Privacy : Our privacy assurance to you

At Australian Business Academy your privacy is important to us. We comply with the National Privacy Principles (new privacy laws which apply from 21 December 2001) as well as our existing obligations of confidentiality. ABA welcomes the Privacy Amendments (Private Sector) Act 2000 and the subsequent amendments to this ACT along with the 11 Privacy Principles that the Act embraces. (To review these Principles go to: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/pa1988108/s14.html . These provisions also extend to information gathered by the Academy for the purposes of VET FEE-HELP assistance and repayment of HELP loans.

This policy and other privacy statements

This privacy policy explains how we collect personal information and how we maintain, use and disclose that information. It also provides some detail about your privacy rights along with our general rights and obligations and our policy in relation to the personal information we keep on record.

When you apply to enrol with Australian Business Academy, the Application for Enrolment - Domestic Students form includes notices about privacy and requests for consent. Those privacy notices (called privacy statements) specify in more detail how any information about you may be used and disclosed in relation to the particular product or service.

When you apply for enrolment as a student at Australian Business Academy, you consent to us collecting, maintaining, using and disclosing personal information about you and provided by you or by another person in accordance with the privacy statement in this policy.

This privacy policy does not apply to parties that may be linked to or from the Australian Business Academy website. Those website owners are responsible for the privacy of the information they collect and should be contacted directly for details of their privacy policies.

What information does Australian Business Academy hold?

The types of information we keep on record will depend on the type of product or service requested by you.

Generally, we keep a record of one or more of the following types of information about you:

• Information that identifies you, such as your name and address and other information provided by you and people nominated by you;
• Information about course applied for, enrolment dates and course fee payment details including credit cards details if applicable.
• Information that identifies your Responsible Fee Payer (RFP), if this is not you, such as the RFP's name, address and other information provided by that party.

All information sought is required for our business purposes, which are detailed generally in this privacy policy and more specifically in our application forms or on the web pages which allow you to contact us.

We do not actively seek to collect sensitive information (for example health information or information about your racial or ethnic origin, criminal record, political views, religion, or sexual preferences), unless it is necessary for our business purposes. If we do have to collect sensitive information, (e.g. if you volunteered information about your health status that may affect your ability to complete a course) we will do so in accordance with the National Privacy Principles.

During the course of our relationship with you, we may gather information about you relating to all products and services that we or other members of the Australian Business Academy Group or our preferred suppliers provide to you. This information is used to help us form views about how we can improve our relationship with you.

Interested individuals may supply ABA with personally identifiable information (such as name, address, email address or telephone numbers) for various purposes either on this site, at events such as Career Markets, or to our physical offices. These purposes include registering to receive e-mail information, requesting further information about our courses, or simply asking a question about ABA. ABA does not collect personal information from you unless you provide it to us. This means that you can visit our site without telling us who you are or revealing any personally identifiable information about yourself.                                                               

At any time you can be removed from our database and receive no more information or contact from us. See "Choice/opt out" below.

Choice/Opt Out

If you have registered to receive communications from us and later change your mind, you may contact us to have your name removed from our mailing lists. Specific details of unsubscribe actions should be contained in each communication piece; otherwise you can send an e-mail to info@aba.edu.au

How Australian Business Academy collects information from its website

We collect and hold information about you when you:

• complete an Application for Enrolment - Domestic Student or other type of form we may require to provide you with our services;
• provide us with your email address; or
• access and use our services through our website.

We also collect some statistical information about visitors, from our website (for example, the number of visitors, pages viewed, types of transactions conducted, time online and documents downloaded). Some of this statistical information is collected by using cookies, but none of the statistical information we collect allows us to identify a visitor. We use this information to evaluate our website performance and continually improve our services.

Other than statistical information, we do not collect any information about you through our website unless you provide the information to us.

How Australian Business Academy generally collects your information

Generally, we only collect personal information about you from you, unless it is not reasonable or practical for us to do so or you consent to us collecting this information from other sources.       

How may Australian Business Academy use your personal information?

We use your personal information to:

• respond to your request or help us process your application for our products or services;
• Effectively manage and administer all products and services we provide to you. (for example we may use your email address to communicate with you about the services we provide to you);
• Ensure our internal business operations are running smoothly which may include fulfilling legal requirements and conducting confidential systems maintenance and testing.

When we request your information we may give more specific details about the way we use your information.

