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Page Last Updated:
Tuesday, 28 March 2006 |
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Home>Privacy Statement
This is the Southern Grampians Shire Council website. We are committed to protecting user privacy. We understand that visitors and users of this website are concerned about their privacy, and the confidentiality and security of any information that is provided.
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 Freedom of Information
Information collected on the Southern Grampians Shire Council website
Tenders or Employment Downloads and Personal Data Collection
Circumstances where the Council will attempt to identify your personal details
When would your e-mail address be recorded?
Security
Clickstream Data
Use of Web Beacons
Use of Cookies
How do you avoid Cookies?
| Freedom of Information | | What is Freedom of Information?
Since 1982 Victoria has had an Acts of Parliament called the Freedom of Information Act. It gives people a right to obtain information held by Ministers, state government departments, local councils, most semi-government agencies and statutory authorities, public hospitals and community health centres, universities, TAFE colleges and schools.
The Freedom of Information Act gives people the right to request documents relating to their personal affairs. People can also request information about any of the activities of a government agency. The Act also gives an individual the right to request that incorrect or misleading information held by an agency about that individual be amended or removed.  Top
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| Information collected on the Southern Grampians Shire Council website | | Unless you specifically tell us, the Southern Grampians Shire Council website will never know who you are.
When you visit the Southern Grampians Shire Council website our Internet Service Provider's standard web logs record anonymous information for statistical purposes only, including:
- The type of browser you are using
- Your traffic patterns through our site such as:
- The date and time of your visit to the site
- The pages you accessed and documents downloaded
- The previous page you visited prior to accessing our site
- The Internet address of the server accessing our site Top
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| Tenders or Employment Downloads and Personal Data Collection | | When you select a Tender download link on the council website, you will be redirected to a form which requires you to fill in your contact details prior to downloading the document file. Only upon completion of the form will you be allowed to download the associated Tender files.
Why are your details required for Tenders?
Tender Addendums need to be sent to people that have downloaded the original Tender and Employment document files. This is to ensure that they have the correct and most current information upon which to base their decisions.
When Tender Addendums are published, an e-mail will automatically be sent to all people that have downloaded the original tender advising them of the Addendum. The Addendum document will be attached to the e-mail. If the e-mail is not received by the intended recipient, it will be returned to the e-mail address contained in Email Notification for the tender/employment notice. A report of these e-mails can be produced and is visible only to Southern Grampians Shire Council site administrators.Top
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| Circumstances where the Council will attempt to identify your personal details |
| In the event of an investigation when a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the Internet Service Provider's or Southern Grampians Shire Councils website logs. | | If you choose to download information from the Tenders section of the Southern Grampians Shire Council website | | No attempt is or will be made to identify your personal details except in the circumstances outlined above.
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| When would your e-mail address be recorded? | | Our Office will only record your e-mail address if you send us a message. Your e-mail address will only be used or disclosed for the purpose for which you have provided it and it will not be added to a mailing list or used or disclosed for any other purpose without your consent.
E-mail correspondence sent to the Southern Grampians Shire Council will be archived in accordance with Council processes and will be retained as required by Council policies and other relevant regulations. Once these processes, policies and regulations are satisfied, archived e-mail correspondence will be destroyed.
We will not add any details to a mailing list without your consent, and we will not disclose your details to third parties without your consent, unless required by law. We will disclose your e-mail details to the relevant authorities if necessary to protect the safety of the public or to protect the rights and property of the Southern Grampians Shire Council.
Our Internet Service Provider may monitor e-mail traffic for system trouble-shooting and maintenance purposes only.Top
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| Security | | | This site does not provide facilities for securely transmitting information across the Internet. We recognise that there can be risks with transmitting information across the Internet. Top
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| External Links | | This site contains links to non-Southern Grampians Shire Council websites. The Southern Grampians Shire Council is not responsible for the privacy or security practices or the content of such websites.
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| Clickstream Data | | Clickstream data is collected and used on the Southern Grampians Shire Council Website.
