Privacy Policy expert

Privacy Policy

This is the privacy policy for Your Property Buddies Pty Ltd ABN 45 675 503 545 (trading as "Your Property Buddies") for the Your Property Buddies Website.

Your Property Buddies takes your privacy seriously and has provided this privacy policy which sets out our information gathering and usage practices. For additional information about using the YourPropertyBuddies.com Website, please review our terms and conditions.

By using our Website, or otherwise providing personal information to us, you acknowledge that we will collect, use, store and disclose personal information in accordance with applicable laws and this privacy policy.

In this privacy policy:

• "Members" are both Your Property Buddies  “Subscribers” (Real Estate buyers and/or owners) and “Professionals” (Real Estate professionals), as defined in our terms and conditions.
• "Personal Information" is information about an identifiable individual, as defined in the Privacy Act 2020 and Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

Overview of how we store and protect your data

• We use industry standard HTTPS and SSL to secure all data communications
• Passwords are hashed and salted (we don’t store passwords in plaintext and we can't decrypt them)
• Information such as name, phone, email is stored in our secure database (as plaintext)
• Job descriptions and profiles are publicly searchable. For Subscribers, name and phone are never made public. For professionals, your name is publicly viewable as part of profiles and phone numbers are revealable on certain paid packages.
• Information you send to customer support may be stored on services such as Zendesk
• We use cookies to provide secure account access and account checks
• We don’t store credit card information if provided. This information is stored using PCI compliant third party providers
• Any ID documentation that you upload is only accessible by yourself and administrative staff. It is only stored on our server and backups

1. Use of information 
1.1  We will use and disclose your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Purposes for which we use and disclose personal information include: 
1.1.1  Our quoting services enable Subscriber to send a service request to us which we will match with a relevant Professional who can provide quotations for the job/service request. We forward these job/service requests directly to the Professional suitable to provide the services to the Subscriber. The Subscriber's contact details are forwarded to the Professional. Information regarding a job/service request is stored on our servers. 
1.1.2  When you submit a job/service request, you expressly consent to being contacted by us and by Professional via phone, fax, email, mail or other reasonable means, at any of your contact numbers or addresses, in order that we may provide the Services set forth on our Website, service your account, reasonably address matters pertaining to your account or for other reasonable purposes related to our business. 
1.1.3  When a Subscriber accepts contact with a Professional, various personal information may be provided to each party by Your Property Buddies, and may be provided by us either at the time of connection or at a later time. 
1.1.4  In order to protect against accreditation fraud, if a Professional adds a valid accreditation to their account we may contact the owner of the accreditation and provide them with details of the account that entered their accreditation. Details may include trading name, director/owner name, and contact details. 
1.1.5  We may post and publish Members' feedback and reviews of Professional's performance, as well as feedback and testimonials at our sole discretion. Where we post feedback and testimonials, this may include the Member’s name, photo, and general location. 
1.1.6  To verify address, entity, or identity, data entered or to check the creditworthiness of our Professionals or Subscribers we reserve the right to obtain information on the Professionals or Subscribers through third parties and public sources. For this purpose, the information collected during registration including the name of the individual or the business, address and date of birth, if appropriate, are sent to a business credit agency or other credit reference agency to check the address and creditworthiness of the Professional  or Subscriber in question. The credit agency is required to protect the data. 
1.1.7  In the event of any breach of contract (e.g. termination for failure to pay, debt recovery proceedings or enforcing a judgment), we may also send personal information to a credit reference agency. In such a case the data will only be transferred and stored to the extent necessary to protect our interests or the interests of the general public. The professional or Subscriber shall be informed of the intended recipient of the data before it is transferred. 
1.2  From time to time Your Property Buddies may wish to forward your contact details on to partners. Your Property Buddies will always ask you for your consent before forwarding any details. 
1.3  We release account and other personal information only when we believe release is appropriate: 
1.3.1  for legal compliance and law enforcement (including to government agencies with statutory law enforcement responsibilities); 
1.3.2  to facilitate court proceedings; 
1.3.3  to enforce or apply our terms and conditions; or 
1.3.4  to protect the rights, property, or safety of Your Property Buddies, our members, or others. 
Government agencies with statutory roles enabling them to request data from us includes, but is not restricted to, Police, IRD, ATO and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. Members can contact Your Property Buddies to ask whether their personal information has been provided to a Government agency. 
1.4  If a dispute arises between you and another Member, or you wish to take Dispute Tribunal proceedings against another Member, you can contact Your Property Buddies  or the Disputes Tribunal, requesting contact details for the sole purpose of making a claim.

2. Email 
2.1  It is the policy of Your Property Buddies to send our Members email throughout the process of undertaking the services and other email they have elected to receive, in addition to customary business communications (payment confirmations, etc.). Your Property Buddies  will send newsletters and other marketing communications to Members (including promotional material from some of our affiliated partners), and by registering each Member consents to receive such communications by email. Newsletters and marketing communications will contain clear and obvious instructions for how the Member can remove themself from that mailing list. It is our policy to promptly remove any Member from any mailing list upon the Member's request. 
2.2  We use electronic means (including online forms) to receive feedback, including testimonials, from Members. Feedback provided by Members may be published by us on our Website and may be removed by us at our sole discretion. 
2.3  Your Property Buddies provides facilities to refer a friend to Your Property Buddies. You may not use this service or other email forwarding services that we offer to send spam or otherwise send content that would violate this privacy policy or our terms and conditions.

