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The Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) takes the privacy of our members, supporters, volunteers, sponsors and donors seriously. The ESA is bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act), which sets out a number of principles concerning the privacy of individuals.
Collection of your Personal Information
We collect, store and use certain categories of personal information directly from you when you join the ESA, apply for a grant or award, register for one of our events, or otherwise interact with us. This may include, but is not limited to:
- Name
- Contact details (address, phone, email)
- Gender
- Decade of birth
- Class of member (i.e. ordinary member, student, corporate, affiliate, retired etc)
- Date membership commenced
- Career stage, focus and discipline
- Educational degrees
- Sector of employment
- Professional interests
We collect banking or credit card details if you want to make payments (e.g. donations, membership fees, purchases through our online shop) or receive payments (e.g. reimbursements).
Our website uses cookies (small text files with no executable code, stored by a browser on your computer or device). We gather or may gather certain information about your use of our site, such as what areas you visit and what services you access. Moreover, there is information about your computer hardware and software that we collect or may collect. This information can include, but is not limited to:
- Top level domain name (for example .au, .nz, .com)
- IP address
- Date and time of visit
- Pages and documents accessed during visit
- Referring site (if you followed a link from there to ours)
- Whether you’ve visited our site before
- Browser details
Our website uses Google Analytics to track anonymous traffic data. This helps us evaluate how the site is used and to improve the user experience. IP addresses have been anonymised so that no personally identifiable information is collected.
Many aspects of the site can be viewed without providing personal information; however, access to members-only sections require you to become a member of the ESA and to submit personally identifiable information.
Sharing of your Personal Information
We will only disclose your personal information:
- when permitted by the Privacy Act and its APPs; or
- with your consent; or
- for direct marketing; or
- when legally required to do so.
In the course of our activities, we may disclose your personal information to our contractors, consultants, banks, accountants, lawyers or insurers. For example, we may allow technical information to be accessed by our web hosting and other technical service providers for the legitimate purpose of hosting our web servers and ensuring information security for our networks. This is done only when appropriate and on a need-to-know basis.
A list of the third-party service providers used by the ESA is available on request (via ).
Our technology infrastructure may make use of cloud infrastructure or servers located outside Australia.
Use and Storage of your Personal Information
We’ll only use your personal information:
- for the primary purpose for which it was collected; or
- when permitted by the Privacy Act and its APPs; or
- for direct marketing; or
- with your consent.
Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- To process your membership application
- To manage your membership and subsequent renewal
- For financial record keeping
- To provide the benefits of membership
- To provide you with information relating to an event you have registered for
- To consider and administer awards and grants
- To process competition entries, such as our photography competition
- To identify expertise within the membership which could be used to promote our core objectives
- To keep you up to date with news about the ESA’s activities, according to your communication preferences, which may include direct marketing of our own products, services and events
- To send our members relevant surveys relating to their membership or the provision of our services to them
- To manage mentoring programmes
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. We retain indefinitely certain anonymized information we gather about visitors or subscribers for the legitimate purpose of performing website analytics and providing use of our website to all visitors in an efficient, practical, and relevant way.
Members and subscribers who do not wish to receive electronic newsletters may follow the unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of any ESA e-news.
Information You Post
Information you post in public and/or social networking areas of the ESA website, for example in a comment on an article, the information disclosed may be displayed to other users of these services, and subsequently collected and used by others over whom we have no control. ESA is not responsible for the use made by third parties of information you post or otherwise make available in public areas of the ESA website. If you remove information that you have made public on websites, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages of the ESA website or if others have copied or saved that information.
Data Quality and Security
Data quality
We take steps to ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate, up to date and complete. These steps include maintaining and updating personal information when we’re advised by individuals that their personal information has changed, and at other times as necessary.
We will correct any personal information that we hold about you on request. If you’re a supporter, you may opt out of all or specific kinds of communications by contacting us or using the “unsubscribe” link in our email.
Data security
We take steps to protect the personal information we hold about you against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, and against other misuse. These steps include 2FA and password protection for accessing our electronic IT systems, and maintaining updated security software.
There are inherent risks in transmitting information across the internet and we do not have the ability to control the security of information collected and stored on third-party platforms. In relation to our own servers, we take all reasonable steps to manage data stored on our servers to ensure data security. Where ESA contracts with a third-party provider, we try to ensure that the provider takes all reasonable steps to manage data stored on their servers to ensure data security.
We take reasonable measures to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information when it is no longer required.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
The ESA reserves the right to make amendments to this Privacy Policy at any time. If you have objections to the Privacy Policy, you should not access or use the Site. Complaints can be directed to ESA Executive Officer Gail Spina ().
Accessing and Changing Your Personal Information
You may access, correct or update any of your personal information we hold about you by contacting us directly. Where available you may also access, correct or update, your personal information through the online portals accessed from our website.
For help, contact .
Contacting us
The ESA welcomes your comments regarding this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy and would like further information, please send an e-mail to .