Cooper Symons & Associates Privacy Policy

Introduction

Cooper Symons & Associates uses Personal Information provided by individuals and organisations, including research participants and clients, for the purposes of operating a market and social research and recruitment business.  Market and Social Research investigates the behaviours, needs, attitudes, opinions, motivations or other characteristics of individuals, companies or other organisations. This research is undertaken to provide insights to our clients, including government, commercial and not-for-profit organisations, which will assist them in making decisions.

We respect and uphold your rights under the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) and the Privacy (Market and Social Research) Code 2021, which we are also bound by [https://dataandinsights.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ADIA-The-Privacy-Market-and-Social-Research-Code-2021-Member-Version_FINAL.pdf].

This Privacy Policy lets you know what Personal Information we may hold, what we may do with it, who we may disclose it to and how you can access the Personal Information we hold about you. You can also find out here how to change inaccurate Personal Information and how to opt out of receiving communications from us.

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information means any information or opinion (true or not) about an individual who is, or could reasonably be, identified.

Examples of Personal Information include:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Date of birth
  • Phone number
  • Email address
  • Salary information
  • Opinions

Sensitive (personal) Information includes any information about an individual’s:

  • Country of Birth or ethnic origin
  • Political opinions
  • Religious beliefs or affiliations
  • Membership of a trade union
  • Sexual preferences
  • Health information

How do we collect and hold your Personal Information?
Where possible, we will generally collect your Personal Information directly from you. We may also collect Personal Information from our clients, publicly available sources and registering on our website to participate in market research paid activities.

What Personal Information about you does CSA collect and hold?
The information we collect includes names, date of birth, marital status, occupation, email addresses, telephone numbers and residential suburb/state (and street addresses for in home interviews only). In addition, we record details of market research activities you have participated in, including date, topic, client and researcher.

What do we do with your Personal Information?
We will only use and disclose Personal Information for the purposes for which it was collected. Personal Information will normally be stored in our internal database and our domestic IT system.  All client lists provided to us are saved to our server and deleted at the end of a project.

Who will we disclose your Personal Information to?
We may disclose your Personal Information to our IT providers, lawyers, auditors, accountants, and in the case of contact details, to contracted marketing agents or our other service providers. Research respondents’ details are never forwarded to another organisation, nor published in a form that would enable a research participant to be identified, without prior consent.

In the event that your Personal Information is disclosed to an overseas recipient (such as via cloud-based IT hosting), we will also endeavour to take adequate measures to ensure that the Personal Information is handled by the overseas recipient in accordance with the Privacy Act and our instructions for the purposes described above.

By providing us with your Personal Information, you consent to this disclosure of your Personal Information for purposes related to our provision of services or contractual relationship with you.

Openness
You may request access to Personal Information (including your credit information) we hold about you by contacting the Privacy Officer at the address below. Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will endeavour to provide you with a suitable range of choices as to how access is provided (eg, emailing or mailing it to you). A fee may be charged to cover the cost of retrieval.

If at any time you believe that Personal Information, we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request amendment of it and we will either amend the information or make a record of your comment, as we think appropriate.

Marketing
Where we have obtained your consent to do so, or in circumstances where you would reasonably expect that your Personal Information would be used or disclosed for this purpose, we may contact you from time to time with marketing material about our services or events.

Questions and complaints
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or believe that we have at any time failed to keep one of our commitments to you to handle your Personal Information in the manner required by the Privacy Act, then we ask that you contact us immediately using the following contact details:

Abigail Cooper
Director
Cooper Symons & Associates Pty Ltd
2/637 Inkerman Road, Caulfield North, Victoria, 3161.
[email protected]

We will respond and advise whether we agree with your complaint or not.  If we do not agree, we will provide reasons.  If we do agree, we will advise what (if any) action we consider it appropriate to take in response.  If you are still not satisfied after having contacted us and given us a reasonable time to respond, then we suggest that you contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by:

Phone: 1300 363 992 (local call cost, but calls from mobile and pay phones may incur higher charges). If calling from overseas (including Norfolk Island): +61 2 9284 9749
TTY: 1800 620 241 (this number is dedicated to the hearing impaired only, no voice calls)
TIS: Translating and Interpreting Service: 131 450 (If you don’t speak English or English is your second language and you need assistance and ask for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner)

Post: GPO Box 2999 Canberra ACT 2601
Fax: +61 2 9284 9666
Email: [email protected]

Our Website 
When visiting our website, the site server makes a record of the visit and logs the following information for statistical and administrative purposes:

  • the user’s server address – to consider the users who use the site regularly and tailor the site to their interests and requirements;
  • the date and time of the visit to the site – this is important for identifying the website’s busy times and ensuring maintenance on the site is conducted outside these periods;
  • pages accessed and documents downloaded – this indicates to us which pages or documents are most important to users and also helps identify important information that may be difficult to find;
  • duration of the visit – this indicates to us how interesting and informative our website is to users; the type of browser used – this is important for browser specific coding
  • In order to optimize our website and better understand it’s usage, we may collect the visiting domain name or IP address, Computer Operating System, Browser Type and Screen Resolution

A ‘cookie’ is a piece of information that an Internet website sends to your browser when you access information at that site. Cookies are either stored in memory (session cookies) or placed on your hard disk (persistent cookies). Our website does not use persistent cookies. Upon closing your browser, the session cookie set by this web site is destroyed and no Personal Information is maintained which might identify you should you visit our web site at a later date.

Security of Information

We will take reasonable steps to protect your Personal Information from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.  To do this, we use a variety of physical and electronic security measures, including firewalls and secure databases to keep Personal Information secure from misuse, loss or unauthorised use or disclosure.

Our Director and Supervisors manage confidentially/privacy within a project.  Data files containing research participant details for groups, interviews, clinics etc is password encrypted.  Passwords are emailed separately to clients.  However, you should keep in mind that the transmission of information online is not completely secure or error-free.

Miscellaneous
In this policy “Personal Information” has the same meaning as under the Privacy Act.

This policy is effective from 1st August, 2024.

We may change this policy from time to time. Although we intend to observe this Privacy Policy at all times, it is not legally binding on us as, from time to time, we may regard it as necessary or desirable to act outside the policy.  We may do so, subject only to any other applicable contractual rights you have and any statutory rights you have under the Privacy Act or other applicable legislation.