This privacy policy will set out to explain how IncomeShield.com.au collects, discloses and secures individuals’ and customers’ personal information. This policy has been written to inform your of inform and explain to you our compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (incorporating the National Privacy Principles)

1. Collection

IncomeShield.com.au collects Personal Information where the information is completely necessary for us to assist you with your quote or purchase through our service. In this context, “collect” means gather, acquire or obtain by any means, information in circumstances where the individual is identifiable or identified.

The website and related services are intended to assist you in selecting and purchasing products and services and in some cases, to provide a link between you and an income protection insurance adviser and /or qualified and/or licensed financial adviser and /or other expert adviser (“Expert”). The information and material provided on or through the website is provided as general information only and should not be regarded as a substitute for professional legal or financial advice. Prior to entering into a transaction or taking any particular course of action in connection with the information you receive from the website, you should make your own inquiries and seek independent advice tailored to your specific circumstances and objectives.

IncomeShield.com.au collects and distributes Personal Information. Your private details and information are required to assist you with your quote inquiry or purchase of a Income Protection Insurance policy. If you do not wish to have your private details distributed to our 3^rd party official partner or respective Income Protection Insurer, we recommend that you do not use our service.

IncomeShield.com.au also collects and uses Personal Information for secondary purposes including:

Provision of products and services;
Business planning and service development.

IncomeShield.com.au will notify individuals (including, but not limited to, our customers) of the matters listed below at the time of collecting any Personal Information

We may collect the following types of information:

Information you provide – When you apply for a product or service with IncomeShield.com.au, we ask you for personal and sensitive information. We may combine the information you submit under your account with information from other IncomeShield.com.au services or third parties in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services.

Cookies – When you visit IncomeShield.com.au, we may send one or more cookies to your computer or other device. We use cookies to improve the quality of our service, including for storing your preferences, previous searches and tracking user trends. If you wish not to provide any information via cookie, please disable the option of cookies in your browser and be advised that you will be limiting one or more features or aspects of our service that may prevent you from continuing to use the service.

Log information – When you access IncomeShield.com.au services via a browser, application or other client our servers may automatically record certain information. These server logs may include information such as your web request, your interaction with a service, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

User communications – When you send email or other communications, such as via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. to IncomeShield.com.au we may retain those communications in order to process your inquiries, respond to your requests and improve our services. We may use your email address to communicate with you about our services.

Affiliated IncomeShield.com.au Services on other sites – We offer some of our services on or through other web sites and social media services. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to IncomeShield.com.au in order to deliver the service requested. We process such information as per this Privacy Policy.

Third Party Applications – IncomeShield.com.au may make available third party applications, such as service feedback and commentary, through its service. The information collected by IncomeShield.com.au when you enable a third party application is processed under this Privacy Policy. Information collected by the third party application provider is governed by their privacy policies.

Other sites – This Privacy Policy applies to IncomeShield.com.au services only. We do not exercise control over the sites that may be linked to from the IncomeShield.com.au website, such as our participating providers. These other sites may place their own cookies or other files on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information from you.

In addition to the above, we may use the information we collect to:

Provide, maintain, protect, improve our services (including advertising services) and develop new services
Protect the rights or property of IncomeShield.com.au or our users.

If we use this information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use.

IncomeShield.com.au processes personal information on servers in Australia and in other countries. In some cases, we process personal information outside Australia.

2. Use

If IncomeShield.com.au relies on the Direct Marketing exception to Direct Market to individuals it will ensure that Individuals are clearly notified of their right to Opt Out from further Direct Marketing; and If the individual Opts Out of all Direct Marketing the Opt Out will be respected by IncomeShield.com.au and implemented free of charge.

IncomeShield.com.au will not use Sensitive Information for Direct Marketing without having received your expressed consent through either providing you a service that you have requested, AND/OR your acknowledgement of our desire to use sensitive information for direct marketing. IncomeShield.com.au may use Personal Information to avoid an imminent threat to a person’s life or to public safety. It may also use Personal Information for reasons related to law enforcement or internal investigations into unlawful activities.

IncomeShield.com.au will not use Personal Information without taking reasonable steps to ensure that the information is accurate, complete and up to date.

