1. Introduction
WhatPhone respects your privacy and shares your concern about the security of information that is shared when using our website, whatphone.com.au (“Site”).
We are committed to managing personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles (“APPs”) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) and in accordance with other applicable privacy laws.
This document is referred to as our “Privacy Policy” and explains what personal information we collect, how we use and protect it and how you can access and manage your information. Our Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference into the WhatPhone Terms of Use.
2. Who is WhatPhone?
whatphone.com.au is owned and operated by WhatPhone Pty Ltd ABN 23 159 746 924 of 10/99 York Street, Sydney NSW 2000 (“WhatPhone”).
Through the Site, we provide a comparison service which involves providing everyday consumers with the tools and information they need to compare a range of mobile phone plans and providers, and find the best deal that fits their needs (“Service”).
3. Our Relationship
In this Privacy Policy, “we” and “us” refers to WhatPhone and “you” refers to any individual about whom we collect personal information. Together, you and we may be collectively referred to as “Parties”.
4. What does this Privacy Policy cover?
This Privacy Policy applies to your access and use of the Site and our Service.
This Privacy Policy, which forms part of our Terms of Service, describes what personal information we collect, how we use personal information, the circumstances where we may disclose that personal information, how we secure and store personal information, and how to access, update and correct your personal information. We may not be able to provide our Service to you if you do not provide the information we request. By registering an account with us, or by using our Site or Service you agree to our Privacy Policy and the Terms of Service.
4.1 What is Personal Information?
Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not and whether the information or opinion is recorded in material form or not.
4.2 Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may make changes to our Privacy Policy from time to time by publishing the updates to this website, and those changes become effective 30 days from publication. We may provide separate notification of the updates by email or on the Site. By continuing to use the Site or our Service, you consent to the updates.
5. Collection of information
We try to only collect personal information which is reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, the particular function or activity we are carrying out. We collect personal information in the following ways:
5.1 Browsing the Site
We may collect information from your browser, and device, including IP address, geographical location, search terms, device description, device operating system, browsing times and dates, user ID, location information, page view statistics, website traffic information, referral url, web log information.
5.2 When you contact us
This includes information gathered through webforms, email, or other means of communication (including a complaint lodged by you) between you and us, and where relevant between you and the other party to a transaction.
5.3 Indirect information
We may collect information from someone authorised by you, and you may authorise to collect information on your behalf from a third party.
5.4 Direct Marketing
We may use the personal information we collect for direct marketing. This includes receiving emails and SMS messages from us. If you do not wish to receive direct marketing, please contact us in writing with your request. Please note that we may not be able to continue to provide our Service to you if you opt out of direct marketing.
5.5 Cookies
We may collect information using cookies and similar technologies, relevant to viewed pages, followed links, and other browsing behavior. You can choose to enable or disable Cookies in your internet browser. Most internet browsers also enable you to choose whether you wish to disable all cookies or only third party Cookies. By default, most internet browsers accept Cookies but this can be changed. For further details, please consult the help menu in your internet browser or the documentation that came with your device. You can choose to delete Cookies on your computer or device at any time, however, you may lose any information that enables you to access the Site more quickly and efficiently including, but not limited to, login and personalisation settings. It is recommended that you keep your internet browser and operating system up-to-date and that you consult the help and guidance provided by the developer of your internet browser and manufacturer of your computer or device if you are unsure about adjusting your privacy settings.
5.6 Other sources
We may get information from 3rd parties which are used to verify your identity, publicly available information, information from other users, information related to transactions and delivery of goods and services, credit related information and demographic information which is lawfully available to us.
5. 7 General
We collect personal information which is reasonably necessary for the functions or activities of our business. We will only collect information by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way.
6. Anonymity and pseudonymity
Where possible, and if you so choose, we will interact with you anonymously. However, if we do not have relevant personal information, we may not be able to provide our services to you.
7. Third Parties
The Site may contain hyperlinks to websites owned and operated by third parties, and advertisements by independent third party sellers. These third party sellers, and third party websites may have their own privacy policies and are also likely to use cookies, and we, therefore, urge you to review them. They will govern the use of personal information you submit when visiting these websites, which may also be collected by cookies. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of such third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.
8. What we use, retain and disclose
Our use of your personal information will always have a lawful basis, either because you have consented to our use of your personal information or because it is reasonably necessary to provide our services and undertake our activities.
