Our Commitment to Your Privacy

This site is owned and operated by Hope Connect Inc. We respect each site visitor's right to personal privacy. To that end, we collect and use information throughout our website only as disclosed in this Privacy Policy. This statement applies solely to information collected during your visit to this website.

This page explains the information we collect, how we use it and under what circulmstances (if any) we disclose it.

INFORMATION HOPE CONNECT INC GATHERS AND TRACKS

Hope Connect Inc gathers two types of information about users:

• Information that users provide through optional, voluntary submissions. These are voluntary submissions to receive our electronic newsletters, to participate in our commenting facilities, message boards or forums, to email a friend, and from participation in polls and surveys:
• Information Hope Connect Inc gathers through aggregated tracking information derived mainly by tallying page views throughout our sites. This information allows us to better tailor our content to readers' needs and to better understand the demographics of our users. Under no circumstances does Hope Connect Inc divulge any information about an individual user to a third party.

The information we collect is:

• never shared with other organisations for commercial purposes
• only used to provide more relevant content and to make our site more user-friendly.

Children
Consistent with the Commonwealth Privacy Act and National Privacy Principles, we will never knowingly request personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 13 without requesting parental consent.

Usage tracking
Hope Connect Inc tracks user traffic patterns throughout all of our sites. However, we do not correlate this information with data about individual users. Hope Connect Inc does break down overall usage statistics according to a user's domain name, browser type, and MIME type by reading this information from the browser string (information contained in every user's browser).

Hope Connect Inc sometimes tracks and catalogs the search terms that users enter in our Search function, but this tracking is never associated with individual users. We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you.

Cookies
We may place a text file called a "cookie" in the browser files of your computer. The cookie itself does not contain personal Information although it will enable us to relate your use of this site to information that you have specifically and knowingly provided. The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites. Hope Connect Inc uses cookies to track user traffic patterns (as described above).

You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. If you've set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use this site. However, you do need cookies to participate actively in several features of the site.

USE OF INFORMATION

Hope Connect Inc uses any information voluntarily given by our users to enhance their experience in our network of sites, whether to provide interactive or personalized elements on the sites or to better prepare future content based on the interests of our users.

As stated above, we use information that users voluntarily provide in order to send out electronic newsletters and to enable users to participate in any appropriate polls, surveys, commenting message boards, and forums. We send out newsletters to subscribers on a regular schedule (depending on the newsletter), and occasionally send out special editions when we think subscribers might be particularly interested in something we are doing. Hope Connect Inc never shares newsletter mailing lists with any third parties, including advertisers, sponsors or partners.

We use tracking information to determine which areas of our sites users like and don't like based on traffic to those areas. We do not track what individual users read, but rather how well each page performs overall. This helps us continue to build a better service for you. We track search terms entered in Search function as one of many measures of what interests our users. But we don't track which terms a particular user enters.

We will not disclose any information about any individual user except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.

SHARING OF THE INFORMATION

Hope Connect Inc uses the above-described information to tailor our content to suit your needs and better understand our audience's demographics. We will not share information about individual users with any third party, except to comply with applicable law or valid legal process or to protect the personal safety of our users or the public.

When we transfer and receive certain types of sensitive information such as financial or health information, we redirect visitors to a secure server (you can confirm this by checking for a padlock in your browser status bar). We use industry-standard 256-bit SSL encryption technologies when transferring and receiving data exchanged with our secure site. We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to prevent against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you at our site.

Our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized individuals have access to the information provided by our customers.

OPT-OUT POLICY

We give users options wherever necessary and practical. Such choices include:

• Opting not to register to receive our electronic newsletters.
• Opting not to participate in certain interactive areas, which completely alleviates the need to gather any personally identifiable information from our users

YOUR CONSENT

By using this site, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Hope Connect Inc. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we disclose it.

 

Notification of changes:
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement.

Conflict resolution:
We are committed to resolving disputes. If problems arise, users may contact us using the contact details below.

Contact Information:
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding our privacy policy, please contact us at:

    Privacy Officer:  The Business Manager
    Phone:  (02) 9638 7955
    Email: admin@hopeconnect.org.au
    Postal address: 16 Shortland Street, Telopea, NSW 2117