privacy policy

The following statement explains the Being Australian policy regarding the personal information Being Australian collects from you.

1. Introduction

This policy covers Being Australian’s use of personal information that Being Australian collects when you visit this Site. The policy also gives you information about cookies; Being Australian and third parties' use of cookies; and how you may reject such cookies.

When you choose to register as an enrolled member of Being Australian, you will be invited to provide some personal information about yourself (e.g. name and email address) in order to personalize your experience of this Site and/or to receive or use services provided by and through this Site.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable Being Australian, its authorized assigns and service providers to provide you with the features and services you select through this Site. Whenever you provide such personal information, Being Australian will treat that information in accordance with this policy. When using your personal information, Being Australian will act in accordance with current legislation and is committed to following current Internet best practices.    

2. Spam

It's quite simple: Being Australian doesn't spam.  Being Australian regards spam as invasive and intrusive and does not produce it.  Any and all communications you receive from Being Australian will be the product of (a) permission you have expressly or implicitely provided to Being Australian as a result of your participation in this website or (b) someone possibly known to you to whom you have granted your contact details they have subsequently used to initiate a communication with you from the Being Australian website. Such communications include the integrated BeamMe SMS content link-referral service whereby users of this website may cause Being Australian to invoke transmission of the title of a particular page on this website to a mobile telephone.

3. Use of cookies

During the course of any visit to this Site, some the pages you see may be arrive at your computer with a short text-only file called a 'cookie'. Many websites do this, because cookies help website publishers determine if users have visited before and, if they have, what the users’ preferences may be in relation to past visits. Information supplied by cookies can help Being Australian to provide you with a better visitor and membership experience.    

4. What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small amount of text-only data, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier that is sent to your browser from a website's computer and stored on your computer's hard drive. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser's preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a web site to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other sites.

Many sites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows.

Cookies record information about your online preferences. Users have the opportunity to set their computers to accept all cookies, to notify them when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. Disabling cookies in your computer may mean that certain personalised content or services provided to you by Being Australian cannot be provided. Consequently, you may not be able to take full advantage of all of the features of the Being Australian Site in future. Each browser is different, so check the "Help" menu of your browser to learn how to change your cookie preferences.

If you have set your computer to reject cookies you can still browse this Site anonymously until such time as you wish to register for Site services that require cookies be enabled in your browser. For further information on cookies please visit www.aboutcookies.org.    

5. Use and storage of your personal information

When you supply any personal information to this Site (e.g. for logging stories, purchasing merchandise or for polls and competitions) Being Australian has legal obligations towards you in the way Being Australian uses the personal data you provide.

Any information you provide to Being Australian will only be used within this Site and by service providers authorised by Being Australian to render a service you have specifically requested. Your information will be disclosed where we are obliged to do so by law. Also, if you post or send offensive, inappropriate or objectionable content anywhere on or to this Site or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on this Site, Being Australian reserves its right to make use of whatever information that is available to it about you to prevent such behaviour. This may involve informing relevant third parties such as your employer, school e-mail/Internet provider and law enforcement agencies about the content and your behaviour on this Site.

Being Australian will hold personal information you have provided to this Site for as long as you remain a Member and/or continue to use services you have requested through this Site.  Your personal information will be removed entirely upon your written  instruction. For safety reasons, however, Being Australian may store messaging transcript data (including message content, member names, times and dates) arising from your use of the Site’s message-delivery pages (‘Contact’ and ‘Feedback’ and any member-to-member message-board facility Being Australian deploy on this Site). Where personal information is held for people who are not yet registered but have taken part in other Site services (e.g. competitions and polls), that information will be held as long as is necessary to ensure that the service is operating smoothly. Being Australian will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely.

Being Australian request your contact information so that Being Australian can contact you if needed in relation to content you have provided and/or services you have requested through this Site. For example, Being Australian may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that the particular service has been suspended for maintenance. Being Australian will not contact you for promotional purposes, such as notifying you of improvements to the service or new services on this Site unless you specifically agree to be contacted in accordance with the preferences you have nominated in your personal Profile page. As a registered member of this Site, you are encouraged to update your communications preferences on your personal Profile page.    

6. Access to your personal information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information that you have provided to Being Australian where such information provided by you is not viewable via your personal profile page on this Site.    

7. Users under 17 years of age

If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide personal information to this Site. Users without this consent are not permitted to provide Being Australian with personal information.    

8. How to find and control cookies in your browser

If you're using Firefox:

If you're using Internet Explorer 7.0:

If you're using Netscape 6.0:

If you're using Internet Explorer 6.0:

If you're using Internet Explorer 5.0 or 5.5:

If you're using Internet Explorer 4.0:

If you're using Netscape Communicator 4.0:

Netscape bundles all cookies into one file on your hard drive. You'll need to find the file, which it calls Cookie.txt on Windows machines.

9. How to review your cookie code

Just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.    

10. Cookies currently in use by this Site

When you interact with Being Australian and are logged in as a registered user, the web server for this web site transmits a single cookie containing numerical session information only.  This session information data is visible at the very bottom of the browser page. The session cookie enables your browser to maintain your session, which is important when submitting stories for publication or purchasing goods and services through the Being Australian web site. When you log out from the Being Australian web site, the session cookie provided by Being Australian becomes redundant and can be deleted at your discretion using your browser's cache-clearing utility. No other information is sent by Being Australian to your browser nor acquired by the Being Australian server during your session. Additional cookies deployed in future will be identified for your information here.