Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective as of 15 November 2015

This Privacy Policy describes the practices that FHBA Pty Ltd (“FHBA”) follows with respect to the collection, holding, use and disclosure of information provided by you or collected from you during your use of our website, www.fhba.com.au or www.firsthomebuyersaustralia.com.au (the “Site”), attendance at any event held or organised by us or provided or collected during any communication by or with you in any format including social media.

Amendment to Privacy Policy

We may, from time to time, modify or amend this Privacy Policy. As such amendments are made, we will post an updated Privacy Policy on the Site displaying the date from when the modifications will apply. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of an updated Privacy Policy indicates your acceptance of all such modifications and amendments.

Personal Information

When you use our Site we collect Personal Information from you.

Personal information” includes any information or opinions from which you can be identified which may include your name, email address, postal address or phone number. Other information, such as your computer or server’s IP address, may also become personal information if it is associated with other identifying information.
We only collect your personal information when you provide it to us.The provision of your personal information is reasonably necessary for or directly related to the provision of our services to you. If you do not provide your personal information to us, you may be unable to use certain features of the Site.

If you fail to provide to us your personal information and it is unreasonable or impracticable for us to collect such information from you, you consent to us obtaining your personal information from someone else.

Other Information

When you use our Site we may also collect information other than personal information. This information is automatically collected by our web server which is information that your web browser makes available when you visit our Site.
This automatically collected information may include your browser type and capabilities, the website you visited before our Site, the content you viewed on our Site and your geographic location.

All computers and servers on the Internet use IP addresses to recognise and communicate with each other. We collect and maintain the IP address of your computer or server for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
The above information is held in aggregated form and does not identify you. We use this information to assist us in analysing and administering our Site and to generate internal reports such as how many visitors we have had and what content is being viewed.

This Site also uses “cookies.” “Cookies” are small text files that allow websites to store and retrieve information about you from your computer system. This information does not personally identify you.

Your consent to the collection, holding, use and disclosure of your personal information

By using our Site you consent to the collection, holding, use and disclosure of your personal and other information in the ways described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not consent to your personal information being collected, held, used or disclosed as described in this Privacy Policy, please do not use the Site and exit immediately.

Access to and correcting your personal information

On receipt of your written request we will provide you with the personal information we have collected about you. If you wish to update your personal information you should send an email to [email protected] advising us of any corrections.

How we will use your personal information

We hold and use your personal information for purposes which are reasonably necessary for, or directly related to, one or more of the functions or activities we undertake. This may include using your personal information to send newsletters; to establish your online account (if any) and recognise you when you return to the Site; to contact you regarding contests, promotions, polls, and surveys; to provide access to real estate agents and other industry professionals for personalised contact; to provide customer support or to otherwise communicate with you regarding our Site.

We will only use personal information collected from you for the purpose of direct marketing. If you do not wish to receive these communications, you may opt-out or unsubscribe by updating your preferences in your profile or clicking “Unsubscribe” in any of our emails. We will immediately notify any third party suppliers of your unsubscribe preference but we cannot guarantee when such third party will remove you from their marketing list. We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that you cease receiving communications from us and our third party suppliers as soon as possible after your unsubscribe request has been received by us.

We may also hold and use your personal information to attribute to you comments and/or other submissions you make to the Site or if, for example, your identity is important to resolving a service issue or in resolving a financial matter regarding a purchase on our Site.

Disclosing your personal information

We may disclose your personal information in special cases when we have reason to believe that disclosing this information is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may have breached our Terms and Conditions or who may be causing injury to or interference with (either intentionally or unintentionally) our rights or property, other users of our Site, or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities.

We may also disclose your personal information when we reasonably believe that the law requires it.

If we engage third party agents, subsidiaries, affiliates and joint venture partners to perform functions on our behalf, such as credit card processing, shipping or stocking orders, providing customer service, and real estate or finance professionals etc. we will disclose your personal information to them, as required for them to perform their functions.

If FHBA or substantially all of FHBA’s assets are sold or transferred, your personal information may be one of the business assets disclosed to the purchaser or transferee.

We may hold, use and disclose individual or aggregated information automatically collected from you to track how our visitors use the Site, study traffic patterns, run and maintain the Site. We may provide targeted advertisements to you based on such data.
Although we do not currently engage in such practices, we may share aggregated data with our advertisers.

International disclosure

We may need to disclose your personal information to entities located outside Australia for the purpose of us providing our services to you. We will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that the overseas recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles including satisfying ourselves as to the practices of the overseas entity and the security measures that are used by the overseas entity to protect your personal information.

If personal information is to be disclosed to an overseas entity, this Privacy Policy will be updated to include the country in which such disclosure has been or will be made. You agree that the posting of an updated Privacy Policy on our website will be deemed notification to you of the country and it is your responsibility to check, from time to time, for updated policies.

Protection of your personal information

We will take all reasonable steps in the circumstances to ensure your personal information is kept secure and is protected from unauthorised use or disclosure. Unfortunately, information transmitted on the Internet and/or stored on systems attached to the Internet are not 100% secure. As such, we provide no warranty or guarantee as to the security or integrity of your personal information.

To the extent permitted by law, you release us from any liability for the disclosure of any information due to errors in transmission or the unauthorised acts of third parties and indemnify us in respect of any claims arising from such disclosure.

Your privacy on third party websites

Our Site provides links to websites maintained by other organisations. These links are provided to you as a convenience, but we do not operate, control or endorse any websites to which these links are attached. We cannot attest to or assure you of the privacy principles maintained by any website other than our own Site and you are responsible for reviewing the terms of all other websites whether such websites have been accessed by you via our Site or otherwise.

How to cease receiving communications from us

You may terminate any ongoing communications you receive from FHBA via e-mail (such as newsletters, subscriptions, contest results, survey inquiries, etc.) by (1) clicking the “unsubscribe” link that is available within the communication received, or (2) by emailing [email protected] and request to be unsubscribed.

If you think we have breached the Australian Privacy Principles

To the extent that we are subject to the Australian Privacy Principles, we have taken all reasonable steps to ensure that our practices comply with those principles. If you believe we have breached those principles we request that you email us at [email protected] setting out the circumstances in which you believe we are in breach.

Your complaint will be reviewed and investigated by a senior manager of FHBA and a response will be provided to you within 30 business days.

If you are unhappy with our response you agree that any further dispute should be determined by mediation with an independent mediator to be appointed by agreement of the parties within 14 business days of you notifying us of you wish to proceed to mediation. You agree that the cost of mediation will be borne equally between the parties and that the decision of the mediator will be final and binding on the parties.

Questions? If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please e-mail them to [email protected] and be sure to indicate the nature of your question.