Our Policy is to Respect and Protect the Privacy of our Customers

This policy statement tells you how the Water Corporation collects, uses and discloses Personal Information. It applies equally to conventional and electronic information.

For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, Personal Information means recorded information or an opinion about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained, from the information or opinion.

The principles that the Water Corporation applies when managing your Personal Information are outlined below:

Collection:

We will collect Personal Information only if this is necessary for one of our functions or activities and will do so in a lawful, fair and not unreasonably intrusive way.

From time to time, we will ask you to provide Personal Information to us by a range of methods. We may ask you to complete a standard form when applying for a particular Water Corporation Service, or to provide information to us on the phone, by telephone or by fax. In addition, we welcome and encourage your feedback on services which we provide and will invite you to provide Personal Information when you send us such comments or feedback.

When we collect Personal Information about you, we may use this information to:

• provide you with the service you have requested, or meet the purpose for which the information was submitted;
• if necessary, and for legitimate reasons, identify with whom we are communicating; or
• create aggregate data about our customers

Disclosure:

We will disclose Personal Information that you submit to us to a third party to the extent necessary to provide the service you have requested or to meet the purpose for which it was submitted.

We will also disclose Personal Information:

• if you have agreed to such disclosure at the time of collection;
• in order to participate in activities with business partners (whose identities will be explained to you when the relevant Personal Information is collected);
• to enable market research for the purpose of meeting customer needs;
• if the disclosure is required by law or necessary to co-operate with a judicial process or a law enforcement agency;
• if the disclosure is necessary to protect and defend the rights or property of the Water Corporation or to lessen or prevent unlawful activity or serious threats to individuals, public health or safety.

The Water Corporation will only disclose information to third parties to the extent necessary to carry out the purposes outlined above. Wherever possible, the Corporation will ensure that third parties to whom information is provided have in place privacy practices that protect the confidentiality of personal information.

If you tell us that you do not wish to have your Personal Information used or disclosed for a particular purpose, we will respect your wishes, unless this is not legally or practically possible.

The Water Corporation is involved in information sharing with a number of government agencies and with all local government authorities. These include Ministry of Housing, Valuer General’s Office, Department of Land Administration. The Water Corporation does not supply individual customer information on request to other groups, although aggregate data (such as water usage patterns) is provided.

Sensitive Information:

We will not collect, use or disclose sensitive information (for example information about the health of an individual, their racial or ethnic origins or their political or religious beliefs) except with your specific consent.

Non-Personal Information:

We may collect, use and disclose non-personal information about you. For example, we disclose aggregate average data about visitors to our Web Site to business partners, or to share aggregate average water usage information to other stakeholders in Western Australia.

Accuracy and Security:

• We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the Personal Information we collect is accurate, complete and up-to-date.
• We will take reasonable steps to protect Personal Information from misuse, loss, and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.
• We will destroy or permanently de-identify Personal Information, which we no longer use.

Inquiries, Access and Correction

If at any time you wish to know more about our privacy practices, or you believe that the Water Corporation has not adhered to the principles outlined above, or you wish to review or make corrections to your Personal Information held by us, please contact our Privacy Officer by e-mail at privacy@watercorporation.com.au, by phone on 9420 2865 or by Fax on 9420 3198. We will make all commercially reasonable efforts to deal promptly with your inquiry and, in any case, will acknowledge your inquiry within 14 days.

Privacy regarding Water Corporation Web Site visit data

We do not collect Personal Information about you when you visit the Water Corporation Web site (http://www.watercorporation.com.au). You are welcome to use most of the features of the Web Site without ever telling us who you are or revealing other Personal Information, unless you choose to provide such information to us, and you will not be penalised if you do not. We may require your Personal Information before you can use certain parts of the Web Site. If you do provide us with Personal Information, at any time on the Web Site, we will collect that Personal Information under the principles outlined above.

We will only record your e-mail address if you send us a message. It will only be used for the purpose for which you have provided it and will not be added to a mailing list without your consent. The Corporation will preserve the content of any e-mail you send us if we believe that we have a legal requirement to do so.

We will make a record of your visit and log the following information for statistical purposes only.

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

No attempt will be made to identify users or their browsing activities except, in the unlikely event of an investigation, where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the service provider's logs.

No data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure and we cannot warrant the security, integrity or privacy of Personal Information submitted to our Web Site.

This Privacy Policy will not apply to web sites which are linked to this Web Site and over which the Water Corporation has no control. You should check the privacy policy of any other web site you enter.