2.4 By creating an account on the Your Property Buddies Platform, you expressly consent to receive our product commercial emails, including but not limited to updates on new features, promotions, newsletters, and other relevant information. These communications are designed to keep you informed about platform improvements and offerings that may be of interest to you. You have the right to opt out of these marketing communications at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions provided in the emails or by contacting us directly at [email protected]. Please note that even if you opt out of marketing communications, you may still receive administrative emails necessary for the operation of your account and the services we provide.

3. Membership registration 
3.1  Our Website's registration form requires you to provide us contact information and may also require demographic information. 
3.2  We may also require (at our discretion) a Professional's registered company name or personal name, insurance policy details and references to complete a credit check and/or a background check, prior to a Professional being approved to join our network.

 
4. Updating your personal information 
4.1  You have rights to request access to, or correction of, the personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
4.2  Subject to certain grounds for refusal set out in the Act, you have the right to access your readily retrievable personal information that we hold and to request a correction to your personal information. 
4.3  Your Property Buddies provides you with ways in which you can alter your personal information held by us, including changing your email address, physical address, password, phone numbers, etc. Your Property Buddies  may store previous email addresses, NZBN numbers, and other information against your account to ensure compliance with our terms and conditions, specifically the use of one account per Member. 
4.4  It is your responsibility to let us know if the personal information which we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

5. Control of your password 
5.1  You are responsible for all actions taken with your member name and password, including fees. Therefore we recommend that you do not disclose your Your Property Buddies  member name or password to any third parties. If you choose to share your member name and password or your information with third parties, you are responsible for all actions taken with this information.

6. Credit card security 
6.1  We prioritize the security of your personal information, including credit/debit card details. It's important to note that we do not process credit/debit card payments on our website. 
6.2  The Your Property Buddies Website never requests your credit card details. Instead, as a Professional, you are invoiced monthly. Your Property Buddies never has access to your credit card information. 
6.4  It is important for you to protect against unauthorized access to your password and to your computer. Ensure you logout when you have finished visiting the Your Property Buddies Website, especially if you access the Your Property Buddies Website from a shared computer. 

7. Cookies 
7.1  A cookie is a piece of data tied to information about the Subscriber and stored on the Subscriber's computer. This is widely used among major websites. A cookie provides details of your IP address, the computer platform that you use (e.g. Mac or Windows), the browser that you use and what domain you are accessing our sites from. 
7.2  By accepting the cookie, this helps us reduce the number of times you need to log in, thereby saving time while on our Website. We can also use cookies to help show you the most relevant content and allow us to track traffic patterns to Your Property Buddies. 
7.3  If you would rather we did not use cookies with you, you can refuse them by turning them off in your browser and/or deleting them from your hard drive. The drawback to this is that your experience and/or access may be limited in some areas of our Website. 

8. Other information we collect 
8.1  We use additional information to do internal research on our Members' demographics, interests, and behavior to better understand and serve you. This information may include the URL that you just came from (whether this URL is on our site or not), which URL you next go to (whether this URL is on our site or not), what browser you are using, and your IP address. 
8.2  Members who login have their IP addresses recorded. This information is stored securely and will not be provided to other Members or non-authorised parties. This information will only be provided to legal authorities in cases of suspected fraud or for law enforcement purposes. 
8.3  If you choose to leave feedback for other Members, we will collect that information you provide to us. 
8.4  If you send us personal correspondence, such as emails or letters, or if other Subscribers or third parties send us correspondence about your activities or postings on the Website, we may collect such information into a file specific to you.

9. Using information shared with you 
9.1  A Professional is only allowed to use the personal information communicated to that Professional exclusively for the purpose of carrying out the relevant job/service.

10. Membership removal 
10.1  We will disable your account upon request. To disable your account, you may send us an email requesting this or request via email to [email protected] 
10.2  We will delete your email and name upon request. To remove this personal information, please follow this process:

• Submit a request via email to [email protected] stating that you wish your data to be deleted, ensuring that you provide your email associated with the account.
• We will then send you an email to confirm account deletion. Reply to this email so we can confirm ownership of the email address provided.
• Our support team will delete your data within 7 working days and will confirm via email once actioned.

11. Advertising and third party links 
11.1  Some Your Property Buddies advertisers may request information directly from Members, or link to sites that do so. Your Property Buddies  has no control over its advertisers' privacy policies, and encourages Members to review such policies prior to submitting any personal information to them. 
11.2  Your Property Buddies contains non-advertising links to a variety of third party sites to enhance the Member experience. Your Property Buddies has no control of either the content or privacy policies of such sites, nor should such links be considered an endorsement of these sites except where otherwise noted.

12. Updates to our information practices 
12.1  From time to time, we make changes to our information practices or alter the functionality of our Website. We always update this privacy policy accordingly, so we encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on privacy practices at Your Property Buddies. 
12.2  Your continued use of our Website constitutes your acceptance of the changed policy and any personal information collected or held by us will be subject to the changed policy.

If you have any questions about our privacy policies or any other matter, please via email to [email protected]