Privacy Policy

Why we collect personal information

For our business purposes, in order to provide the Opal Service and products to you, we collect personal information from you when it is reasonably necessary to do so. This helps us to:

• Meet your needs
• Understand how we can meet your future needs
• Develop and evaluate our products and services
• Tailor our services and advertising to make them relevant to you
• Manage our business
• Comply with our legal obligations

What information we collect and how we collect it

Opal collects personal information like your name, address, date of birth, gender, occupation, interests, location, contact details, payment details, financial information, and information about how and where you purchase and use our products.

There are a few different ways we collect this information. It’s usually directly from you when you fill out forms online or in person or give it to one of our representatives on the phone. We also collect information from you when you pay your bills, purchase and us our products and services. Our website also uses cookies and digital identifiers including site performance identifiers, analytics and advertising cookies to gather statistics about our site and services to see what’s most popular and how many people are looking at different pages of our site, what other sites are most popular to visit from our site, and to improve our understanding of the kind of advertising that may be relevant to different segments of our online customers.

You’re free to choose not to provide any personal information or deal with us anonymously. You can also clear cookies or digital identifiers from your device and disable future use by changing the security settings on your web browser. That’s up to you but if you do, then we may not be able to provide you with the product or service you’ve asked for or give you the level of service we’d like to provide.

We also collect information from others such as your parent or guardian if you are under 18 or from other companies or trusted services who are able to disclose it to us if it’s not practical to collect it from you. This helps us to tailor our services to you and to identify people who might be interested in hearing about our products.

We will take reasonable steps to make sure you know we have your personal information, how we got it and how we’ll handle it.

Your credit situation

We collect some types of personal information to assess your credit situation when you apply for certain services. For more details, see the section on Credit-related information below.

Insights from statistics and research

We aggregate and process personal information to generate new insights about our network, products and customers, so we can provide you with the best possible service.

Sensitive personal information

When we talk about sensitive information, we mean details about your race, ethnicity, politics, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences, health, genetics or criminal record.

Generally speaking, we don’t need sensitive information about you – it’s just none of our business.

There may be times when you choose to tell us about your health, and we might collect biometric information for use with new technologies like voice or fingerprint recognition. This could happen as technology changes and evolves over time.

Remember, this kind of information will only be collected with your permission, and we will only use it for the purpose for which you provided it.

The Opal group and who we work with

We may share your personal information within the Opal Broadcasting Network group of businesses including XABC Entertainment Pty Ltd ACN 151 022 577.

We also work with a number of other companies, and in certain circumstances may share personal information with them too.

Parties we work with

We sometimes team up with other companies to offer products. If you purchase a product or service that is delivered by one of our partners, we’ll give them the personal information they need to provide it and manage their relationship with you. In these circumstances, we have arrangements in place with our partners that limit their use or disclosure of your personal information to these purposes.

Outsourcing

We may work with third parties to provide some types of sales, business and customer support. They may have access to systems that include your personal information. These companies are subject to strict controls that protect your information from unauthorised use or disclosure, and limit their access to your personal information to the extent necessary to do their job.

Outstanding payments

In some circumstances, we may need to refer or sell overdue debts to debt collectors or other companies. If we do this, we’ll give them secure access to the personal information they need to handle the debt.

We may also update credit reporting agencies about some types of payment defaults, although we’ll always tell you before we do this.

Legal obligations and other privacy exceptions

We give access to personal information where we are permitted or obliged to do so by Australian law. For example, in some circumstances we will use or disclose personal information to react to unlawful activity, serious misconduct, or to reduce or prevent a serious threat to life, health or safety. We are obliged to cooperate with law enforcement bodies in some circumstances. We may disclose personal information, including information about phone calls and service use, when we receive an access request or warrant that is authorised under Australian law.

We also give information about some of our telephone products to the Integrated Public Number Database, where it’s used to do things like write phone directories and assist with the dispatch of emergency services.

Others

We will only disclose personal information to others if you’ve given us permission, or if the disclosure relates to the main reason we collected the information and you’d reasonably expect us to do so.

Advertising

So that you receive information about those products that may be of interest to you, Opal may use your personal information to send you customised advertising that is more relevant to your interests, characteristics or general location. Tailored advertising means that the advertising that you see will hopefully be more relevant to you and will not necessarily mean you’ll get more advertising.

Advertising Opal products and services

Opal advertises by mail, phone, email, text, and online via the internet and in apps.

