Changes
We may make changes to this policy from time to time. If we change our privacy policy we will post the changes on our website privacy page and we will hold a record of the changes that we make. Please revisit the privacy policy when you want to confirm how we use your personal information. This policy was last revised in May 2022.
Access to your personal information
You have the right to request and be sent:
- confirmation that your data is being processed;
- access to your personal data; and
- other supplementary information that we hold about you.
To make a request please contact us. We will take steps to confirm your identity before releasing any information to you. We will not charge you for providing the information that you request. We aim to amend or delete any information we hold that is incorrect within one month or as soon as possible thereafter.
Your rights and acceptance of this policy
By sharing your consent preferences, and by using our website, you consent to the collection and use of information by Friends of the Earth in accordance with our privacy policy. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our site.
Privacy policy for minors
The protection of children is very important to us and we don’t actively seek opportunities to collect personal information from under-18s. If you are under 18, please do not provide us with any personal information. Minors should always ask a parent or guardian for permission before sending personal information to anyone online.
Information retention
We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is appropriate for the activity that you are supporting (for example participating in a campaign or making a donation to support our work). If you ask for your personal information to be deleted, we will manage your request in a transparent and timely manner.
Whilst we will take all reasonable steps to protect and secure your personal data, we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of any messages transmitted between you and us via email as these are potentially accessible by the public. We will not be liable to you or anyone else for any loss relating to any email message sent by you to us or by us to you. If you have any requests concerning your personal information or any questions about how we manage our data, please contact us.
Complaints
If you are concerned that we have not complied with your legal rights or applicable privacy laws, you may bring a complaint internally through our complaints process or you may decide to make a formal complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Consumer (www.oaic.gov.au), which is the regulator responsible for privacy in Australia.
Contact Us
Any complaints or correspondence in relation to this Privacy Policy should be sent to:
Friends of the Earth
ATT: Database Coordinator
PO Box 222, FITZROY, VIC, 3065.
Attention: The Database Coordinator
Email: [email protected]
We will endeavour to respond to all complaints and correspondence promptly.
Updated May 2022.