Townsville City Council is committed to protecting your privacy. This notice describes our privacy policy.
By visiting Townsville City Council's website, you are accepting the practices described in this Website Privacy and Security Statement.
View our Information Privacy Policy.
For the purposes of this statement, personal information refers to any information that may enable the identification of an individual visitor to the website.
Collection of personal information
As a visitor to the Townsville City Council website, you will not be required to disclose personal information to visit or browse our site unless you voluntarily choose to do so, for example by making a payment, emailing us or choosing to complete a survey.
When you visit the Townsville City Council website, the following information is recorded for the purpose of gathering statistics, in order to monitor usage of the website and provide the optimum online service to our customers:
- Your IP address
- Your operating system (e.g. Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X)
- Your browser type, including version (e.g. IE8, Firefox 3.6)
- The date and time of your visit
- Pages accessed and files downloaded
- The time spent on individual pages and the site overall
This information gathered by Townsville City Council as a result of your visit to our website will not be used in any way to identify individual users. The information gathered (outlined above) helps us continually improve your experience while visiting our site.
Any personal information will only be stored in the event that you voluntarily provide it to us, such as making an online payment, the completion of an online survey or form, by submitting an email enquiry or maintenance request. This information will be used for the purpose for which it was provided and will not be disclosed to other persons or organisations without your prior approval or if authorised or required by law.
Pages or applications on the Townsville City Council website that require you to voluntarily disclose personal information are governed by the following collection notice.
Collection notice
You are providing personal information which will be used for the purpose of delivering services and carrying out council business.
Your personal information is handled in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2009 and will be accessed by persons who have been authorised to do so. Your information will not be given to any other person or agency unless you have given us permission or the disclosure is required by law.
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Automatic information (“Cookies”)
We receive and store certain types of information whenever you interact with us. For example, like many websites, we use "cookies," and we obtain certain types of information when your Internet browser accesses the various areas of Townsville City Council's website. A cookie is a small tag of information stored by your Internet browser on your computer. Most Internet browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can customise your browser not to accept cookies without first notifying you.
External websites
From time to time, council’s website may direct you to external websites which we believe may enhance your experience or provide additional information. Council may not have control over the content on these sites and advises you to view the relevant privacy and security statements for those sites. Linking to the website does not necessarily mean that council endorses that site or any of its content or affiliates.
Security for Online Payments
As the Internet is essentially a large global network of computers, owned by many different individuals and businesses, there are no definitive regulations, legislation or security mechanisms in place to protect personal information sent via the Internet from misuse by third parties.
Secure online payments
When you choose to make an online payment here at Townsville City Council's website, you will be redirected to our payments provider, CommSecure, for the completion of your transaction. Townsville City Council does not view, store or retain any of your credit card details.
128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used to secure your credit card details whilst being transmitted over the Internet. SSL protects the information you submit to us by scrambling it. This makes it extremely difficult for third parties to intercept the information which in turn, greatly reduces the chance of your credit card details being misused.
Townsville City Council provides alternative methods of payment, including face to face, telephone, mailing and paper forms if you are uncomfortable with transmitting your payment online.
Recognising a secure site
A "secure" area is recognised by the closed padlock or an unbroken key coming into view in the bottom status bar in your web browser. You can also check to make sure that a valid site certificate is being used. A site certificate is used to validate a site's authority to use SSL and authenticates the website's state of security. This enables you to check the site's validity yourself. You can do this by double clicking on either the closed padlock or the unbroken key.
Conditions of Use, Notices and Revisions
If you choose to visit Townsville City Council's website, your visit and any dispute over privacy is subject to this Notice and our legal information, including limitations on damages, arbitration of disputes, and application of the law of the State of Queensland. If you have any concerns about privacy whilst visiting Townsville City Council's website, please send a thorough description to Knowledge Management, Townsville City Council, 103 Walker St, Townsville 4810. Please check our website frequently to view recent changes.
For further information about your privacy, please visit the Right to Information page or view our Information Privacy Policy.
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