Advertising other products

We also work with other companies to advertise their products online. We don’t give them access to your personal information when we do this. Instead, we work with them to understand the type of audience they want to advertise to, and deliver the ad for them.

Opting out

We’ll make sure that any marketing emails, texts and letters we send you clearly tell you how to opt out, or you can tell our phone staff.

You can opt out of receiving online relevant advertising material at any time by clicking on the ‘opt out’ button at the bottom of any email we send you.

When you opt out, you can choose to opt out of particular direct marketing, or all direct marketing. Of course, there are some types of marketing we can’t control on an individual basis, like general letterbox drops or online ads that are not targeted specifically to you.

Credit

Opal uses personal information to assess your credit situation when you apply for some products. For example, we generally do a credit assessment before you take a product with a monthly billing account.

We might ask you for information about yourself and things like your employment details and credit history, and then seek a credit report from a credit reporting agency.

We’ll always tell you before we seek a credit report, and we won’t get one if you’re under 18.

The credit report provided by a credit reporting agency may include information like your employment history, previous credit checks, any problems you’ve had paying bills and whether those issues were resolved. Opal uses this information to assess whether we’re entering into an arrangement that is sensible for both you and us.

After you become a customer, we store the crucial bits of information from the credit report and our own credit assessment. We may continue to use this information to manage credit, and to make sure we’re offering and providing the right services to you.

Opal doesn’t use credit related information to generate marketing lists. Sometimes, we might ask a credit reporting agency to do that for us. You can ask the credit reporting agency not to use your information for these purposes by getting in touch with them directly.

Opal works with customer service partners inside and outside Australia on credit related matters. Where necessary, we give our partners access to the credit information they need to help manage credit and your services.

You can get access to credit related information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or make a complaint, as described elsewhere in this policy. If we agree that our records need to be corrected, and we’ve previously disclosed that information to a credit reporting agency or other person, we’ll tell them about the correction too.

You can ask the credit reporting agencies not to use or disclose the information in their files if you think you have been or are likely to become a victim of fraud.

You can find out more about the credit reporting agencies Opal works with at www.veda.com.au and www.dnb.com.au. Their websites give their contact details and their policies about the management of your personal information.

Security

Security is serious. We’re committed to protecting your personal information and we assure you that we will comply with all the relevant laws about keeping your personal information secure.

Some of the security measures we use include:

• Firewalls and access logging tools that protect against unauthorised access to your data and our network.
• Secure work environments and workflow systems that prevent unauthorised access and copying of your personal information.
• Secure server and closed network environments.
• Encryption of data in transit.
• Virus scanning tools.
• Management of access privileges, to ensure that only those who really need it can see your personal information.
• Ongoing training and security reviews.

These measures are robust, but security risks do change. We will remain vigilant in our efforts to protect your personal information.

Access

If you need access to the personal information we hold about you, please ask us. If there is no legal reason why we cannot give it to you, we will give it to you, but we will always have to confirm your identity before giving access to your personal information. We are sure you don’t want us to give your personal information to someone who simply claims to be you without checking first.

You can ask for access by calling us on +61 2 8091 3326 or emailing us on admin@opalbroadcastingnetwork.tv. It will really help if you tell us what you’re looking for.

There are circumstances under Australian privacy laws where we may not give you access to the personal information we hold about you. For example, we can’t give you access if it would unreasonably affect someone else’s privacy or if giving you access poses a serious threat to someone’s life, health or safety.

There is generally no cost for accessing the personal information we hold about you, unless the request is complex or resource intensive. If there is a charge, it will be reasonable and we will let you know what it is going to be so that you can agree to it before we go ahead.

Quality

We aim to keep the personal information we hold about you accurate, up-to-date and complete. If you think our records need to be corrected, please call us.

Changes

We’ll amend this policy if our practices change. Details of recent amendments and the date they were made will be detailed below.

We encourage you to update your details with us so we can deliver better service to you, and so the others we work with (like emergency services) have access to the information they need to do their job.

Contact us

We recognise that your personal information is important to you, so please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this policy or our practices.

You can get in touch with us by:

Phone: +61 2 8091 3326 or email: admin@opalbroadcastingnetwork.tv.

If you believe that we have breached your privacy or have any questions in relation to this Privacy Policy, you can contact us on +61 2 8091 3326 or at admin@opalbroadcastingnetwork.tv.

We will investigate any complaint, and notify you of our decision in relation to the complaint, as soon as practicable after it is received. 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.