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Effective June 13, 2002

This statement discloses the privacy practices for motormouth.com.au and motormouth.net.au web sites. When you visit one of these web sites you can expect to be notified of:

  • What personally identifiable information of yours is collected;
  • What organization is collecting the information;
  • How the information is used;
  • With whom the information may be shared;
  • What choices are available to you regarding collection, use and distribution of the information;
  • What kind of security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under the company's control; and
  • How you can correct any inaccuracies in the information.

Questions regarding this statement should be directed to privacymotormouth.com.au.

General
The purpose of this privacy policy is to inform you, as a consumer of MotorMouth products and services, what kinds of information we may gather about you when you visit our websites, how we may use that information, whether we disclose it to anyone, and the choices you have regarding our use of, and your ability to correct, the information.

This privacy policy applies to the MotorMouth web site and other Internet accessible MotorMouth branded services like motormouth.net.au. Please note that this policy applies only to MotorMouth, and not to other companies' or organizations' web sites to which we link.

MotorMouth Membership
MotorMouth membership has been designed to give you a more rewarding and personalised MotorMouth experience. Although you are not required to be a MotorMouth member to use our service, the full functionality of our service is only available to registered MotorMouth users. You will be required to register and log in if you wish to take full advantage of our service.

The Collection of Personal Information
When you visit MotorMouth, our servers automatically record information about your visit. The information that we collect is:

  • your IP address
  • your cookie ID (if enabled)
  • the date and time of your visit to our site
  • the date and time you left our site
  • the pages you accessed and documents downloaded
  • the type of browser you are using
  • the type of operating system you are using

We do this to help us better understand what aspects of our services our users find the most useful and how to develop services for you in the future. This information also helps to ensure any advertising is more relevant to your interests.

Unregistered MotorMouth Users (Non Members)
If you are not a registered MotorMouth user, the information we collect about you remains anonymous, and we do not link it to any other personal information.

Registered MotorMouth Users
Once you have become a MotorMouth user, we collect personal information about you in order to provide you with the full benefits of Membership. When you first register for Membership, we collect information from you directly and also from time to time thereafter if you provide us additional information. The mandatory information we collect includes:

  • Name;
  • Email details;
  • Postcode;
  • Gender;
  • Date of birth; and
  • Occupation.

When you register to become a MotorMouth user or modify your existing MotorMouth profile the pages are encrypted using a digital certificate and a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) session.

Once you have logged on as a member, we keep a record of how you use the service. This helps us to build a profile of what interests you, so that we can personalise your experience and publish you information that is directly relevant to your interests.

Users & Business Partners
When you first sign up or commence a contract with MotorMouth we request information such as:

  • Name;
  • Address;
  • Postcode;
  • Phone Numbers;
  • Domain Name; and
  • Email details.

We use this information to deliver our services to you. This may include:

  • technical support;
  • sales support;
  • billing & credit control;
  • product upgrades; and
  • other information.

Cookies and Applets
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the users hard drive tied to information about the user. MotorMouth use both persistent and session ID cookies.

MotorMouth use persistent cookies for the following purposes:

  • record your membership details to allow you to login automatically
  • allow you to personalise your MotorMouth experience
  • provide us with aggregated information on how people use our service, and which advertisements are effective.

Like many web site operators, MotorMouth also uses the independent company Red Sheriff to measure and analyse the internet usage across the MotorMouth websites. MotorMouth uses Red Sheriff's Measurement tracking code to collect the following core information on the usage of the MotorMouth website:

  • The number of page views (or page impressions) that occur on the website;
  • The number of unique visitors to the website;
  • How long these unique visitors (on average) spend on the website when they do visit; and
  • Common entry and exit points into the website

This aggregate, non-personal information is collated by Red Sheriff and provided to MotorMouth to assist in analysing the usage of the website. The Red Sheriff data is also accessible by media organizations and research companies, for the purpose of conducting industry comparisons with other internet portals.

All pages on the website are coded with the Red Sheriff Measurement software. This is transparent to the user as the software makes use of an invisible image (via JavaScript) or an invisible Java Applet*, at the bottom of the web page. This software stores a session ID cookie in the browser, which contains a unique identifier. This enables Red Sheriff to track the number of unique visitors to the website. This information is collected and aggregated by Red Sheriff, and in no way does this unique identifier identify a user personally. MotorMouth does not and will not marry any data collected by Red Sheriff with any personal information collected on the website.