3. Disclosure

IncomeShield.com.au may disclose your Personal Information. We will disclose your personal information to an official third party partner who will use your personal information for the purpose of providing you with a policy when purchasing through our service. Unrelated third parties will never be provided your personal information by IncomeShield.com.au without explicit consent provided by the individual prior to disclosing your personal information. IncomeShield.com.au will take reasonable steps to ensure that its contracts with third parties include requirements for third parties to comply with the Use and Disclosure requirements of the Privacy Act and will not be held accountable for the distribution of your personal details after reasonable steps have been taken. In the rare event that IncomeShield.com.au is required to disclose Personal Information to law enforcement agencies, government agencies or external advisors IncomeShield.com.au will only do so in accordance with the Privacy Act or any other relevant Australian legislation.

If a Disclosure is not for a Primary Purpose; is not for a related Secondary Purpose; or upfront consent has not been obtained, IncomeShield.com.au will not Disclose Personal Information with the exceptional circumstances that cannot be controlled by IncomeShield.com.au stated above.

IncomeShield.com.au does not generally share its customer lists on a commercial basis with third parties but if it did, it would only do so if we had the appropriate consent of the individual involved.

4. Information Quality and Sharing

IncomeShield.com.au will review, on a regular and ongoing basis, its collection and storage practices to ascertain how improvements to accuracy can be achieved. IncomeShield.com.au will take steps to destroy or de-identify Personal Information after as short a time as possible and after a maximum of seven years, unless the law requires otherwise.

IncomeShield.com.au only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of IncomeShield.com.au in the following limited circumstances:

We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

When you complete an application for the product or service of a company through IncomeShield.com.au, we assume your implied consent to share the specific elements of your personal information required to fulfill your application with the company providing the product or service you are applying for.

We share this via secure and encrypted means to ensure only that company can view your personal information. We provide such information to our subsidiaries, affiliated companies or other trusted businesses or persons for the purpose of processing personal information on our behalf. We require that these parties agree to process such information based on our instructions and in compliance with this Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.

We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of IncomeShield.com.au, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

If IncomeShield.com.au becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will ensure the confidentiality of any personal information involved in such transactions and where appropriate, will use reasonable endeavours to provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

5. Information Security

IncomeShield.com.au requires employees and contractors to perform their duties in a manner that is consistent with IncomeShield.com.au’s legal responsibilities in relation to privacy.

The website and related services are intended to assist you in selecting and purchasing products and services and in some cases, to provide a link between you and an Income Protection Insurance adviser and /or qualified and/or licensed financial adviser and /or other expert adviser (“Expert”).

We take appropriate security measures to protect against unauthorized access to or unauthorised alteration, disclosure or destruction of data. These include appropriate encryption and physical security measures to guard against unauthorised access to systems where personal data is stored.

We restrict access to personal information to IncomeShield.com.au employees, contractors and agents who need to know that information in order to process it on our behalf. These individuals are bound by confidentiality obligations and may be subject to discipline, including termination and criminal prosecution, if they fail to meet these obligations.

The participating providers are not employed by us. We do not sponsor, endorse, recommend or approve any provider, who offers services through the website. All premium quotes provided on the website are subject to variation by the service provider and should therefore be considered indicative quotes which are subject to change and confirmation by the service provider at the time of purchase.

When using the World Wide Web, the Internet or third party networks or facilities, you are using networks, facilities and services that are beyond our control.

6. Access and Correction

When you use IncomeShield.com.au services, we make good faith efforts to provide you with access to your personal information and either to correct this data if it is inaccurate or to delete such data at your request if it is not otherwise required to be retained by law or for legitimate business purposes. We ask individual users to identify themselves and the information requested to be accessed, corrected or removed before processing such requests, and we may decline to process requests that are unreasonably repetitive or systematic, require disproportionate technical effort, jeopardize the privacy of others, or would be extremely impractical (for instance, requests concerning information residing on backup tapes), or for which access is not otherwise required. In any case where we provide information access and correction, we perform this service free of charge, except if doing so would require a disproportionate effort. Because of the way we maintain certain services, after you delete your information, residual copies may take a period of time before they are deleted from our active servers and may remain in our backup systems.

