We only collect personal information online when you choose to provide it.

Why we collect your personal information

The purpose for collecting your personal information is to manage online participation in our engagement related to our services, projects and plans and to communicate with you about them if you agree to updates. We or our Contract Service Providers may also use your personal information for customer research purposes, consistent with our main Privacy Policy.

Site visit data

You can access Let's Talk | Melbourne Water’s website anonymously, without disclosing your personal information.

This site’s web-server automatically collects the following non-personal information (i.e. clickstream data) for statistical and system administration purposes only:

• your server (or IP) address
• the day and time you visited the site
• the pages you visited on our site
• the address of the last page you visited
• the operating system you are using
• rough geographic location (down to the city)
• language (e.g. American English)
• internet service provider (e.g. Telstra)
• the type of browser and version you are using.

We collect this information to evaluate the performance of our online services and product offerings. To the extent that this data could make you identifiable, Melbourne Water will not attempt to identify individuals from the records the server automatically generates unless necessary to investigate a breach of law or regulation.

Cookies are used on the site, but they do not collect any personal information. For the most part they are sessional and just contain system-generated values to identify the user's session for statistical and system administration purposes only.

User registration

If you choose to sign up at the site we invite you to enter a username, email address and postcode.

If you choose to respond to forum questions we require a username and an email address. Only your username will be visible to other participants when they view responses.

We recommend you use an anonymous username if you do not want your real name visible on the website with forum comments, stories or questions.

By providing an email address you help us protect the integrity of the discussion from individuals and groups who may attempt to unduly influence the outcomes of the consultation process. For example, we check the database to ensure each user has a single email account on the site. We also frequently review the site for trolls and spammers.

Demographic information (optional)

We ask optional demographic questions when you sign-up to help us determine whether we are getting a diverse cross-section of participants. These questions are age group and gender.

Social media collection statement

If you use your Facebook account to log in and/or authenticate with the Melbourne Water Let's Talk portal, we will collect and store a unique user ID provided by your social networking site (‘SNS’) .

As a Melbourne Water Let's Talk portal user, you can choose to log in and/or authenticate with a SNS, such as Facebook. To do so, you must use your account credentials (typically username and password) for your SNS. Your SNS will provide Melbourne Water with a unique user ID which we can use to identify you on our Let's Talk portal. Melbourne Water will retain this user ID, keep it private and use it to identify you and enable your access to features on our websites.

If you choose to sign up with your SNS profile Melbourne Water will request to collect your name and email. You can cancel this request and then manually enter this information through the Let's Talk email registration process.

We encourage you to read the privacy policies and other statements of the SNS you use.

Google reCAPTCHA

We use a Google-provided tool called "reCAPTCHA" which, on some form submissions, is intended to tell humans from robots to prevent abuse of those forms by spam bots. The reCAPTCHA tool may, in its algorithm, make use of cookies as well as other information like IP address, date, time, language, screen size and resolution, and mouse movements while on the page. The reCAPTCHA tool is subject to Google’s terms of use and privacy policy.

Melbourne Water is committed to holding your personal information securely. All stored information is protected from unauthorised access through the use of secure passwords and user log on or other security procedures.

When you sign up as a user you provide two types of information:

• Publicly available information
• Information only available to Melbourne Water.

Publicly available information

Publicly available information is limited to your username and any comments you leave under that username in the forums or other feedback tools on Let's Talk | Melbourne Water’s website.

Feedback (including overall results of polls and surveys, and in some instances, quotes from forums and surveys) may be published in publicly available reports at the end of the consultation period.

Please note that Melbourne Water is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) legislation, which gives individuals a general right of access to documents held by Melbourne Water, including records in our Let's Talk | Melbourne Water’s website.

Information only available to Melbourne Water

• all information from the sign-up form
• comments, questions, stories, guestbook posts
• survey responses, Quick Poll responses, Map pins
• general site activity such as document downloads, videos viewed, images viewed etc.
• information on the technology used to access the site.

Disclosure of personal information

Melbourne Water will take all necessary measures to prevent unauthorised access to, or disclosure of, your personal information.

External organisations to which personal information is disclosed include Melbourne Water’s contracted Service Providers who perform various services for and on behalf of Melbourne Water. These contractors have agreed to be bound by the provisions of the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014. Information provided to these contractors is limited to contact details provided by you whilst contacting us.

We will also ensure that your personal information is not disclosed to other individuals, institutions and authorities outside Melbourne Water except if required or authorised by law or explicitly permitted by you. For example, in the event of an investigation into suspected unlawful or improper activity, a law enforcement agency or government agency may exercise its legal authority to inspect the web server's records (e.g. in relation to hacking or abusive messages).

Access and correction

Requests for access to documents containing personal information held by Melbourne Water are handled under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 can be made online.

If you would like to access, update, correct, complete or delete the personal information that Melbourne Water is holding about you, you are welcome to make these requests by emailing [email protected].

Links

This website privacy statement does not apply to other websites we may link to. We recommend you read the privacy statement when you access another site.

Access to personal information

If you would like to access, update, correct, complete or delete the personal information that Melbourne Water is holding about you, you are welcome to make these requests by emailing [email protected]

General enquires about Melbourne Water’s privacy procedures

Melbourne Water’s Privacy Officer
Phone: 131 722
Email: [email protected]

Technical questions about how this site operates

Phone: (03) 9023 8126
Email: [email protected]

Further information

For more information about privacy issues in Victoria visit the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner website.