Privacy policies can be long and full of legal jargon that is hard to understand. So we’ve pulled out the most important questions that you might have about our privacy policy and answered them below. It will take about 7 minutes or so to read.

We also have a set of terms and conditions for using Ask Izzy that you can read at this link. If you wish, you can read the full privacy policy (the legal stuff) at the bottom of this page. We'd like to thank Reset Australia for letting us use their template for this privacy policy.

Who is collecting your data?

Infoxchange (ABN 74 457 506140) (NZCN 4098258) is committed to using your information responsibly. We are guided by the Australian Privacy Principles and the New Zealand Privacy Act 1993.

What data do we collect about people and why?

This depends on what you want to do with us.

  • If you read Ask Izzy, or any website we set up, we collect as little information as we can about you.

We collect information about your search activity that includes your IP address, what you searched for, and the time of day you searched. This information is used by us to understand the kinds of services that people are seeking, and how these searches might change over time or in response to events in Australia or the world. This information is then “rolled up” into reports that we share with our funders and partners in the sector. Those reports do not contain any information about individual users or the details of any individual search – they only reflect total or average activity across the various categories in Ask Izzy. We also a technology called Cookies to collect some information about your behaviour on our website, information about what browser you are using, and if you came to us from a different website for example so we can know more about who looks at our website. More about these Cookies is below.

  • If you join our mailing list, we collect your name, email address and other information that allows us to keep in touch with you about our work. We only add you to our mailing list if you consent, and you can unsubscribe to our mailing list whenever you want.
  • If you give us user feedback through Ask Izzy..

We will use that feedback to understand how you feel about our website, and how to improve it. We won’t use your information for marketing purposes, or give it to anybody else. If you provide us feedback as part of a testing session, either face to face or online, then we consider that to be user research and those guidelines would apply.

  • If you participate in user research or codesign activities with us then...

We collect information that allows us to understand the type of user you represent. This may include your name, age, gender, and other demographic information. Depending on the research, we might also collect information about how you use Ask Izzy, and other things about your life that are relevant. We only ever collect this with your consent and allow you to make changes and retain a copy of this information at your request. To make Ask Izzy better and to advocate for change, we might share information about your experience with other Infoxchange staff, or other people outside of Infoxchange. We will only do this in a way that does not allow you to be personally identified, either by removing personal details, or by “rolling up” the information you have provided with that of other people.

  • If you donate money to us,

We collect your name, email and postal address for our tax and accounting purposes. With your consent, we may use your details to contact you for future donation opportunities, and retain your payment details if you want to make ongoing donations.

What about website Cookies?

We use as few cookies on our website as we can. At the moment, we use only Google cookies: We use Google cookies to help power our analytics. Analytics allow us to identify the kinds of things people do on AskIzzy and how often they do them. This helps us focus our time on the things that are important to our users and make them even better and more useful in the future.

What about links to other websites?

Our website includes links to other websites. These may collect and use your data or have cookies too. You can find out more about how they collect and use their data by looking for their Privacy Policies on their websites. We cannot control how other websites or apps collect and use your data, so be careful.

How long do we keep personal data?

  • Each time you make a search on Ask Izzy, Infoxchange stores data about IP address, time of search, and what was searched for. This information is kept by Infoxchange for purposes of statistical analysis, and to detect and block attempts to use our system improperly. This data is never used to identify individuals or individual activity.

  • For our mailing lists, campaigns, events and social media data, we hold onto this data until you tell us not to or it is no longer relevant

  • For donations data, we keep your data for seven years to meet tax and accounting laws

What about sensitive data?

We do not collect specific or sensitive data about you through our website. Sensitive data is things that might allow someone else to identify you or learn things about you that you don’t want them to know, such as your name, your address, your specific situation, or things like your religion or political views. We ask that you don’t provide this information to us through Ask Izzy or things like feedback forms either, as we can’t guarantee it will be handled safely and securely unless it comes to us through appropriate channels. Sometimes we collect sensitive data as part of our campaigns or petitions, or if you tell us something as a ‘personal story’ or case study to share. When this happens, we only do so with your consent and we will make it as clear as we can what we will do with your data.

Do we keep data secure?

We try as hard as we can to keep your data safe. For example, we are audited to internationally recognized security standards, we make sure that only people who need to can see your data, we encrypt data where we can, and we train our staff. Although we do our best to protect your data, please remember that there is always a risk involved when sending data over the internet.

Who do we share your data with?

We share your data with as few people as possible. We only do this where we need to. At the moment we share data with MailChimp for our mailing list, Humanitix for our events and Cookies’ companies Matomo, Heroku and Cloudflare. We have agreements with them to protect your data and to follow Australia’s data protection laws.

Do we send personal data overseas?

No

Will we let people see, access, change or delete their data?

For sure. (Unless we need to keep it for legal reasons). Just email us at privacy@infoxchange.org and ask. We’ll need to make sure it’s data about you first, so you may need to identify yourself.

When did we write this policy?

This policy is based on a version drafted by the people at Reset Australia [au.reset.tech], and has been adapted by us on 30 November 2021. We will review it annually.

Who can be contacted to find out more, or ask to see, change or delete data?

You can email our Privacy Officer at privacy@infoxchange.org or by mail at 33 Elizabeth Street, Richmond 3121, Victoria.

Our full privacy policy

If you want you can read the full Infoxchange privacy policy on the Infoxchange website. This policy covers all the products and services that Infoxchange provides, so a lot of it won’t be relevant to your use of Ask Izzy.