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Privacy Policy

Date: October 2011

Melbourne IT Ltd (ABN 21 073 716 793)("Melbourne IT") respects your privacy and is committed to the protection of it.

This privacy policy explains why and when we collect your personal information, and what use we make of that information. The policy also explains where and why your information may be disclosed to third parties, and the security measures used by Melbourne IT to help protect your personal information.

• Why and when Melbourne IT collects your information
• How Melbourne IT uses your information
• Disclosure of your information to third parties
• Accuracy / Access
• Security
• Changes

Why and when Melbourne IT collects your information
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• Personal information you give us

Melbourne IT collects the information you give us either online or by email, post, facsimile, face to face, over the phone or through our reseller channel, including wholesalers and partners. In most cases, the personal information Melbourne IT will collect from you is the personal information we are required to obtain and pass on to the relevant registry when you apply to register a domain name with or transfer a domain name to Melbourne IT. This information includes your full name, mailing address, phone number, email address and where applicable, your facsimile number. Melbourne IT also collects your payment details from you when you apply to register a domain name, such as your credit card number or bank account details.

If you purchase a digital certificate through us, we are required by the provider of those certificates to collect personal information from you to pass back to that provider. We will also collect your payment details from you such as your credit card number or bank account details.

If you consent to us referring you to a third party service provider, we will provide your contact details to that third party provider to enable them to contact you directly regarding their services.

• Website information (including cookies)

Melbourne IT makes limited use of cookies on this website. A cookie is a small message given to your web browser by our web server. The browser stores the message, and sends the message back to the server each time you request a page from the server.

Melbourne IT only uses cookies to tell us when you have set up an account with us previously (i.e. when you are a "registered user" of our website), and sometimes to let us know how you found our website. Where the cookies tell us that you are a registered user, cookies also allow us to automatically link you to your personalised accounts so that you can easily access any products or services only made available to our registered users, without your having to provide us with your username and password on every web page. The cookies allow us only to identify you in our database if you are a registered user, and to connect you to the relevant products and services on our website, but not to track the pages you visited on our website.

You always have the option to disable cookies by turning them off in your browser. However, you should be aware that many of the services available on the Melbourne IT website will not work if you have chosen to do this.

In addition to cookies, Melbourne IT servers register the type of web browser you are using and your IP address when you access our website.

How Melbourne IT uses your information
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• Use of your information as required by ICANN or other domain administrators, or the registries

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the organisation which governs the functions performed by both its accredited registrars (of which Melbourne IT is one), and the registries in regulating the domain name registration process. ICANN requires that each of its registrars must make available the personal information we collect from you when you apply to register any generic top level domain names (ie., com, net, org, biz, info and name) to the public on a publicly accessible database known as the WHOIS database. In addition, it applies to some of the country code top level domains. For example, in Australia the personal information you supply to us in applying for a domain name registration for a com.au domain name, must be made public on the publicly accessible database run by the com.au registry.

The public policy behind this requirement is that the personal details of domain name licence holders should be freely available to all other users of the Internet. This public policy is adopted by the domain name industry as a whole. The requirement means, however, that Melbourne IT will not be able to control how members of the public may use the information made available on these publicly accessible databases.

In addition, ICANN has another mandatory requirement that all its accredited registrars make the WHOIS database of personal information for com, net and org available for bulk downloads by third parties who have entered into a bulk access agreement with Melbourne IT.

• Use of your information to fulfil our role as registrar

We will be contacting you and may use the personal details you provide to us, at the time you apply for a domain name registration with Melbourne IT or during the licence period of your domain name registration with Melbourne IT, to obtain relevant information from you with respect to your domain name application, or, to advise you of all relevant information relating to your domain name licence. This includes any account administration information including renewal information and billing information, as well as notices of any important system changes which will impact on your online interactions with us. Each of these functions is necessary if Melbourne IT is to effectively fulfil its role as the registrar of your domain names.

