In this privacy policy “we”, “us” and “our” means Living Now Digital Media (LivingNow). Please read this policy carefully as it describes the way in which we collect and handle your personal information. We may update or revise this policy from time to time. If we elect to update or revise this policy, we will post the date on which that revision takes effect. The date is displayed at the end of this policy.

Please be aware that you have no obligation to provide any personal information requested by us. However, if you choose to withhold your personal information, we may not be able to provide you with the services or products that depend on the collection and use of that information.

OUR PRIVACY COMMITMENT

We recognise the importance of, and are committed to, managing any personal information that we collect in compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), which includes the Australian Privacy Principles, and other Australian privacy laws (together, “Privacy Laws”).

1. HOW DO WE COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION?

Where possible, we collect your personal information directly from you. This collection includes through your:

registration when you purchase a product, magazine or digital subscription;

• entry into promotions or competitions
• answers to surveys
• signing up to newsletters and other notifications from our magazines and other brands;
• signing up to join our online communities
• registration to attend events
• provision of express permission when accessing applications sitting on LivingNow brand social media accounts;
• application for an internship or employment with us
• communications with us such as letters, telephone calls, text messaging and emails regarding services and products;
• registration for our loyalty clubs
• download and use of our digital publications and mobile applications (“apps”)

Third parties
In some circumstances, however, we may also collect your personal information from third parties or public agencies where it is unreasonable or impracticable for us to collect the personal information directly from you. For example, if you subscribe to one of our magazines through a third party that is authorised to take subscriptions for us, we will collect your personal information from that third party. If we have difficulty in delivering a magazine to you, we may make enquiries in an effort to locate your address or correct any error in our recorded address details for you.

In some circumstances, we may provide you access to our online communities through the option of a third party platform sign on. This includes, but is not limited to, social sign ons. In this instance we will be accessing and collecting the personal information which you have authorised the third party platform to pass on to us. Where we collect personal information from third parties, we will ensure that the collection is conducted in a fair and lawful manner. This will only occur when the information is necessary for our functions or activities.

2. WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

The personal information we collect varies depending upon the purpose of the collection and the product or service we are providing you. Generally, we collect and hold the following types of personal information:

• your name and address
• your telephone number
• e-mail contact details
• date of birth
• your gender
• other information you may make publicly available online (including but not limited to on social media platforms)
• transaction details, if you make a purchase with us or choose to store details in your online profile
• bank account/credit card numbers and associated details as reasonably required in relation to processing payments at your request
• any other personal information which may be required in order to facilitate and where possible improve your dealings with us

However, for certain purposes, such as where you apply for employment with us, we will collect additional personal information such as your employment history, educational history and employment references.

Sensitive information
We generally do not collect sensitive information that is associated with an identifiable individual.

We may from time to time collect information that would be sensitive personal information about you with your consent where the collection is related to provision of a service or other benefit to you. For example, we collect information from expectant mothers in relation to them and their families with their consent, in order to provide them with baby products and associated maternity benefits.

We may collect information from you about particular health concerns, gender orientation or other sensitive information with your consent, in order to provide you with offers or promotions related to your concerns or status.

In the event that we are required to collect sensitive personal information, we will notify you of this at the point of collection and obtain your consent to collect and hold this sensitive personal information.

If you provide us with sensitive information on an unsolicited basis, we assess whether such information is reasonably necessary for one or more of our functions or activities. The unsolicited sensitive information you disclose to us may be used and disclosed for the purpose for which you provided such information or, where you would reasonably expect us to, we may use the information for a directly related secondary purpose. We may also disclose or use the information for other purposes with your consent or if required to by law.

3. WHY DO WE COLLECT AND USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will collect your personal information if it is reasonably necessary for the performance of our business activities and functions. This includes providing a range of products and services to you, some of which are listed below

.

Registration for magazine subscriptions
We collect personal information from individuals who subscribe to our magazines, in order to process their payments and to confirm whether they would like to receive promotional materials in the future.

