Privacy Policy

Invest & Co Trust T/AS Invest & Co Realty (“ICR” or “we”, “our” and “us” in this Privacy Policy) operates the websites (including any subdomains) located at investandcorealty.com.au. These sites are also displayed as mobile sites and through mobile and tablet applications. All these websites, mobile sites and apps are called the “Websites” in this Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy sets out the manner in which we manage personal information collected via the Websites and associated interfaces. By using the Websites, or entering into an agreement with us in relation to the Websites you are taken to have read, and agreed to the collection, use, disclosure and handling of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We reserve the right, at our discretion, to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. You should review this Privacy Policy periodically so that you are updated on any changes. We welcome your comments and feedback.

Respecting information privacy

We recognise the importance of protecting personal information. We do not collect sensitive information as defined under the Privacy Act such as racial or ethnicity information, political opinions or associations, criminal records or health information.

In collecting and handling personal information, we are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), including the National Privacy Principles, and applicable privacy regulations.

Problems or Questions

If we become aware of any ongoing concerns or problems with the Websites, we will take these issues seriously and work to address these concerns. If you have any further queries relating to this Privacy Policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please email sq@investandco.com.au.

 

For more information about privacy issues in Australia and protecting your privacy, visit the Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner’s website.

Collection of Personal Information

We may collect the following personal information:

  • Information, such as your name, email, other contact details, addresses, gender, industry, occupation and personal interests and any other information that you provide our service providers or us by using or subscribing to our products or services including:
    • registering to use the Websites or parts of them through our subscriber system
    • logging in to use our Websites via your social networking site (“SNS”) account and any information provided by that SNS to enable you to register or log into our website and use the requested service from time to time;
    • filling in forms on the Websites or websites of our service providers e.g. the 1Form online rental application;
    • contacting us or our service providers for any reason including reporting a problem with the Websites, requesting further services or completing our surveys;
    • posting or contributing material on our Websites; or
  • If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
  • We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
  • Details of transactions you carry out through the Websites including any competitions or promotions.
  • Details of your visits to and behaviour on the Websites including, but not limited to your IP address, Cookie information, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data and the resources that you access.
  • Information about you that we obtain from service providers or third parties.
  • If you are a real estate agent, your contact details and a profile picture.

Use of Personal Information

We may use your personal information to:

  • ensure that content from the Websites are presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
  • provide a better service or product to you, for instance by automatically populating forms on our Websites by which you make enquiries of selected estate agents;
  • combine your personal information with information that we have collected from our service providers, third parties, cookies or web beacons in order to provide you with a better or more personalised experience and to improve the quality of our services;
  • personalise and customise your services, experience, advertising and content that you view and engage with on our Websites or the websites of our service providers and business partners. This may include displaying targeted advertisements based on your personal information;
  • respond to or provide you with service, products, information and assistance that you request from us;
  • contact you to conduct surveys, research and feedback about our products, services or our Websites;
  • verify your identity when you register or log into our Websites via your SNS account;
  • allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so;
  • notify you about changes to our service and remind you of your password and username;
  • share your information with our service providers and other third parties so that they can provide you with products or services on our behalf or help us to provide you with the requested products or services including contacting you in relation to the products or services;

We may also use your personal information to:

  • provide you with information about offers, promotions, goods or services, which we believe may be of interest to you; and
  • share your information with our service providers and other third parties so that they can contact you directly about their offers, promotions, goods or services,

provided that if we do use your personal information in these ways, we will always give you the opportunity to request that your information not be used for further direct marketing in the future.

Disclosure of your Personal information

We may disclose your personal information to:

  • Estate agents or agencies, property developers, builders, retirement community operators that have listings or advertising on our Websites and which you have requested information from by submitting an enquiry. If you request information from these organisations through our Website, you will need to check their privacy policy to find out how that organisation handles your personal information. We are not responsible for the way these organisations collect, use, disclose or handle personal information.
  • Third party suppliers:
    • who we have engaged to provide you with goods or services on our behalf, for the purposes of helping us provide you with the requested goods or services or so that they can contact you in relation to the goods or services; or
    • so that they can contact you directly about their offers, promotions, goods or services. If we do disclose your personal information for this purpose, we will always give you the opportunity to request that your information not be disclosed for this purpose in future.

Where we have disclosed your personal information to third party suppliers for the above purposes, we have used reasonable endeavours through contractual arrangements to ensure compliance by the third party supplier with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

  • Relevant public authorities, our legal representatives or other concerned parties, in special situations where, either:
    • we have reason to believe that disclosing your personal information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against anyone damaging, injuring, or interfering (intentionally or unintentionally) with our rights or property, users or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities; or
    • we believe, in good faith, that the law requires disclosure.