• Other uses
  • Melbourne IT may use your information to measure your experience of our services and products, and to identify and inform you of new product developments and associated services that we believe will interest you. If you do not wish to receive email notices or other communications from Melbourne IT regarding additional products and services, please contact us on 1300 654 677 and request to opt-out.
  • We may use your information in statistical form to analyze your purchasing preferences. This information is not used to track your individual preferences but rather to give us a general picture of the products and services our customers prefer. We might also gather information in statistical form such as the number of visitors who visit the Melbourne IT website on a daily basis. Again this is not used to track any individual customer's browsing habits.
  • We may use your email communications with Melbourne IT to analyze customer service issues as a way of identifying potential improvements for Melbourne IT products and services. In addition, we may occasionally monitor telephone conversations with you in order to facilitate staff training and to maintain our high levels of customer service. We will always inform you prior to any telephone conversation which is monitored in this way to obtain your prior approval.
  • We may use your IP address to contact your Internet Service Provider to let you know of any problems with payments you have made to us where we believe this is reasonably necessary to protect against fraud and credit card misuse.
  • Where you purchase a digital certificate through us, we are required by the provider of those certificates to collect personal information from you to pass back to that provider (other than your payment details, which we hold internally). If you would like to see how your digital certificates provider will treat your personal information, you can find their privacy policy here: http://www.esign.com.au/repository/privacy/
  • We may use your information in order to contact you for marketing purposes including but not limited to new products, services, promotions, give-aways, renewal reminders, via email, facsimile, telephone, post and SMS. If you do not wish to receive any marketing communications from Melbourne IT, you may opt-out and stop the delivery of future promotional material from Melbourne IT by following the special instructions in the email you receive. These instructions will tell you how to remove your name from our promotional list.

Disclosure of your information to third parties
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• International subsidiary companies

Melbourne IT is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Melbourne IT also has international subsidiary company offices operating in:

• • Wellington, New Zealand;
  • California, New York & Arizona, USA;
  • Madrid, Spain;
  • Stockholm & Malmö, Sweden;
  • London, United Kingdom;
  • Paris & Valbonne, France;
  • Cape Town, South Africa;
  • Copenhagen, Denmark;
  • The Hague, Netherlands;
  • Wiesbaden, Germany

Any information which you supply to Melbourne IT or any of its international subsidiary companies will be shared within the internal company group to facilitate our provision of products and services to you. Each of our international subsidiary companies is committed to protecting your personal information.

• Third party service providers

On occasion, we may supply your personal information to third parties to perform services on our behalf, such as the following:

• • the distribution of marketing information to you (except where you have chosen to opt out of receiving this information from us);
  • the supply of datacentre storage and maintenance services for our IT systems and infrastructure (by Australian or overseas providers);
  • the supply of credit related services such as credit worthiness, credit provision and credit rating, or bank related services; or
  • the supply of billing and payment services.

Our relationships with such third party service providers are governed by our contracts with them. Those service providers are required to hold your personal information strictly confidential.

Accuracy / Access
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You may access and update the personal information we provide to the registries in respect of your domain name licence at any time. The procedure to do this is explained on the Help Centre on our website at http://www.melbourneit.com.au/help

If you believe that Melbourne IT may hold other personal information about you which is inaccurate, or you wish to change or update any of the personal information you have provided, please contact us by using this web form and we will take reasonable steps to ensure that it is corrected.

Security
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The transfer of information across any media may involve a certain degree of risk, and the Internet is no different. However, helping you to keep your information secure is very important to Melbourne IT.

In order to protect the security of personal information transmitted to Melbourne IT online, our Web servers support the use of the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Protocol where appropriate. Using this protocol, information transferred between our systems is encrypted.

In addition, in respect of any payment details you send to us, we reveal only the first six and last three digits of your credit card number on the tax invoice receipt which we send to you for billing purposes. This is to help keep your credit card details secure.

You can also use simple precautions to help protect your security, such as protecting against the unauthorised use of your username or password or other authentication id.

Changes
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Melbourne IT may make changes to its privacy policy from time to time. You should check our privacy policy from time to time to see if we have made any changes to it.