We use your personal information for the following purposes:
- we provide a personalised service, including using our services, using our platform interface;
- answering your general queries about mobile phone plans and related matters;
- correspondence with you or as directed by you, or on your behalf;
- carrying out advertising, marketing and educative training or promotional activities;
- to facilitate marketing from third parties;
- to contact you;
- to improve our services;
- to provide technical and customer services;
- to provide feedback to you;
- to provide subscription services which you have consented to receiving including emails and newsletters;
- carrying out competitions;
- helping you identify products or services which may be appropriate for you;
- referring you to product and service providers;
- in connection with a corporate transaction such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, or asset sale, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy;
- where we provide personalised services, we may analyse the information you supply, as well as your activity on our (and other) services, so that we can offer a more relevant, tailored experience and where appropriate
- we provide your personal information to third parties for purposes related to providing our services, including for regulatory requirements, processing transactions and identification.
We may also use your information to provide you with offers, location based services, and to directly contact you using email, SMS, telephone and postal mail for purposes including customer services related matters which includes technical issues, disputes, general assistance and surveys. We may also use personal information to enforce agreements.
We may use information which we hold about you to show you relevant advertising on third-party sites (e.g. Facebook, Google). This could involve showing you an advertising message where we know you browsed the Site and/or used our Service. If you don’t want to be shown targeted advertising messages from WhatPhone, or its affiliated entities, some third party sites allow you to request not to see messages from specific advertisers on that site in future.
We store personal information for as long as we require it for our business purposes and legal compliance. We store personal information to stop criminal activity, to collect any overdue fees, to resolve disputes, to deal with technical problems, enforce our agreements, and for other purposes under Australian laws. We have security measures in place to protect your personal information.
Your personal information may be shared with third parties and other companies in the Finder Group in order to provide services to you, to identify you, to enable us to undertake marketing and advertising related activities, for research purposes, to detect or investigate unlawful activities, to meet our legal and compliance policy requirements, and for transaction processing.
We may transfer your personal information to overseas recipients, including other businesses in our group, which may result in your personal data being transferred between, and stored on, servers in Europe, Australia and other countries.
We may also access, hold and use aggregated information about the people that use our services. Aggregated information won’t identify you or any other individual but simply provides us with non-personally identifiable data that we’ll use to improve our services, understand our users’ needs and develop tailored content. We may disclose this aggregate information to third parties for purposes including research and publishing statistics related to our business. Although you would have provided us with the information we aggregate for these purposes, it won’t identify you or enable you to be personally identified.
We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioural metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products/services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement.
If we do not need your personal information for any or the purposes set out in this policy, or as required by law, we will take reasonable steps to de-identify or destroy the information.
By using the Site or our Service, you consent to us collecting, holding and using your personal information in this way.
9. Security
Your information is protected by security measures, including data encryption, access controls including physical controls and information access controls, firewalls. If you believe your account has been compromised, please contact us by emailing [email protected] or using the online contact form located on the Site.
10. Accessing and correcting your personal information
We aim to ensure personal information is accurate, up-to-date and complete. Please ensure that you provide us with accurate information.
You have the right to ask for access to personal information that we hold about you, and ask that we correct that personal information and we must respond within 30 days. Following your access request, we must give you access to your personal information and we must take steps to correct it if we consider it is incorrect, unless we are prevented from doing so under a relevant law.
We will require you to verify your identity before we give you access to your information or correct it. If we refuse to give you access, or correct it, we must notify you in writing of the reasons. If we have disclosed your information to a third party, and it has since been corrected, you can request us to tell them about the correction. If we refuse to correct the information, you can request that we associate it with a statement that you believe the information is incorrect and why.
11. How to make a complaint
If you decide to make a complaint to us about how your personal information has been handled, you should write to us by email or post setting out the circumstances of your complaint, and how you wish for it to be resolved.
Following receipt of your complaint, we will consider your complaint, and decide what action to take. If we decide that the complaint should be investigated, it will be handled by a more senior person than the person who the complaint is about. We will respond to you within 30 days.
If you need additional information about the Australian Privacy Principles, the Privacy Law or our obligations you can also access the website of The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (http://www.oaic.gov.au/).
12. How to contact us
If you want to arrange access to your information or have questions about privacy or the use of this site, please email [email protected] or use the online contact form located on the Site.
You can also write to us at:
Privacy Team
WhatPhone
L10, 99 York St,
Sydney, NSW, Australia 2000
Privacy Policy Last Modified: 7 July 2023