Powerhouse Museum commitment to protecting
your privacy
The Powerhouse Museum is committed to protecting your privacy, including
while and as a result of your interaction/s with our websites. These include:
- www.powerhousemuseum.com
- www.phm.gov.au
- www.sydneyobservatory.com.au
- www.dhub.org
- other web servers running on the phm.gov.au domain
and all subsections of the above
The Powerhouse Museum is subject to the NSW Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act (1998). The Museum's Privacy Management Plan outlines how the Museum complies with the Act.
Automatic logging of information
IP (Internet Protocol) addresses [an IP is the address of a computer] of visitors are automatically logged by our servers. The server makes a record of your visit and logs limited information for statistical purposes - your IP address, top-level domain name (.com, .gov, .edu, com.au etc), the date and time of your visit to our site, pages accessed and documents downloaded, previous site visited and the type of browser used. These logs are used to administer the website and to diagnose problems in order to be able to rectify them. This data is also used for audience research to help us to improve the site.
IP addresses do not contain any personally identifiable information and are aggregated for analysis. Such aggregate data may be provided to internal departments only. Recording usage patterns helps us to identify popular areas of our site, and helps us to improve the site. Reports generated on aggregate data are periodically sent to State Government as part of the Museum's statutory requirements.
Collection of personal information
The Powerhouse Museum collects personal information such as name, phone/fax number, email address/postal address when you provide it in order to receive specific Museum services. This information is stored in secure Museum databases. The information you provide will be used solely by the relevant Museum staff for its intended purpose, as stated on those pages. Your name, contact details and other information will not be provided to any other person or third-party organisation without your consent.
Your provision of personal details is optional, however some services may not be available to you if you do not provide these details.
One such example is Soundbyte.org, the Museum's interactive music site which requires users to log-on and authenticate with the site to access premium services.
If you contact the Museum via this website, your email address will be used only to reply to you - which may require it to be sent on to the appropriate Museum staff member. Your email address will not be added to a mailing list or disclosed to any other person or organisation without your consent.
Use of cookies
Cookies are small files that a website can store on a user's computer and are used for keeping the 'state of a user session' i.e. remembering who you are from a page requesting information through to supplying it. The cookies that are used by the Powerhouse Museum websites do not collect any personal information and we do not combine information collected through cookies with other personal information to tell us who you are other than to authenticate the user for security purposes.
We also use cookies to measure certain visitor patterns, including areas of the website you have visited. This research is used to help us understand user habits, so the website can be improved.
If you prefer not to receive cookies, you can adjust your internet browser to refuse cookies or to warn you when cookies are being used. Refusal may make some parts of our websites inaccessible, unusable, or not function correctly.
Disclosure
The Powerhouse Museum will not disclose your personal information to any third party except when required by law and/or in accordance with the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act, 1998.
The Museum may be required to disclose your personal information to third parties to provide the service you requested. For example, in purchasing products online, the Museum will need to disclose personal information to third parties in order to bill and deliver your products. This disclosure, however, will only be made to fulfil the purpose for which you disclosed your personal information. We will not disclose your personal information for any other purpose unless you have authorised us to do so.
External links
This site contains links to other sites. The Powerhouse Museum is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such web sites.
Public forums and listservers
There are interactive features on some of the Museum's websites including email groups and online collaborative functionality. These services are opt-in services and by their nature require that certain details are transmitted to third parties. For example, a participatory email discussion list requires disclosure of email addresses to other participants in the group when you post messages for discussion. If you post personal information in publicly accessible online forums, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return. Please do not post any information that you do not want seen in these public areas.
Security
The Museum's website does not provide for online credit card transactions.
This site has security measures in place to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of information under our control.
Contact details
If you have any questions about this Online Privacy Statement, please contact the Museum's Privacy Officer by telephoning (02) 9217 0575.