DEST Web Site Privacy Statement

All personal information collected by the Department is protected by the Privacy Act 1988. Information on the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 can be found on the Federal Privacy Commissioner's web site.

Security of Information
You should be aware that there are inherent risks associated with the transmission of information via the Internet. For those who do not wish to use the Internet, DEST provides alternative ways of providing information. For example, forms may be printed and lodged by post.

Our internal network and databases are protected from unauthorised access using firewall and other technologies. To improve security of personal information, some electronic forms that collect this information have been secured under the HTTPS protocol (Hypertext Transport Protocol Secure), a standard Web communications protocol that encrypts and decrypts a message for online transmission.

The Data We Collect - E-mails and Electronic Forms
We will record your e-mail address only if you send us a message. Your personal information will only be used for the purposes for which you have provided it. Your e-mail address will not be added to a mailing list, unless you have provided it to us in order to subscribe to one of our subscription services such as DEST's Site Change Subscription Service or the DEST Media Subscription Service.

Where you choose to send us a completed electronic form that includes your personal details, we do collect personally identifiable information, such as name, address and email address. Ê

The information collected by email or electronic forms will be used only for the purpose for which you provided it, and we will not disclose it without your consent, except where authorised or required by law.

Publishing Personal Information
We will only publish personal information on this site if it has been collected for this purpose with your knowledge or if you have consented to the disclosure. When giving such consent you should be aware that information published on this site is accessible to millions of users from all over the world, that it will be indexed by search engines and that it may be copied and used by any web user. This means that, once the information is published on this site, we will have no control over its subsequent use and disclosure.

The Data We Collect - Browsing (Clickstream data)
When you look at this web site, our server makes a record of your visit and logs the following information:

• the user's server address,Ê
• the user's top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc),Ê
• the date and time of visit to the site,Ê
• the pages accessed and documents viewed,Ê
• the previous site visited, andÊ
• the type of browser used.Ê

ÊThe data listed above is collected for the following purposes:

• web site and system administration, including monitoring to prevent security breaches;Ê
• enhancement of the web site to the user's needs; andÊ
• research and development.Ê

No attempt will be made to identify users or their browsing activities, except in the unlikely event that a law enforcement (or other government) agency exercises a legal authority to inspect ISP logs (eg, by warrant, subpoena, or notice to produce).

Cookies
A cookie is a small amount of information stored on your computer by our web site server. It is information that your web browser sends back to our web site server whenever you visit it again. We use cookies to 'remember' your browser between page visits. In this situation, the cookie identifies your browser, not you personally. No personal information is stored within the Department's cookies.