We will also seek your consent to send to you LivingNow promotional material and special offers. Where you have a subscription for a magazine published by us, then we will also send you renewal notices, that magazine’s regular newsletter as well as promotional material. Occasionally, where notice has been given, you may also be sent special offers from third parties associated with that title.

Sales promotions, competitions, surveys and registration to attend our events
We collect personal information when you respond to one of our promotions, competitions or surveys or when you register to attend an event in order to inform you if you have won a prize, to place you on a guest-list to the event, and to help us better understand what products and services you would like to receive information about in the future.

Our mobile apps
We, or a service provider, may collect information through our apps to assist us in understanding how you use our apps, how the apps are performing across different handsets, and to assist us in the selection of advertisements for groups of individuals. Our access to this information is as you have agreed to with the respective app store from which you download our app.

Registration for our newsletters, online communities and/or loyalty clubs
We collect personal information when you sign up to register for our newsletters or join one of our online communities. By providing this information we are able to keep you updated on special offers and events that may interest you. Also to reward your commitment to the brands.

Our online communities
We collect personal information from you when you participate in any activity on our online communities. By providing personal information to us during such activity, we can assist in identifying ways in which we can provide you with a better service. We can also enhance your online experience.

Employment or internship
We collect personal information from applicants who are seeking employment or an internship with us. This is part of the recruitment process. In circumstances where you do not provide the mandatory personal information, we will be unable to consider you for a position with us.

Direct marketing and research
As set out above, we may use personal information about you for marketing and research purposes. However, you can manage your communication preferences with us in a number of ways. For example, if you are an online customer, you will be provided options to manage your own online profile. In addition, the marketing communications that we send to you will also contain information on how to unsubscribe from those communications.

You can also tell us at any time if you do not want us to disclose your details to other organisations such as our related companies or third parties for marketing purposes. To do this, you just need to contact our general editor.

Sometimes we extract information from our collected records to produce aggregated data. This aggregated data does not identify individuals. We use the aggregated data for research purposes, product development and may share the data with third parties.

4. WHO DO WE DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO?

We provide your personal information to third parties where you have consented to such disclosure. We also provide your personal information to third parties in order to carry out our business activities and functions. This may include:

• newsagents for the purpose of fulfilling subscriptions to our publications;
• organisations who are sponsoring or otherwise involved with or participating in a promotion, offer, competition or survey;
• other companies or individuals we engage to perform functions on our behalf. (This could be for mailing a subscription, processing credit card information, mailing information or prizes, data analysis, telemarketing, research and advertising, IT support services, etc.);
• with your specific and prior consent, to other companies or individuals for the purposes you have consented to.

We disclose your personal information offshore to our owners, joint venture partners, service providers and agents. It is not practicable to specify all countries to which we may disclose your personal information as, among other things, we are part of a global organisation. The countries and regions your personal information may be disclosed to include New Zealand, the USA, and Europe.

We ensure that any organisation which we disclose your personal information to is subject to appropriate contractual obligations to safeguard and protect your personal information and comply with all Privacy Laws.

In certain circumstances, we may disclose your personal information where required or authorised to do so by law. This includes emergency situations, and to assist law enforcement agencies. We will always ensure that those to whom we disclose your personal information have the legal right to receive it.

5. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION SECURED?

We understand that the security of your personal information is important. As such, we take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We store information both at an onsite secure server and at trusted third party storage providers. We undertake regular training of our staff to ensure that they are aware of our privacy commitments and our obligations in the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. Our staff is also required to sign in and use a password when accessing our secure systems.

6. ACCESS TO AND CORRECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

In certain circumstances where you have a sign in to your customer details and/or you can access your own personal information via your membership you will be required to follow prompts to access, correct, or update your personal information. If this option is available to you directly, we will clearly mark it for ease of access.