What is Clickstream Data?
Clickstream data is a virtual trail that a user leaves behind while surfing the Internet.
A clickstream is a record of a user's activity on the Internet, including every Web site and every page of every Web site that the user visits, how long the user was on a page or site, in what order the pages were visited, and even the e-mail addresses of mail that the user sends and receives. Both ISPs and individual Web sites are capable of tracking a user's clickstream.
What information is collected on this site?
The following information is collected for every visitor click :
- Remote_Host: The IP address of the visitor
- Path_Info: The web page they are visiting
- HTTP_User_Agent: The operating system of the of the visitor
- Date: Date and time visited
- Page: The Page_id visited
- HTTP_Referer: When did they enter, and from where did they come?
- No name, address or specific user details are stored
What does Southern Grampians Shire Council use the collected information used for?
This information is used for internal reporting purposes only.Top
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| Use of Web Beacons | | This website does not use Web Beacons which are also also known as a Web bug, pixel tag or a clear GIF.
What does a Web Beacon do?
A Web beacon is an often-transparent graphic image that is placed on a Web site (or in an e-mail) and when used in combination with cookies, can monitor the behaviour of the user visiting the Web site (or sending the e-mail).
The type of information collected might include the IP address of the computer that retrieved the image, the time the Web beacon was viewed and for how long, the type of browser that retrieved the image and previously set cookie values.
Who uses Web Beacons?
Web beacons are typically used by a third-party to monitor the activity of a site.
How do I detect and prevent Web Beacons?
A Web beacon can be detected by viewing the source code of a Web page and looking for any IMG tags that load from a different server than the rest of the site.
Turning off the browser's cookies will prevent Web beacons from tracking the user's activity. The Web beacon will still account for an anonymous visit, but the user's unique information will not be recorded.Top
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| Use of Cookies | | This web site does not use cookies, however some 3rd party sites linked from the Southern Grampians Shire Council website do use persistent cookies.
What is a Cookie?
A cookie is a piece of information that an Internet website sends to your browser when you access information at that site. Upon receipt of the information your browser saves the information on your hard-disk (unless your browser doesn't support cookies). Each time you use your computer to access that same website, the information that was previously received is sent back to the website by your browser. Most commonly used browsers support the use of cookies.
Why are Cookies used?
When you access the Internet through a public ISP, each request you make to a website cannot be linked to a previous request, as each request does not contain a permanent unique identifier. Cookies allow website operators to assign a unique permanent identifier to a computer which can be used to associate the requests made to the website from that computer.
Cookies indicate to a website that you have been there before and can be used to record what parts of a website you visit. While cookies in themselves may not identify you, in the way a name or address does, a cookie could potentially be linked with other identifying information. For example, if you provide extra information about yourself to the website by buying something on-line or subscribing to a free service, then the cookies can be used to build up a profile of your buying habits and what you are interested in. They can then be used to tailor banner advertising to your interests.
Types of Cookies
Cookies can be either "persistent" or "session" based. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer, contain an expiration date, and may be used to track your browsing behaviour upon return to the issuing web site. Session cookies are short-lived, are used only during a browsing session, and expire when you quit your browser. Top
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| How do you avoid Cookies? | | Many web surfers object to having files, like cookies, placed onto their hard drive without their permission. There are various things you can do to avoid cookies if you do not trust them, these include:
Setting the browser cookie file to be Read Only. Whether you can do this or not may depend on what sort of Operating System (OS) or browser you are using. But if you can do this then the cookies will only last for as long as your browser is running.
Set up your computer to delete the cookies file whenever you start your browser.
Many browsers allow you to set them up so that you are notified when a cookie is to be written to your computer. However there may be instances where there are so many cookies that it becomes annoying to reject them all.
Install a software product which will reject or manage cookies for you, these include Cookie Crusher, Cookie Pal and Cookie Cruncher. You can perform an internet search to find them.Top
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