What rights does Australian Business Academy have to disclose personal information?

We must get your consent before we disclose your personal information. You must give us your consent expressly.

Depending on the product or service that we provide to you, if it is necessary we may also disclose your personal information to:

• Our external service providers (which may be located overseas) for the purposes of our business or providing a service to you, for example organisations that provide concessional student benefits for travel on public transport. Information is only disclosed on a confidential basis.                 
• Government agencies in connection with your VET FEE-HELP loan.

We will not disclose your health information or information about your medical history unless you tell us to.

We may at other times give you more details about our disclosure practices in relation to specific products or services - for example on the forms we use to collect personal information about you.

How may the Australian Business Academy Group use your personal information?

Your personal information may also be used by Australian Business Academy or other members of the Australian Business Academy Group to help assess your total relationship and product holding within the Australian Business Academy Group, analyse products and services, evaluate the needs of our customers and develop new products.

We may also provide access to your personal information to members of the Australian Business Academy Group to inform you of products and services offered by any member of the Australian Business Academy Group or preferred organisations which we think may be of interest or value to you. If you tell us or have previously told us that you do not wish to receive such information, then it will not be sent to you. Your health information or information about your medical history will not be disclosed to other members of the Australian Business Academy Group for this purpose.

How Australian Business Academy protects the security of your information

We take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

We provide the maximum level of security when you use our online products and services

We have physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect your information which is held by us. For example, your personal information is stored in secured office premises, in electronic databases requiring logins and passwords for access. Access to information stored electronically is restricted to staff whose job purpose requires access. We require all staff to maintain the confidentiality of customer information.

Any visitor, for any purpose, to any part of our premises in which customer personal information is kept is required to be accompanied by a member of staff while in the premises.

We use secure methods to destroy or de-identify any personal information as soon as the law permits, provided the information is no longer needed by us for any purpose. Ordinarily, for information about a particular account, we destroy the information seven years from the date you cease your relationship with us.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

We may amend this policy from time to time. Not all changes to our privacy policy will require your consent, for example where office security procedures are changed. We will notify you of any change to our information handling policy that requires your consent before being implemented.

What are your rights?

You need not give us any of the personal information about you or any other person which may be requested in our communications with you. However, without that information, we may not be able to process an application, fulfill your request or provide you with an appropriate level of service.

Information about our Products and Services

If you do not want the benefit of receiving information, special offers or exclusive opportunities about products and services (which may be supplied by us or any member of the Australian Business Academy Group or preferred suppliers) which we think may be of interest or value to you, then please tell us. You can do this at any time by writing to us or telephoning us at the contact details listed on our contact us page or contacting us by email.

Access to your information  

You can request access at any time to personal information we hold about you. We will process your request within a reasonable time, usually 14 days for a straightforward request. More time may be needed, depending on the nature of the request.

There is no fee for requesting access to your information; however we may charge you the reasonable cost of processing your request.

Sometimes we are not required to provide you with access - for example, if the law says we can deny access. If we refuse you access to your personal information, we will tell you the reason why. If we are not required to provide you with access to the information requested, we will consider, if reasonable, whether the use of a mutually agreed intermediary would allow sufficient access to meet your needs and ours.

Correction of information

We try to ensure that all information we hold about you that we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up to date. You must promptly notify us if there are any changes to your personal information.

You may ask us at any time to correct personal information held by us about you, that you believe is incorrect or out of date. We will deal with your request within a reasonable time.

If we disagree as to the accuracy of the information, you may request that we attach a statement to that information noting that you consider it is not accurate, complete or up to date.

If there is anything you would like to discuss, please contact us

In this policy, reference to "we/us" means each member of the Australian Business Academy Group. Members of the Australian Business Academy Group include companies that are related to or owned by Australian Business Academy Pty Limited. Members of the Australian Business Academy Group may change from time to time. If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about our privacy policy or practices or would like more information about particular members' privacy policies or practices, please contact us on 1800 063 049 , 9am - 5pm (AEST), 5 days a week.

We will try to answer any questions you may have, correct any error on our part or resolve any complaint that you may have about our information handling practices. If we do not resolve a complaint to your satisfaction, you also have the right to complain to the Privacy Commissioner. We will provide you with their contact details if required.

For more information

If you have any other questions, concerns or comments, please e-mail the ABA Privacy Officer: info@aba.edu.au