We will only use your information if we have a lawful reason to do so such as when it’s our legal duty or we have your consent and when it’s in our legitimate interest to do so. These include:
Administration - To help us properly manage the products and services we provide to you and to maintain and update our records. For example, we need to be able to verify your identity to detect, prevent and address fraud. We also use your information for charging and billing and to identify breaches of our terms and conditions of service.
Network, security and fraud protection - As part of our network protection activities, we monitor Domain Name Servers (DNS) for known malicious domains which can, amongst other things, lead to the downloading of malicious software on to devices. Where Telstra’s DNS services are used to connect to these known malicious domains, we may identify impacted customers for the purposes of notifying them so they can take action to protect themselves.
Communication - We need to be able to communicate with you in order to provide you with our products and services. We might do this on mediums such as email, SMS, social media, search engines and web pages you may visit.
Improvement – We are constantly working to not only maintain and improve our products, services and processes but to develop new ones. We use information we hold to help us do this in a number of ways. For example to monitor network use, quality and performance, and to operate, maintain, develop, test and upgrade our systems and infrastructure. We may also combine information from one service with information from one of our partners’ services to improve our credit assessment and debt recovery processes.
Development and analysis - It’s important we understand your information and communication needs. One of the ways we do this is through using analysis and business intelligence techniques. This gives us high level insights into things like usage patterns, network performance, demographic trends and other types of behavioural data. In many cases this information is aggregated and de-identified when analysed. We may share these anonymised insights with select business and commercial partners. In some cases, we may create insights with your information on an identified basis but would only do so in compliance with privacy laws (such as, with your consent).
Direct marketing - We want to make sure that you know about all our products, services and special offers that are relevant and are of interest to you. We may use the information we hold to market and promote them directly to you. This also may include products, services and offers provided by our trusted partners. In some cases this marketing activity can continue after you have stopped using our products or services, unless you opt-out. You can stop us using your information for direct marketing by updating your preferences by logging into My Account online or by calling us on 1800 039 059.
Compliance - There are a number of circumstances where we are required or authorised by law to collect, use or disclose information. These include:
- as required or authorised by legislation (for example under the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth) and the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) including the data retention provisions)
- to produce and distribute an alphabetical public number directory (known as the White Pages) in compliance with our Carrier Licence Conditions
- as required by or in accordance with any industry code or industry standard registered under the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth)
- when we need to undertake identity checks for pre-paid public mobile telecommunications services under the Telecommunications (Service Provider-Identity Checks for Prepaid Mobile Carriage Services) Determination 2013
- providing emergency call service centres and the relevant emergency services organisation(s), the most precise mobile location information we can access about the device from which a call is made to the emergency call service number (000 and 112) at the time of the call
- providing information in relation to calls to the emergency call service number (000 and 112) or to prevent or lessen threats to a person’s life or health under the Telecommunications Act 1997, Telstra’s Carrier Licence Conditions and the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2009.