Storage, Security and Processing

We strive to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of personal information submitted to our Websites, and we review and update our security measures in light of current technologies. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. However, we will endeavour to take reasonable steps to protect the personal information you may transmit to us from our online products and services or otherwise collected by us. Once we do receive your transmission, we will also use reasonable endeavours to ensure its security on our systems.
In addition, our employees and the contractors who provide services related to our information systems are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by us. However, we are not responsible for events arising from unauthorised access to your personal information.

Transfer of Personal Information outside Australia

Personal information submitted by customers and visitors to our Websites may be held on servers located in Australia or in the data centres of outsourced data processors with data centres in Australia, the United States of America, Europe and Asia. The purposes of transfer of data outside of Australia are the secure storage, back-up and retrieval of data. CRE has implemented policies and procedures to safeguard the secure storage and processing of data intra-group, has verified the security arrangements of its outsourced data processors and has implemented contractual arrangements intra-group and with its outsourced data processors in accordance with Privacy Act 1988(Cth). When you provide us with your personal information you give us your consent to the transfer of personal information outside of Australia for the purposes described above.

Some of the third parties to whom we may disclose your Personal Information are located overseas. For example:

  • our information technology and business process service providers that are located in countries including (but not limited to) Asia, United States of America, Europe and Australia; and
  • Our contracts with these parties generally include an obligation for them to comply with Australian privacy law and this Privacy Policy.

However you acknowledge that, by agreeing to the disclosure of your Personal Information to these entities outside of Australia, we will no longer be required to take reasonable steps to ensure the overseas recipient’s compliance with the Australian privacy law in relation to your Personal Information and we will not be liable to you for any breach of the Australian privacy law by these overseas recipients. On this basis, you consent to such disclosure.

Correction and access

We will endeavour to take all reasonable steps to keep accurate and up to date any information which we hold about you. If, at any time, you discover that information held about you is incorrect, you can contact us to have the information corrected.
You can also gain access to the personal information we hold about you, subject to certain exceptions provided for by law. To request access to your personal information, please contact us.

Cookies and Web Beacons

By using our Websites, you consent to the use of Cookies, Web Beacons and measurement software in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

‘Cookies’ are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your computer when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating web domain on your subsequent visits to that website.

Cookies are industry standard and are used by most websites, including our Websites and are useful because they allow:

  • a website to recognise a user’s device to enable more efficient navigation of the website, remember preferences and generally improve a user’s experience;
  • customisation and personalisation of advertising presented to you based on your interests which are determined by your actions such as the pages you view, the links you click, the search terms you enter using search engines, the products and services you use on our Websites.
  • compilation of analytical data to improve site performance and monitor traffic, measure the effectiveness of products, services, website usage and auditing.

‘Web Beacons’ are small pieces of code that are contained in emails and webpages and allow a website to transfer or collect information such as whether an email is opened or links are clicked upon. We may use Web Beacons to determine which emails and web pages are interesting to you and for the same reasons we use Cookies on our Websites.

When you use our products, services or visit our Websites, we may, or we may allow service providers or third parties such as our analytics partners including Nielsen, Adobe and Hockey App, or our advertising and ad-serving partners, to place one or more ‘Cookies’ on your computer or collect information about your browsing activities through Web Beacons. If your access to our products, services or Websites is through a mobile or tablet device, we may, or we may allow these service providers or third parties to use mobile or tablet measurement software to obtain similar information that we do through Cookies and Web Beacons. We allow these third parties to use Cookies, use Web Beacons and measurement software on our Websites to assist us to provide or improve the provision of our products and services to you, display personalised advertising and to assist us to audit, measure and analyse usage across our Websites. We may combine our Cookies (or information collected through our Cookies and Web Beacons) with third party Cookies to provide more relevant services and advertising to you on our Websites or third party websites.

Cookie Choices

If you do not want information collected through the use of Cookies or mobile measurement software, there is a simple procedure in most browsers or the settings section of mobile and table devices that allows you to deny or accept the cookie or mobile measurement software feature. However, you should note that disabling these features may cause some of the functions on our Websites not to work properly.

Applications, widgets or links to other websites

We provide links to websites outside of our Websites, as well as to third party websites. We also allow some third parties to display widgets and applications on our Websites that allow you to interact and share content including social media buttons such as Facebook share and like, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. These linked sites, applications and widgets are not under our control, and we cannot accept responsibility for the conduct of companies linked to our Websites or collecting information through these third party applications or widgets. Before disclosing your personal information on any other website, or using these applications or widgets we advise you to examine the terms and conditions of using that website and the relevant third party’s data collection practices and controls in their privacy policy.