Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

HelloSuburb ("we", "us", "our") is committed to protecting your privacy and handling personal information responsibly. Where the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) apply to us, we handle personal information in accordance with those requirements. We also aim to follow these principles as a matter of good privacy practice more broadly.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, hold, use, and disclose personal information when you use hellosuburb.com.au (the "Site").

2. What We Collect

Depending on how you use the Site, we may collect:

• Business listing information: business name, address, phone number, email, category, website, and description, submitted by business owners when creating or claiming a listing. Some business information may also constitute personal information where it identifies an individual, such as a sole trader.
• Contact details: name, email address, and phone number, when you contact us, submit a business listing, or make a purchase.
• Payment information: processed entirely by Stripe. We do not collect or store your credit card details — Stripe handles this in accordance with its own privacy policy and PCI-DSS standards.
• Location data: if you use address-based features (e.g. bin day lookup, service-area business matching), you may enter a street address to identify your suburb or collection zone. That address is used only to determine the relevant suburb/zone (e.g. via a mapping or geocoding service) and is not retained by us. Only the resulting suburb and zone (e.g. endeavour-hills, Tuesday_Week_1) are stored in your browser and reflected in the page URL, for bookmarking and convenience — not your address. We do not use this information to identify you or build a personal profile.
• Usage data: standard technical data such as IP address, browser type, device type, and pages visited, collected automatically via hosting (Vercel) and any analytics tools we may use.
• Public-source information: we may collect business information from publicly available sources and authorised third-party data services (e.g. Google Places).

We collect personal information:

• directly from you when you submit a form, make a purchase, contact us, or claim/manage a listing;
• automatically when you use the Site, through website infrastructure and any analytics technologies we use;
• from publicly available sources and authorised third-party services used to populate or verify business listings.

We do not knowingly collect sensitive information (e.g. health, religious, or political data) and ask that you do not submit such information through any form on the Site.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use personal information to:

• Display and manage business directory listings
• Process payments for featured listings, sponsorships, and website build services
• Respond to enquiries and provide customer support
• Verify business ownership claims
• Improve and maintain the Site's functionality and content accuracy
• Send administrative and service-related communications about listings, payments, enquiries, or services you use
• Send promotional or marketing communications where we have your consent or are otherwise permitted to do so — you can unsubscribe from marketing communications at any time
• Comply with legal obligations

4. Disclosure to Third Parties

We share limited personal information with the following third-party service providers, to operate and provide HelloSuburb's services:

Some of these service providers process or store personal information outside Australia. Based on information published by our service providers, the countries most likely to be involved are:

• United States — Stripe, Google Workspace, Google Places API, Vercel, and Cloudflare all process data in the US as part of their standard global infrastructure.
• Europe — Vercel and Cloudflare also process some data (e.g. technical/metadata) in European data centers as part of their global network.

Where applicable, we take reasonable steps appropriate to the circumstances when using these overseas service providers, including considering their contractual terms, privacy practices, and security safeguards.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes.

5. Public Nature of Business Listings

Business listings submitted under our free, featured, or sponsorship tiers are intentionally displayed publicly on the Site as part of its core directory function. By submitting a listing, you consent to your business name, address, contact details, and description being publicly visible. This does not apply to personal contact information used solely for account administration (e.g. the email used to manage a listing), which is not displayed publicly.

6. Data Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect personal information from misuse, loss, and unauthorised access, including relying on the security infrastructure of our providers (Stripe, Google, Vercel, Cloudflare). However, no method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

If we become aware of a data breach involving personal information, we will assess and respond to the incident and, where the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme applies to us, notify affected individuals and the OAIC as required by law.

7. Data Retention

We retain personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes outlined in this policy, or as required by law (e.g. financial records under Australian tax law, generally 5 years). When personal information is no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected and we are not required to retain it by law, we may delete or de-identify it.

Public business information may remain displayed while we reasonably consider the listing current and useful. Personal information used to administer a listing is retained only for as long as reasonably necessary for that purpose or as required by law.

8. Your Rights

Depending on applicable law and the circumstances, you may:

• request access to the personal information we hold about you
• request correction of inaccurate or outdated information
• ask us to remove or de-identify information that we no longer need, where appropriate
• request removal or correction of a business listing
• make a privacy complaint

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at hello@hellosuburb.com.au. We will acknowledge your request, investigate it, and respond within a reasonable period, usually within 30 days.

If the Privacy Act applies to us and you are dissatisfied with our response, you may be able to lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

9. Cookies & Local Storage

The Site uses browser localStorage to remember preferences such as a previously entered suburb or bin-day zone, improving usability on return visits. Standard server-side logs (e.g. IP addresses) aren't cookies but can still involve personal information — see Section 2 and 4 above. At the date of this policy, HelloSuburb does not intentionally use third-party advertising or behavioural-tracking cookies.

We may introduce standard analytics or advertising cookies in future; if so, this policy will be updated and, where required, consent will be sought.

10. Children's Privacy

HelloSuburb is intended for a general audience and is not specifically directed at children. We do not knowingly seek to collect personal information from children through our business listing, payment, or enquiry services.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when our information-handling practices or legal obligations change. The updated version will be published on this page with a revised "Last updated" date. Where a change is significant and it is appropriate to do so, we may provide additional notice.

12. Contact Us

For any privacy-related questions, requests, or complaints:

HelloSuburb
Email: privacy@hellosuburb.com.au
ABN: 38 895 076 866