Individuals wishing to lodge a request to access and/or correct their Personal Information related to their existing Income Protection Insurance policy should do so by contacting their respective Income Protection Insurer and not IncomeShield.com.au, Individuals wishing to remove, modify or otherwise interact with their personal information that IncomeShield.com.au is responsible for, you should write to the IncomeShield.com.au Privacy Officer Lance Goodman, Suite 606a/3 Waverley Street, Bondi Junction, 2022 and request for such changes to be made and/or requests to be executed. IncomeShield.com.au will endeavour to manage any privacy related complaint efficiently and in a timely manner.

7. Openness

Contact with IncomeShield.com.au via phone or web inquiry will be the first point of contact for inquiries about privacy issues or breaches.

We are committed to providing you with a timely response. Where our service involves a Income Protection Insurance advisor or any other expert (“expert”) to contact you to assist you with your enquiry, we will work to ensure that you are contacted by that expert within 2 business days from the time an on-line request is submitted on the website (“response time”). Notwithstanding this, we cannot and do not guarantee the response time of any or all of our advisors.

If you are not contacted within the response time, please let us know: info@IncomeShield.com.au

IncomeShield.com.au websites will contain a prominently displayed privacy statement and will include a copy of this IncomeShield.com.au Privacy Policy.

8. Anonymity

IncomeShield.com.au will not make it mandatory for visitors to its web sites to provide Personal Information while browsing the website. IncomeShield.com.au will only request your personal details for the purpose of providing you with a service in accordance with this privacy policy. IncomeShield.com.au may however request visitors to provide Personal Information voluntarily to IncomeShield.com.au (for example, as part of a competition or questionnaire).

9. Transferring personal information overseas

IncomeShield.com.au generally does not send information overseas.

If Personal Information must be sent by IncomeShield.com.au overseas for sound business reasons, IncomeShield.com.au will require the overseas organisation receiving the information to provide a binding undertaking that it will handle that information in accordance with the National Privacy Principles, preferably as part of the services contract.

Glossary

Collection Information means the information collected from individuals prior to, or as soon as practical after, the collection of their Personal Information.

Direct Marketing means the marketing of goods or services through means of communication including written, verbal or electronic means. The goods or services which are marketed may be those of IncomeShield.com.au or a Related Body Corporate or those of an independent third party organisation.

Disclosure generally means the release of information outside IncomeShield.com.au, including under a contract to carry out an “outsourced function”.

Health Information means Information or an opinion about:

The health or a disability (at any time) of an individual; or

An individual’s expressed wishes about the future provision of health services to him or her; or
A health service provided or to be provided to an individual; that is also personal information; or
Other personal information collected to provide or in providing a health service; or
Other personal information about an individual collected in connection with the donation; or intended donation by the individual of his or her body parts or body substances. Opt Out means an individual’s expressed request not to receive further Direct Marketing.
IncomeShield.com.au Personal Information means information or an opinion (including information or an opinion forming part of a database), whether true or not and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained from the information or opinion.

Primary Purpose is the dominant or fundamental reason for information being collected in a particular transaction.

Reasonable Expectation means a reasonable individual’s expectation that their personal information might be Used or Disclosed for the particular purpose.

Sensitive Information means:

Information or an opinion about an Individual’s:
Racial or ethnic origin; or
Membership of a political association; or
Religious beliefs or affiliations; or
Philosophical beliefs; or
Membership of a professional or trade association; or
Membership of a trade union; or
Sexual preferences or practices; or
Criminal record; that is also personal information; or
Health Information about an individual; or
Use means the handling of Personal Information within IncomeShield.com.au

Contacting IncomeShield.com.au

If you require further information regarding IncomeShield.com.au’s Privacy Policy, please contact us on (02) 8205 7051. Any formal privacy related complaints should be directed in writing to the IncomeShield.com.au Privacy Officer, Suite 606a/3 Waverley Street, Bondi Junction, 2022 for investigation likely in conjunction with myonlineadvisers (AFSL 42784). IncomeShield.com.au will endeavour to manage any privacy related complaint efficiently and in a timely manner.