1. INTRODUCTION

R U OK? Limited (ACN 138 676 829), also referred to in this Privacy Policy as R U OK?, we, us, or our, is a charitable organisation. 

We recognise that your privacy is very important to you and that you have a right to control your personal information. We know that providing personal information is an act of trust and we take that seriously. We are committed to protecting your personal information in accordance with our obligations under the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act).

This privacy policy (Policy) explains how we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information, and your privacy rights. We have a great team of staff and volunteers at R U OK? who help us do many of the things described in this Policy.

2. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT AND HOLD?

The type of information we collect, and hold includes personal information about:

• clients, business associates and potential clients and their employees;
• suppliers and their employees;
• employees, prospective employees and contractors;
• donors;
• volunteers; and
• other people who come into contact with us.

In general, the personal information we collect and hold may include name, contact details, occupation, identification, personal preferences, payment information (including financial and credit card information), images and recordings, social media and website usage data (which may include your IP address, how you accessed our website and interacted with our social media channels, and your wider geographic location), personal description, professional history, information relating to your dealings with us and other information which assists us in conducting our business, providing and marketing our services and meeting our legal obligations.

We also collect additional information about job applicants and team members, including information about qualifications, skills, experience, character, screening checks (including health, reference, background, directorship, financial probity, identity, eligibility to work, vocational suitability and criminal record checks), emergency contacts, work performance, conduct, use of our IT and communications resources, payroll matters, leave and tax/financial affairs.

Sometimes we are required or authorised by law to collect some of the personal information we collect. Those laws may include the Fair Work Act, Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act, the Income Tax Assessment Acts and other tax laws, Corporations Act, surveillance devices acts, Privacy Act, Workplace Surveillance Act, Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act and health services acts, charity and fundraising acts, Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Act, occupational health and safety acts and workers compensation acts.

3. HOW DO WE COLLECT AND HOLD INFORMATION?

In many cases, you do not have to provide personal information to us if you do not want to. However, if we are unable to collect or use your information, we may not be able to engage with you effectively or at all. For example, we may not be able to do the things described in section Error! Reference source not found., such as assessing your applications and providing donation receipts.

We may collect information in the following ways:

• from you directly when you provide your details to us including, for example, when you register with us to receive our newsletters or other information, when you make a donation to us, when register an event or when you purchase merchandise;
• from you indirectly through emails, forms, face-to-face meetings, registration and attendance at events or our premises, business cards and telephone conversations and through use of the services and facilities available through our website and social media channels; 
• from third parties including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, third parties who analyse traffic at our website, our blogs and social media channels (which may involve the use of cookies*) and the types of third parties described in sectionError! Reference source not found.; 
• from publicly available information; and
• by generating new information based on other information about you or attributed to you.

*COOKIES AND OUR WEBSITE

Our website uses cookies from time to time. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website. Cookies are small data files that may have unique identifiers, and reside, among other places, on your computer or mobile device, in emails we send to you, and on our web pages. Among other things, cookies help us improve our website and your experience. For example, we use cookies to see whether you are logged in, which areas and features are popular and to count visits to our website. Cookies may also transmit information about you and your use of our website, such as your browser type, search preferences, data relating to advertisements that have been displayed to you or that you have clicked on, and the date and time of your use.

You can configure your web browser software to reject cookies however some parts of our website may not have full functionality in that case. See www.allaboutcookies.org for instructions on deleting and rejecting cookies for many common browsers.

Our website may use Google services such as Google Analytics from time to time to help us better understand visitor traffic, so we can improve our services. For more about how Google collects and processes data, please see Google’s privacy policy and their information at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners /. Although this data is mostly anonymous, it is possible that under certain circumstances, we may connect it to you.

4. STORAGE AND SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We take reasonable steps to keep any personal information that we hold about you secure, accurate and up to date, whether this information is in paper or electronic form. We may use third parties including overseas companies, to provide services including processing and storage of all or part of the information we hold about individuals. Information processed and/or stored by these service providers may include sensitive Information. In providing this information you consent to us and our service providers processing and storing information about you in this way and confirm that anyone else who you have provided information about also consents to this. Our employees and contractors who provide services related to our information systems are obliged to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by us. 

All personal information you provide to our website is delivered through a secure, encrypted connection called secure sockets layer (SSL). We use 128-bit SSL encryption which provides industry standard levels of protection against unauthorised access to the information while it is in transit over the Internet.

While we take reasonable steps to secure any personal information provided by you over the internet you should be aware that there are inherent risks in internet transmission. You should keep us informed of any changes to your personal information using the contact details below.

We take reasonable steps to ensure we do not keep your personal information for longer than we need to. In most cases, this means that we will only retain your personal information for the duration of your relationship with us unless we are required or permitted to retain your personal information to comply with applicable laws, for example record-keeping obligations.

