PRIVACY POLICY

Beneath the Surface AU

1. We respect your privacy

1.1. Beneath the Surface AU respects your right to privacy and is committed to safeguarding the privacy of our customers, students, research participants, and website visitors. We adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information.

1.2. "Personal information" is information we hold which is identifiable as being about you.

1.3. "Sensitive Information" is defined in the Privacy Act to include information or opinion about such things as an individual's racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a trade union or other professional body, criminal record, or health information. Given the nature of our educational, consulting, and research activities, we may collect sensitive information. We will only collect sensitive information with your consent and use it for the primary purpose for which it was obtained.

2. Collection of personal information

2.1. Beneath the Surface AU will, from time to time, receive and store personal information you enter onto our website, provide to us directly, or give to us in other forms.

2.2. You may provide basic information such as your name, phone number, address, and email address to enable us to send information, provide updates, and process your enrollment in courses or consulting services. We may collect additional information at other times, including but not limited to:

  • Academic or professional history for course prerequisites;

  • Data provided explicitly for academic research projects;

  • Feedback and survey responses;

  • Financial or credit card information for processing orders;

  • Communications with our customer support.

3. How we collect your personal information

3.1. Beneath the Surface AU collects personal information from you in a variety of ways, including when you interact with us electronically or in person, when you access our website, when you participate in our academic research studies, and when we provide our educational and consulting services to you.

3.2. We may receive personal information from third parties. If we do, we will protect it as set out in this Privacy Policy.

4. Use of your personal information

4.1. Beneath the Surface AU may use personal information collected from you to provide you with information, updates, and our services. We may also make you aware of new and additional products, services, and opportunities available to you.

4.2. Academic Research: Where information is collected specifically for academic research, it will be treated in accordance with the specific consent obtained at the time of collection. Research results are generally published in aggregated, de-identified forms unless specific consent is given to identify an individual or organisation.

4.3. We may use your personal information to improve our products and services and better understand your needs.

4.4. Beneath the Surface AU may contact you by a variety of measures including, but not limited to telephone, email, SMS, or mail.

4.5. Direct Marketing Opt-Out: You may unsubscribe from our mailing/marketing lists at any time by contacting us in writing or by using the ‘unsubscribe’ link contained in our promotional emails.

5. Disclosure of your personal information

5.1. We may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers, or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy. Personal information is only supplied to a third party when it is required for the delivery of our services.

5.2. Overseas Disclosure: We use third-party service providers to host our website and manage our data (including Squarespace and Microsoft). Consequently, your personal information may be transferred to, and stored in, countries outside of Australia, primarily the United States. We take reasonable steps to ensure that any overseas recipient deals with your personal information in a manner consistent with the Australian Privacy Principles.

5.3. We may from time to time need to disclose personal information to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, in the course of a legal proceeding or in response to a law enforcement agency request.

5.4. We may also use your personal information to protect the copyright, trademarks, legal rights, property, or safety of Beneath the Surface AU, beneaththesurface.au, its customers, or third parties.

5.5. If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, we reserve the right to transfer to the extent permissible at law our user databases, together with any personal information and non-personal information contained in those databases.

6. Security of your personal information

6.1. Beneath the Surface AU is committed to ensuring that the information you provide to us is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification, and disclosure.

6.2. The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to us, or receive from us. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personal information that we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

7. Access to your personal information

7.1. You may request details of personal information that we hold about you in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). A small administrative fee may be payable for the provision of information. If you would like a copy of the information which we hold about you or believe that any information we hold on you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading, please email us at privacy@beneaththesurface.au.

7.2. We reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information that we hold about you in certain circumstances set out in the Privacy Act.

8. Complaints about privacy

8.1. If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to send in details of your complaints to PO Box 48, Ballajura, Western Australia, Australia, 6066. We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving written notice of your complaint.

8.2. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint, or if we fail to respond to your complaint within 30 days, you may refer your complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

9. Changes to Privacy Policy

9.1. Please be aware that we may change this Privacy Policy in the future. We may modify this Policy at any time, in our sole discretion and all modifications will be effective immediately upon our posting of the modifications on our website or notice board. Please check back from time to time to review our Privacy Policy.

10. Website and Tracking Technologies

10.1. Website Hosting: Our website is hosted by Squarespace. Your data may be stored through Squarespace’s data storage, databases, and the general Squarespace application. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall.

10.2. Microsoft Clarity and Advertising: We partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioral 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.

10.3. Cookies: We may from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website.

10.4. Third party sites: Our site may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that Beneath the Surface AU is not responsible for the privacy practices of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personal identifiable information.