The Particle website is designed, developed and administered by Scitech.

At Scitech, we are committed to our obligation to respect and protect the privacy of the personal information of individuals with whom we deal in compliance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (which commenced operation on 12 March 2014).

In this Privacy Policy ‘us’, ‘our’, ‘we’ or ‘Scitech’ means Scitech Discovery Centre (ACN 009292700) (‘Scitech’). This Privacy Policy applies to your use of the websites operated under the domain name scitech.org.au and the website operated under the domain name particle.scitech.org.au (the “Scitech websites”).

Where this Privacy Policy refers to your “personal information”, it means information that identifies you as an individual or from which your identity can be reasonably ascertained.

This Privacy Policy relates to personal information that we collect and handle about visitors to Scitech, the Scitech websites, social media and other digital services. Job applicants should contact our human resources team for details about the privacy of their personal information.

1 Collecting personal information

1.1 What kind of information do we collect?

We may collect personal information in relation to your interactions with us. The types of personal information we collect depends on how you interact with us.
You can visit the Scitech websites without disclosing any personal information about yourself. Our system may record non-personal information, such as your server address, the date and time of your visit and any pages viewed. Such non-personal information will only be used for statistical and website administration purposes.

If you register to become a member of our Scitrekker program (which allows discounted entry to Scitech for multiple visits) we require your name, contact details, date of birth and gender (for identification purposes) as well as any concessionary entitlements. This information enables us to verify your identity and makes it possible for us to provide our Scitrekker services to you. If you do not provide us with this information we will not be able to process your registration and payments, contact you or manage your membership.

If you sign up to our mailing lists and newsletters or make bookings to visit or use our programs and services we collect personal information about you, which you volunteer by filling in the details. The information you provide may include basic personal details such as your name, address, home and mobile numbers and email addresses.

Where you provide personal information about someone else you must have their consent to provide their personal information to us.

1.2 How do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information in a number of ways including from you directly by personal contact when you interact with us either in person, by mail, telephone, email or online, including as follows:

When we receive bookings for functions, school visits, workshops or conferences, we collect information at the time the bookings are made.
We also collect feedback information from visitors interacting with and using our programs, workshops, exhibits, events and outreach services through surveys and evaluations.
We also collect information from persons who wish to sign up to our mailing lists to receive our newsletters and when we receive letters and emails from the general public.
Photographs and videos of Scitech visitors are collected only with the consent of the person being photographed or filmed, or their parent/guardian. The consent forms for photography and filming also collect information regarding the name of the person in the photograph or video and their contact details.
We may not be able to provide our services to you without your personal information.

2 Management, use and disclosure of personal information

We may hold your personal information in physical and electronic form both at our premises and with the assistance of our service providers. We implement a range of measures to protect the security of that information. We are also required to take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify information when no longer needed for any permitted purpose.

What do we use it for?

We use your personal information:

to help us develop, improve and deliver successful events, exhibitions, programs and services.
to provide you with information that you request or that we think may be of interest to you that relate to Scitech activities.
to ensure that booked events and visits to Scitech, external events or outreach tours may be coordinated.
to generate broad demographic data.
to set up, maintain and manage our Scitrekker memberships.
to sell, manage and deliver admission tickets transacted online.
to gather feedback on the effectiveness of our programs, services and promotions.
to record permissions granted in relation to use of videos and photographic material.
to manage and disseminate electronic communications (enewsletters) to our subscribers.
to notify you about changes to our services.
for purposes connected with the operation, research planning, administration, development, security or enhancement of our services and the Scitech websites.
where we suspect that fraud or unlawful activity has been, is being or may be engaged in.

In order to improve our programs and services to you, we may provide your personal information to third parties and researchers who conduct research or survey work for us. When we provide personal information to third parties for surveys and research, we will limit them to only using or disclosing your personal information for the reasons we engaged them.

We will not otherwise use, share, or sell your personal information to third parties unless we have informed you, have been authorised by you, or are required or authorised to do so by law.

We train our staff to handle personal information and restrict access where appropriate.

Direct Marketing
We may contact you on an ongoing basis by letter, telephone, email or text message to provide you with information on upcoming activities which might be suitable for you, unless you ask us not to do so or legal restrictions apply. You may however exercise your right to opt out (remembering that opting out could stop us contacting you about any of our programs and services that may benefit you), to do so please contact our Privacy Officer.

Our website
Our website at particle.scitech.org.au may use cookies. A cookie is a small file which checks for permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. If permitted (e.g. through your browser’s settings), the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Accessing and correcting your personal information
Under privacy laws you may have the right to access and correct your personal information that we hold. Please provide as much detail as you can about the particular information you seek, in order to help us locate it. We may need to verify your identity and may charge a reasonable fee for this service. If anything is inaccurate or incorrect, please let us know. We will provide our reasons if we deny any request for access to or correction of personal information. Where we decide not to make a requested correction to your personal information and you disagree, you may ask us to make a note of your requested correction with the information.

Remarketing by Google
Scitech use Remarketing with Google Analytics to advertise online. Third-party vendors, including Google, may show our ads on sites across the Internet. Scitech and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together to inform, optimise, and serve ads based on someone’s past visits to your website.

For more information about how Google collects and processes data, please see Google’s privacy policy and their information at http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners. Information about how to opt out of data being collected or used by the cookies from Google, can be found at the following link: https://www.google.com/intl/en/analytics/learn/privacy.html.

The website youronlinechoices.com.au also allows you to opt out of some online behavioural advertising and provides further information about how online behavioural advertising works.

Many of these services operate without collecting or using any personal information.
We do not share any personal information with Google through our remarketing tag or any product data feeds which might be associated with our ads.

Contacting us
We welcome any queries, requests, comments or concerns you may have regarding this Privacy Policy or our handling of your personal information. Please feel free to contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@scitech.org.au or by calling 9215 0700.