Red Sheriff software code cannot be disabled entirely on the website pages, as the Red Sheriff Measurement code takes into account all web-browser configurations, including the disabling of Java and JavaScript. However, if cookies are disabled in your browser, then Red Sheriff cannot track you as a unique visitor, and will consider you as a new visitor each time you browse a new page on the website. To learn more about Red Sheriff's privacy policy, click here.

*The use of JavaScript and/or Java Applet is dictated by the browser you use. Typically Internet Explorer users with Version 4 or above will use the JavaScript method. Netscape users, or users whose browser does not support JavaScript 1.1, will use the Java Applet method."

Clear Gifs (Web Beacons/Web Bugs)
We employ a software technology called clear gifs (a.k.a. Web Beacons/Web Bugs) in our HTML based emails. This lets us know which emails have been opened by recipients. This allows us to understand how well customers accept certain communications and the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. If you would like to opt-out please see the opt-out section below.

Promotional Emails (SPAM)
MotorMouth will not send you unsolicited emails without your prior consent. As part of the membership process you are able to choose whether or not you would like to receive promotional email from MotorMouth. If you would like to opt-out please see the opt-out section below.

We will never sell or rent your email address and personal details to any 3rd parties.

Surveys & Contests
From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose this information. Information requested may include contact information (such as name and shipping address), and demographic information (such as postcode, date of birth). Contact information will be used and shared with the contest sponsors to notify the winners and award prizes. Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the use and satisfaction of this site.

If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our site, we ask them for the friend’s name and email address. MotorMouth will automatically send the friend a one-time email inviting them to visit the site. MotorMouth stores this information for the sole purpose of sending this one-time email. The friend may contact MotorMouth at privacymotormouth.com.au to request the removal of this information from our database.

Online Payments
MotorMouth use the National Australia Bank’s Secure Internet Payment Service (NSIPS) for online credit card processing. MotorMouth does not keep any records of credit card numbers and all e-commerce processing is done by the National Australia Bank. Please read the National Australia Bank’s privacy policy for further information.

Disclosure of personal information with 3rd parties
Your personally identifiable information will only ever be disclosed to a 3rd a party if:

(a) if we are required by law to make the disclosure;
(b) to the extent necessary, to provide the service you have requested or to meet the purpose for which it was submitted;
(c) to protect our rights or the rights of another MotorMouth user;
(d) to lessen a serious threat to a person's health and safety; or
(e) if we have informed you of a particular third party to whom it will be disclosed, at the time of collection.

Storage of Personal Information
All of your personal information is kept in a secure database housed at WebCentral’s secure data centre. Please read WebCentral’s privacy policy.

In addition, our employees, contractors and 3rd parties who provide services related to our services are bound to respect the privacy of any personal information held by MotorMouth.

Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use passwords, access codes and security cards to access your information. Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices through emails, company newsletters and staff meetings. Any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers’ information is protected.

You play an important role in keeping your personal information secure, by maintaining the confidentiality of any password and accounts used on the MotorMouth website.

Correcting/Updating/Deleting/Deactivating Personal Information
If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as your postcode, phone, email or postal address), or if a user no longer desires our service, we provide a way to correct, update or delete/deactivate that user’s personally identifiable information provided to us. This can be done at My MotorMouth or by emailing our Customer Support at feedbackmotormouth.com.au.

If you wish to know what other information we hold about you whilst you have been logged onto the service, please send an email privacymotormouth.com.au outlining your username and details of your request. We will endeavour to respond to your request within 30 days.

Choice/Opt-out
Our users are given the opportunity to ‘opt-out’ of having their information used for purposes not directly related to our site at the point where we ask for the information. For example, our registration form has an ‘opt-out’ mechanism so users who subscribe to email alerts from us, but don’t want any marketing material, can keep their email address off of our lists.

Users who no longer wish to receive our email alerts, newsletters or special offers from our partners may opt-out of receiving these communications by modifying their profile at My MotorMouth

Users of our site are always notified when their information is being collected by any outside parties. We do this so our users can make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with services that require an outside party, or not.

Notification of Changes
If we are going to use your personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time of collection we will notify you via email. You will have a choice as to whether or not we use your information in this different manner. However, if you have opted out of all communication with the site, or deleted/deactivated your account, then you will not be contacted. Nor will your personal information be used in this new manner. In addition, if we make any material changes in our privacy practices that do not affect user information already stored in our database, we will post a notice on our web site notifying users of the change. In some cases where we post the notice we will also email users, who have opted to receive communications from us, notifying them of the changes in our privacy practices.

More Information
For more information about privacy in general, you can visit the Federal Privacy Commissioner's website www.privacy.gov.au