You can also access or correct your personal information by contacting us using the ‘Contact Details’ set out below. Please provide us with as much detail as you can about the particular information you wish to access or correct. This will help us retrieve it for you. We may charge you an access fee to cover our costs of providing that information to you. We will inform you of applicable fees before they are incurred.

In certain circumstances, we may refuse your request to access, or correct, your personal information. If that is the case, we will provide reasons for that decision unless unreasonable for us to do so.

We take reasonable steps to make sure that the personal information we collect is accurate, complete and up-to-date including updating personal information when we are advised by you that your personal information has changed.

If you wish to delete the personal information we hold about you, please let us know by contacting us using the ‘Contact Details’ set out below and we will take reasonable steps to delete the information, unless we are required to retain it for legal reasons.

7. THE USE OF COOKIES AND WEB BEACONS THROUGH OUR WEBSITES AND APPS

Information may be collected when you access our websites or apps. Details such as the time and specific page or app you visited, for example. This information is collected through “cookies”. A “cookie” is a small piece of information, or file, that a website or app sends to your computer’s hard drive while you are viewing that website or app for record keeping purposes. Most web browsers are automatically set to accept cookies. If you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to refuse cookies. However, this will mean you will not be able to take full advantage of our websites or apps.

We, and our service providers, use the information collected from cookies for a number of reasons:

• for statistical purposes, to track how many users we have and how often they visit our website or apps;
• to provide statistical data, ratings and other information for industry and other public reporting;
• provide you with a more personalised, convenient and interactive experience on our websites or apps;
• to track who has viewed an advertisement or clicked-through an advertisement; and
• to provide you with a more targeted advertising experience on and off our websites or apps. Through this we can impose restrictions where appropriate, and monitor how effective an advertising campaign has been.

We engage various analytic programs, to analyse the performance of our websites and apps. Also to provide us with reports that contain aggregated, de-identified benchmark information that assists us to understand when, and how many times, you have used our websites or apps. The anonymous information assists us in the selection of advertisements for groups of individuals.

Google Analytics
We may also use Google Analytics features on our websites and apps. Google Analytics uses both first party and third party cookies to record standard internet traffic information. For example, when, and how many times, you have visited our websites or apps. We, and some third parties, also use the information to optimise advertising selection for groups of individuals based on demographic information.

The cookies allow us and other third parties (including Google) to evaluate your interactions with advertising services on our websites and apps. They then serve targeted advertising on those websites and apps and across the Internet. We have enabled Google Analytics for Display Advertising. This allows Google and other third parties to advertise to you on our websites and apps and across the Internet.

By using Google Ads Settings (located at google.com/settings/ads), you can opt out of these features at any time and customise your Google Display Network Ads.

8. THIRD PARTY WEBSITES

When you click on advertisements or links on any of our websites or through our apps, you may be redirected to a third party website. The linked websites are not under our control. We are not responsible for the conduct of companies linked to our websites or apps. By placing a link to a particular product, we are in no way endorsing that product. We recommend that, before disclosing your personal information to a website to which you were redirected from an advertisement, you read that website’s privacy policy and terms of use/service.

9. ANONYMITY AND USE OF A PSEUDONYM

You may request at any time that you remain anonymous, or choose a pseudonym, when dealing with us. To the extent that it is lawful and practicable for us to enable you to do so, we will grant such a request.

10. HOW TO MAKE A COMPLAINT

If you wish to make a complaint about the way in which we handle your personal information, please contact our general editor using the contact details set out below.

We undertake to acknowledge and investigate any complaint promptly and will respond to written complaints within a reasonable time from the date of receipt.

If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may refer the matter to the Australian Information (Privacy) Commissioner (see oaic.gov.au).

11. CONTACT DETAILS

If you have any questions or comments on our privacy policy, or wish to update the personal information we hold, or make a complaint, please write to:

LivingNow Digital Media

PO Box 336

Clifton Hill VICTORIA 3068

Alternatively, you can send an email to editor@LivingNow.com.au.