Shire Legal deals with information privacy in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the National Privacy Principles set out in the Privacy Act. Shire Legal also complies with the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) which imposes restrictions on sending emails.
The
purpose of this Privacy Policy is to tell you what kind of information
we may gather about you when you visit our website, how we may use that
information, whether we disclose it to anyone, and the choices you have
regarding our use of, and your ability to correct this information. Our
policy allows you to choose what kind and how much information you
provide to us and to control how we use whatever information you give
us. Our goal is to provide you with a satisfying experience while
allowing you to control your privacy and to give you a means to voice
any questions or concerns you may have.
This
policy applies only to www.shirelegal.com.au ("the website") and not to other
companies' or organisations' websites to which the website is
linked.
Collection of Information
Information
is collected from you primarily to make it easier and more rewarding
for you to use our services. Depending on the service you are
accessing, you could be asked to provide information such as your name,
email address or information about what you do. It is entirely your
choice whether you wish to access the service and respond to these
questions or not.
Shire Legal collects two types of information. The first type is
anonymous information - that is, tracking information gathered as visitors navigate their way through the website such as which pages are visited, the length of time spent on each webpage etc. This information is
collected for research purposes, is used in the aggregate (where
possible), and remains anonymous.
If you want to remain completely anonymous, you’re
still free to take advantage of the huge amount of content available on
our sites without registration. The vast majority of our site does NOT
require visitors to complete a registration form or give us contact
information (such as a name and email address) to visit.
The more we know about our visitors the more value
we can potentially offer them. Supplying such information is entirely
voluntary. But if you don’t supply the information we require, we may
be unable to provide you with services we make available to other
visitors to our sites.
The
second type of information that Shire Legal collects is
personal information. Shire Legal will collect personal
information such as your
name, email address, or postal address, only when you provide it to us.
With this information, Shire Legal can provide a variety of
personalised and enhanced services that are not available to anonymous
users. We hope that you will find it beneficial to provide individually
identifiable information about yourself to us because it will make our
services more valuable to you.
Use of anonymous information
Shire Legal automatically gathers anonymous information to
monitor the use of the website like the numbers and frequency
of visitors to the website and its areas. We only use such
data in the aggregate. This collective data helps us determine how much
our audiences use parts of the site, so we can improve the website to assure that it is as appealing as we can make it for as
many users as possible. Shire Legal may publish or provide
this aggregate data to other people.
As the website is international, we will also monitor your
connecting IP address to determine what country you are in and to
deliver relevant site content for your country.
Use of personal information
Shire Legal will only use the personal information you have
chosen to provide us for the purpose for which you provided it. Shire Legal will not use it for any other purpose without your
consent.
Cookies
We also invoke a standard feature of browser
software, called a "cookie," to assign each visitor a unique, random
number, which is a sort of user ID. This cookie resides on your
computer. The cookie helps give us an idea of which parts of our site
users are visiting and doesn’t actually identify the visitor, just the
computer that a visitor uses to access our site.
Unless you voluntarily identify yourself (through
registration, for example), we won’t know who you are, even if we
assign a cookie to your computer. The only personal information a
cookie can contain is information you supply. Our cookies can’t read
unrelated data from your computer.
Links to other sites
This site contains links to other sites. The establishment of
a link does not mean that Shire Legal has approved of a site, is
endorsing a site, has reviewed its content, or is in any manner
recommending a visit. Shire Legal is not responsible for the privacy
practices or the content of linked Web sites.
Privacy Statement
Shire Legal and its agents
hereby agree to protect your personal information according to the
National Privacy Principles. We also agree to abide by the following
additional Privacy Statement.
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We agree to retain the personal information that you
or your advisors provide to us. At the conclusion of your matter we
will continue to retain this information unless otherwise agreed.
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The information we agree to retain includes your
contact and financial details as well as other information and
documentation relation to your matter.
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We are authorised to retain the information and documentation provided to us in hard copy and by electronic means.
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We maintain the electronic information on our computer servers which are located on site.
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The servers are protected by firewalls and anti
virus technologies. The servers are backed up regularly. These backups
are held off site at a secure location.
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Hard copies of all file records are maintained both at our office (for current files) and at a secure off-site file management facility which is secured against fire and theft.
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Documents kept at our office’s safe custody facility are secured against fire and theft.
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Our employees or agents may access your personal information in order to maintain your file.
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To comply with Law Society requirements, we appoint
accountants and auditors on a regular basis. These Auditors may have
access to your personal information.
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You may access your personal information we hold about you relating to your file.
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We will only release your documents upon receipt of an acceptable signed Release Form.
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You may request that we amend your personal
information in person or in writing. All documentation is archived 16
months from the date that we receive your last correspondence or
instructions. The archived material may be maintained on or off-site at
a secure location.
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We retain your personal information for a minimum of
7 years. After 7 years the documents are destroyed without the need to
obtain your permission.
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Material held in safe custody such as on computer hard disks is retained indefinitely.
Any enquiries should be emailed to info@shirelegal.com.au