eChoice will not obtain personally-identifying information about you when you visit our site, unless you choose to provide such information.
In this document, we explain all the steps we take to keep your information private.
What's eChoice's privacy policy in four sentences?
- We've built our sites so that you identify yourself only when you're ready to get matched to a loan.
- We keep your personal information locked up, behind firewalls, encryption and other secure technologies.
- We don't share your names with anyone else - you're an eChoice user, not a name in a database we can sell.
- We treat your information the way we'd want our own personal information to be treated.
What information does eChoice collect?
eChoice helps you find the loan that's right for you. While we're doing this, we avoid collecting information that could identify you, until it is needed to complete the matching process. Here's what we collect:
- To complete the eChoice process and get matched to a loan, you will need to provide personal information which we call applicant details. You'll need to give us your name, address, phone number, email address and financial details. Once we have this information, we immediately complete the loan matching process.
- We also invite you to tick a box on our Web site to request information on services which eChoice offers or may offer in the future. We call this offer confirmation.
- We also offer you the opportunity to subscribe to our email bulletins. If you decide to subscribe, we collect your name and email address, which we call subscriber details. Before we start sending you bulletins, we will confirm via email that you have subscribed to the bulletins; this ensures that you are not accidentally or mischievously subscribed by other people.
- We also offer some users a service where users can send messages to friends to let them know about the eChoice site. As part of this service, we store email addresses submitted by users. We call these friend email addresses. As part of this process, we may record the progress of messages sent; however, we do not record the content of these messages.
- Lastly, we record data on the use of our site from particular Internet addresses and users, which we call usage details.
How do we keep your information safe?
eChoice keeps your personal information safe both while it is being sent to us, and after it arrives.
When you fill in your applicant details, make an offer confirmation or provide friends' email addresses on our site, we encrypt them using the industry-standard technique called Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. Encryption means that the information that you send is scrambled in such a way that only eChoice's server can read it. Thus, even if your data gets intercepted as it travels across the Internet, it will appear as indecipherable gibberish. Your name and address might appear like this:
uIFRydXN0IE5ldHcmsxFzAVBg NVBAsTDlZlcmlTaWduLCBJbmM uMTMwM4QYDVQQLEypWZXJpU2p
In the secure areas of our site, you'll see a closed lock (or an unbroken key on Netscape browsers) in the bottom of your browser window.
For the technologically-minded, we use 128-bit encryption, the strongest available.
Once your information reaches us, it is physically stored on a computer at a purpose-designed secure facility. Electronic access to this information is controlled by a security regime that includes encrypted passwords, firewalls and expert monitoring. eChoice staff have access to this information only on a need-to-know basis.
We minimise the use of printed material which contains your applicant details and subscriber details. We store such information securely and destroy it thoroughly when it is no longer needed.
Most importantly of all, we make sure that eChoice staff and contractors understand their responsibility to protect all your personal data from misuse, loss, corruption or disclosure. We hire and contract with people who respect our users' rights. Then we train them on the steps they must take to protect users' personal information. After that, we get them to tell us when they see anything that might jeopardise your personal information.
Can you see, change or remove your data?
Yes.
You may change your applicant details via the Web while you are on the site, or in conversation with our home loan consultants afterwards. (We call everyone who is matched to an eChoice loan.) You may also update it at any time before your loan settles, by calling eChoice's offices or contacting one of our home loan managers. We are as keen as you are to ensure that our information about you is accurate.
We can also provide you with a copy of your applicant details at any time, on request, as soon as we confirm your identity.
We can also "de-identify" your applicant details on request if you have not yet requested us to begin the loan approval process with a nominated lender. Once your details are "de-identified", we will be unable to tell that an application was made by you. Please note that:
- We may need to confirm your identity before de-identifying you.
- We need to retain identity information for eChoice users who have requested us to begin the loan approval process with a nominated lender.
Whenever we make an offer to users, we provide a way for you to tell us that you don't want further offers. We will make sure that from then on, you don't get any.
Each email bulletin sent contains instructions on how to simply remove your subscriber details from our email database. If this automatic process fails, we will remove your subscriber details manually on request.
You can contact us at any time to talk to us about your data. Click here for contact information.
Does eChoice use "cookies?"
Yes.
Cookies are small text files stored on your computer. They are used by most major Web sites. They cannot read other material on your computer or damage your system. However, there are legitimate concerns that cookies can be misused to gather information surreptitiously. eChoice uses cookies openly and honestly, and maximises your privacy in the process.
eChoice uses cookies in two ways:
- To allow the eChoice matching process to be completed. The cookies used here are "transient cookies", sometimes called "session cookies". These cookies are not stored on your computer's hard disk, cannot be linked to applicant details or subscriber details, and are discarded when you finish the matching process, or if you have left the matching process alone for more than 30 minutes. We cannot use any information from these cookies to find out anything about you. Without them, we cannot complete the matching process.
- To record usage details - primarily, how many times a visitor has been to our site before. The cookies used here are "persistent cookies" that remain on your hard disk for a year after your visit to eChoice. They contain no information that could be read by any other user of your computer. These persistent cookies ensure that no user receives an exit survey twice, and help us make the site easier to use for both new users and those who are familiar with eChoice. However, if you disable persistent cookies in your browser, you can still use eChoice to apply for a loan.
We do not allow any other party to set cookies on the eChoice site. So no other party can link your eChoice visits to your activity elsewhere on the Web.
How does eChoice use information gathered on its sites?
The applicant details gathered on eChoice's sites are used to match your needs with loan products in our network database, to inform our telephone consultants and home loan managers, to allow financial institutions to verify eligibility for a loan, to send offers to those users who have asked us to do so, and to make our process easier and better to use.
We have ensured that lenders in our network have their own strong privacy policies in place. We will release your applicant details to an eChoice home loan manager and to a lender or lenders in our network only if you give us explicit verbal permission to do so. We will ring you to obtain this permission. With this necessary exception, we will not release applicant details to any third parties.
If you confirm that you wish to receive information on offers and services (by ticking a box on our site), we may send you information about eChoice offers and services not specifically related to your home loan. We will not send such information to any user who has not explicitly asked for it, and we will cease sending it immediately upon request. Whenever we make an offer to users, we provide a way for you to tell us that you don't want further offers. We will not release confirmation details to any third parties.
The subscriber details gathered on eChoice's sites are used to correctly address our email bulletins. Again, we will release applicant details if the law or the interests of law enforcement require it. With this one necessary exception, we will not release applicant details to any third parties.
The usage details gathered on eChoice's sites are used make our site and process easier to use. For instance, if we see many users coming to our site many times before applying for a loan, we might work to make it easier for users to apply right away. We will not release applicant details to any third parties.
eChoice may also share aggregated data with financial institutions in the eChoice network, or use it internally to improve the quality of the service we offer. For instance, we might tell a lender that half of our users rated their service as "excellent". Aggregate data excludes information that can be identified by individual.
As required by law, we will also release information if the law or the interests of law enforcement require it.
Privacy and the law
Information gathered in eChoice home loan applications is handled in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Commonwealth), including the credit provision in Part IIIA and the National Privacy Principles issued by the Australian Privacy Commissioner in September 2001.
Who should you contact about privacy issues?
If after reading this document you still have queries or concerns about the privacy of the information we hold, or if you want it changed, de-identified, deleted or provided to you, just contact us by email, phone, fax or letter. Our contact details can be found here.
