Privacy Statement

Collecting your personal information

When collecting your personal information, Council will:

• Tell you for what purpose we will be collecting the information.
• Tell you what information is necessary to access Council's products and services, including payments and transactions.
• Tell you when the information needs to be passed on to Council’s contractors and agents who carry out activities on Council’s behalf.
• Not ask for or collect any sensitive information about you unless it is necessary to meet legal, public interest or statistical requirements.
• Not pass the information on to other entities without your consent unless it is required by law or for public interest.

Using your personal information

When you provide Council with your personal information, Council will:

• Use the information to help you use Council services.
• Gather the data for analysis.
• Remove personally identifiable characteristics, unless you have given us specific consent to recognise your usage on an individual basis.

Disclosing your personal information

Council will not disclose your personal information to any other person or organisation unless one of the following reasons applies:

• You have given us your consent to do so.
• Council is required by law or authorised to do so under a law.
• There are grounds to believe disclosure will prevent a threat to life or health.
• That person or organisation is providing a service to council and is required to maintain the same or similar privacy legislation principles.
• Council is of the opinion that it is unable to assist with your request and that another government agency or authority is more capable of assisting, or has the appropriate jurisdiction to assist with your request.

Security of your personal information

When handling your personal information, Council will:

• Take reasonable steps to ensure that all information we collect, use or disclose is securely stored.
• Monitor transmissions sent to or from council for quality control and systems administration.
• Strive to protect your personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access.
• Operate secure servers to minimise the risk of unauthorised use of your credit card information. 

Website usage data

When you visit Council's website, our web measurement tool and internet service providers automatically record anonymous information on website activity for statistical purposes only, including the number of users who visit the web site, the date and time of the visits, the number of pages viewed, the type of browser and operating system used, and navigation patterns. This information on its own does not identify an individual but it does provide us with statistics that we can use to analyse and improve our website.

We may also collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our service or when you access the service by or through a mobile device ("usage data").

This usage data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

When you access the service by or through a mobile device, this usage data may include information such as the type of mobile device you use, your mobile device unique ID, the IP address of your mobile device, your mobile operating system, the type of mobile Internet browser you use, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.

Tracking & cookies data

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our service and hold certain information.

Cookies are files with small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyse our service.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our service.

Examples of cookies we use:

• Session Cookies. We use Session Cookies to operate our service.
• Preference Cookies. We use Preference Cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
• Security Cookies. We use Security Cookies for security purposes.

Transactional services available from our website or mobile apps may use cookies to track business processes. Please read the particular service's privacy and security statement before beginning a transaction.

You are able to access information held by Council about you under the Right to Information Act. If you have questions or concerns regarding Council's treatment of your information please contact Council.

Public records

Email correspondence, blog comments and information provided via web forms can constitute public records and can be retained as required by the Public Records Act 2002 and other relevant legislation.

Security

We take strong precautions to protect the personal information we hold concerning you from loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, and against other misuse. However, please be aware we do not provide a mechanism for securing the transmission of information across the internet.

Links to other sites

This website contains links to other websites. Council is not responsible for the content and privacy practices of other websites.

Privacy complaints

If you think Council has breached your privacy and confidentiality, you may lodge a complaint with Council's Information Privacy Officer.

To make a privacy complaint, visit our complaints page.

Council will take your complaint seriously, investigate thoroughly and provide you with a response. If you are not satisfied with Council’s response, you may make a complaint to the Queensland Privacy Commissioner.