5. WHY DO WE COLLECT, HOLD, USE AND DISCLOSE INFORMATION?

We may collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the purposes described in this Policy or otherwise disclosed to you (e.g. on our website). For example, we may use your information:

• to provide you with information about our organisation, including information about resources, events and merchandise, and information that we reasonably believe may be of interest to you;
• to administer our website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes and maintaining and updating our records;
• to improve our website to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
• to manage our social media channels;
• to assess your application for work and volunteering opportunities;
• to assess your application for business and/or sponsorship opportunities;
• to enable the performance of contracts with you;
• to carry out ongoing R U OK? activities, including R U OK? Day events;
• to recruit, train and manage our team;
• to respond to your comments and questions and provide customer service;
• to procure or process a donation and provide you with a tax receipt;
• as part of our efforts to keep our website safe and secure;
• to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
• to exercise and defend our legal rights;
• when required or authorised by law and comply with our legal obligations;
• to protect our team members, stakeholders and property;
• in connection with any transition of our operations to another entity, or of another entity’s operations to us; and
• to deal with any threats to a person's health or safety.

6. WHO DO WE DISCLOSE YOUR INFORMATION TO?

We may use and disclose your personal information for many purposes in connection with our functions and activities, including to the following parties:.

• any third party that administers any facility, service or promotion operated via our website on our behalf (this includes ‘Funraisin’ on our subdomain join.ruok.org.au and ‘Big Commerce’ on our subdomain store.ruok.org.au);
• our professional advisors;
• contractors or service providers who we have engaged or appointed to carry out or support our functions or activities, including in relation to promotion, fundraising, delivery, payments, technology and investigations;
• our lawyers and professional advisors;
• any specific parties which we have advised you of at or before the time the relevant personal information is collected;
• third parties to comply with law e.g. where we received a subpoena;
• third parties involved in any transfer of our operations to another entity or vice versa;
• government and law enforcement authorities where relevant; and
• any other parties with your express or implied agreement.

For team members and job applicants, we may also provide your personal information to academic institutions, recruiters, screening check providers, health service providers, professional and trade associations, referees and prospective employers.

We use a secure encryption page for online donations. Your credit card or bank account details are only used to process your donation and are securely stored by the provider of our electronic payment service. The details are not used by us for any other purpose.

Some of the recipients to which we disclose personal information are located overseas including in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and the United States of America.

These overseas recipients will often be subject to obligations to protect the personal information they have access to, but they may not be subject to the specific requirements of Australian privacy laws.

7. ACCESS TO INFORMATION

We endeavour to keep your personal information accurate, complete and up to date.

Subject to the exceptions set out in the Privacy Act, you may seek access to and correction of the personal information which we hold about you by contacting our Privacy Officer  via ruok.org.au/contact .  We will require you to verify your identity. Please provide as much detail as you can about the particular information you seek, in order to help us locate it. If a fee is payable for providing access, you will be advised of the likely cost in advance.

We may say “no” to your request for correction, but we’ll tell you why in writing. If we do say “no”, you can ask us to make a note of your requested correction with the information.

8. SENSITIVE INFORMATION

‘Sensitive information’ is defined in the Privacy Act and includes information about your health, ethnic origin and religious beliefs. We will not collect sensitive information about you unless it is reasonably necessary for our functions or activities and you, or a parent, guardian or other person authorised to act on your behalf, have consented or the collection is otherwise permitted by the Privacy Act. We will regard consent as inferred if information is freely provided by you, or by a family member or other person authorised to act on your behalf, to us.

We will only use or disclose your sensitive information for a purpose for which it was collected unless an exception applies including e.g. where you have consented to a secondary use or disclosure or where you would reasonably expect us to use or disclose your sensitive information for a purpose directly related to the primary purpose for which we collected it.

9. HOW YOU CAN MAKE A PRIVACY RELATED COMPLAINT

If you have any questions about privacy-related issues or wish to complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles or the handling of your personal information by us, please contact our Privacy Officer by email via Email: via ruok.org.au/contact.

We may ask you to lodge your complaint in writing. Any complaint will be investigated by the Privacy Officer, and you will be notified of the making of a decision in relation to your complaint as soon as is practicable after it has been made, usually within 30 days.

If we are unable to satisfactorily resolve your concerns about our handling of your personal information, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:

GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001
Tel: 1300 363 992
www.oaic.gov.au

10. LINKS TO THIRD PARTY SITES

Our website(s) may contain links to websites operated by third parties. If you access a third-party website through our website(s), personal information may be collected by that third party website. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any third-party provider or website and we are not responsible for the privacy policies or the content of any third-party provider or website. Third party providers or websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.

11. NOTICE TO END USERS

If you use one of our services or products with an account provided by an organisation you are affiliated with, such as your work or school account, we may collect and use and disclose personal information about you to provide services to you or your organisation, in accordance with your organisation’s instructions. Please note your organisation will generally be able to access and handle your data. You should refer to your organisation’s privacy policy for more information about how they collect and handle your personal information, and how you may exercise your right in respect thereof.

12. CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

Any changes we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our Privacy Policy.

This Policy was last modified on 4 November 2024. 

13. CONTACT

If you have questions, comments or requests regarding our Privacy Policy please contact us via:

• Email: ruok.org.au/contact
  
• Mail: Our postal address:
  

R U OK?

65 Berry St

North Sydney, NSW, 2060