business.gov.au is bound by the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 with respect to collection, use and disclosure of personal information. business.gov.au also follows the Guidelines for Federal and ACT Government Websites . The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has also issued Guidelines to the Information Privacy Principles .
Clickstream data
Clickstreams are the paths a user takes when navigating a website and the internet in general. When you visit a business.gov.au site, our servers may record the following information for statistical purposes:
- the user's server (IP) address and machine name
- the date and time of visit to the site
- the pages accessed and documents downloaded
- the number of bytes transmitted and received for each request
- the previous site or page visited
- search terms used
- the type of browser used.
business.gov.au examines this information to determine the traffic through the server and to specific pages or applications. In order to deliver better services, we also perform statistical analysis to establish priorities and allocate resources.
No attempt will be made to identify users or their browsing activities except in the unlikely event of an investigation, where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect server logs. The statistics and log files may be preserved indefinitely and used at any time and in any way necessary to prevent security breaches and to ensure the integrity of the information supplied by the website.
Cookies
A cookie is a short piece of data which is sent from a web server to a web browser on the user's machine when the browser visits the server's site. The cookie is stored on the user's machine, but it is not an executable program and cannot do anything to your machine. Whenever a web browser requests a file from the same web server that sent the cookie, the browser sends a copy of that cookie back to the server along with the request. In this way, the server knows you have visited before and can co-ordinate your access to different pages on its web site. A server cannot find out a name or e-mail address, or anything about a user's computer, by using cookies. business.gov.au uses cookies to obtain session details for access to parts of our sites. Cookies are essential in providing a seamless access to some on-line databases. Cookie information is not stored or collected by business.gov.au.
E-mail addresses and other personal information
business.gov.au will only record your e-mail address and personal information if you supply it to us, either by sending a message or completing and submitting a form.
business.gov.au hosts GovForms, SmartForms, ABN Lookup and Business Consultation websites. The use of these applications requires the user to provide personal information. This information will be used only for the purpose which it is provided for and will not be redistributed without legal authority or permission.
Your information will only be used by business.gov.au for the purpose for which you have provided it and will not be added to a mailing list unless you have asked us to, nor will we disclose it except as described in the previous paragraph.
Social media
When you use business.gov.au's social media pages, you are using an external site and are therefore bound by the privacy principles of that site. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of that site for further information. business.gov.au does not endorse, and is not accountable for, any views expressed by third parties using that site.
