Privacy at Telstra

The types of personal information we collect about you depends on which of our products and services you use, how you use those products and services, and our relationship with you.

Generally, we may collect the following types of information about you: 

• Information we need to verify you, provide you with our products and services, and communicate to you about them such as your name, date of birth, contact details (including address, email address, phone number or mobile telephone number), occupation, proof of identity (including your driver’s licence and passport number), Telstra PIN, username and password and financial information (such as credit card or bank account numbers).  We may also collect biometric information like your fingerprints and voice patterns, if you consent to this.
  
  
• Financial and credit information such as your income details, payment history, credit history and service history. For more details on how we manage credit information, see How do we manage credit information? below.
  
  
• Sensitive information like your race, ethnic origin, health, and criminal history. For example, we may need to collect:
  • Limited health information (e.g. to determine if you are an eligible Priority Assist telecommunications customer or if you are an energy customer on life support equipment)
  • Concession details if you are a concession customer (e.g. we need your Centrelink customer reference number to provide you with a pensioner discount).
    
    
  We will seek your consent before we collect and use sensitive information about you, unless we are permitted or required to do so by law.
  
  
• Information about when and how you use Telstra websites

You might also need to provide personal information about other individuals to us, such as your authorised representatives or when someone at your property requires life support equipment or Priority Assist. If so, we rely on you to tell those individuals that you are giving us their personal information and tell them about this Privacy Statement.

Depending on the Telstra products and services you use, we may also collect:

Our products, services and website may contain links to other websites or platforms operated by third parties. It is important to be aware that those third-party websites are not required to comply with this Privacy Statement. 

We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third-party platforms or websites and you should check the privacy policy of that service or website to understand how it will handle your information. For example, you may purchase Netflix through Telstra but be redirected to the Netflix platform to use that service.

There are three ways that we collect your information.

1. You give it to us when you or your representative interacts with either us or one of our trusted partners. This might happen when you are setting up an account with us, using one of our products or services or filling out a form or contact us with a problem or query.
   
   
2. We collect it automatically when you use our networks, products and services, including our call centres and online services. When you visit our website, we may also collect additional information about how you use our website (including via cookies and other technologies).
   
   
3. We obtain it from other sources like regulators, credit reports, marketing mailing lists, public information (including public posts to social networking sites), and commercially available personal, identity, geographic and demographic information sources. We may also collect information about you from our related entities, business and commercial partners and our service providers (like identity and fraud checking services and credit reporting bodies).
   
   

Depending on the Telstra products and services you use, we may also collect your personal information from other participants in the telecommunications (such as our wholesale and other customers) and energy sector (such as energy distributors, other retailers and metering service providers). We understand that you might not want to give us particular personal information. If so, that may mean we are not able to provide you with the products or services you need. 

• To provide relevant products and services – We use your personal information to provide relevant products and services to you and to enable us to conduct our business.  
  
  
• Administration – We use your personal information to help us properly manage the products and services we provide to you, deal with your enquiries 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 our Domain Name Servers (DNS) for known malicious domains which can lead to the downloading of malicious software onto devices. Where Telstra’s DNS services are used to connect to these known malicious domains, we may use your information to determine whether you might be impacted, and if so, notify you so that you can take action to protect yourself.
  
  
• Communication – We need to be able to communicate with you to provide you with our products and services. We might do this via phone, 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 may use your information in a number of ways to help us do this (e.g. to monitor network use, quality and performance, and to operate, maintain, develop, test and upgrade our systems and infrastructure). We may also combine information we hold about you 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 by 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.
  
  
• Direct marketing – We want to make sure that you know about all products, services and special offers of Telstra and its related entities that are relevant and of interest to you. We may use the information we hold about you to market and promote them directly to you. We may also contact you with information about products, services and offers provided by our trusted partners. In some cases, this marketing activity can continue for up to 13 months after you have stopped using our products or services, unless you opt out.  Please be aware that if you unsubscribe from a mailing list, we will continue to send you important messages that are not marketing communications, such as safety or administrative messages. 
  
  
  • You can stop Telstra (including Telstra Energy) using your information for direct marketing or update your marketing preferences by following the unsubscribe instructions in any of our marketing communications, logging into My Telstra or by calling us on 1800 039 059. 
    
    
  • You can stop Belong using your information for direct marketing by visiting www.belong.com.au/unsubscribe.
    
    
• Compliance – We are required or permitted by law to collect or use your personal information in certain circumstances, including those described below.

We may share your information with other parties who provide services to us, including suppliers, agents, partners and contractors that assist us with our business processes and provide our products and services. These services include:

• Providing, managing or administering your product or service including customer enquiries and support services
  
  
• Installation, maintenance and repair services
  
  
• Mailing operations, billing and debt-recovery functions
  
  
• Information technology and network services
  
  
• To develop our credit assessment and credit worthiness rating system
  
  
• Fraud, crime or misconduct identification, investigation and prevention services
  
  
• Market research, marketing, telemarketing and door-knocking services
  
  
• Development, analysis and business intelligence functions.
  
  

We may also disclose your information to:

• Your authorised representatives or advisers
  
  
• Other parties when you ask us to do so or when you consent to that disclosure for the purposes of fraud, crime or misconduct identification, investigation and prevention services
  
  
• Credit reporting bodies (for more information see the How do we manage credit information? section below) for identity checking and credit-related purposes such as checking your credit worthiness, credit rating, default listing, credit provision and financing history. These include:
  
  
  • Equifax Australian Group Pty Ltd
    (formerly known as Veda)
    Telephone: 13 83 32
    Website: www.mycreditfile.com.au/
    
    
  • Illion Australia
    (formerly trading as Dun and Bradstreet (Australia) Pty Ltd)
    Telephone: 13 23 33
    Website: www.illion.com.au/
    
    
  • Experian Australia Credit Services Pty Ltd
    Telephone: 1300 783 684
    Website: www.experian.com.au
    
    
• Our dealers, our related entities or our business or commercial partners and other businesses we work with
  
  
• Parties that assist us with fraud and identity checking including financial institutions and the Government’s National Document Verification Service
  
  
• Law enforcement and national security agencies, and other government and regulatory authorities as required or permitted by law
  
  
• Other parties who assist us in managing or developing our business and corporate strategies and functions, including our corporate risk or funding functions
  
  
• Financiers, investors or other participants and parties (such as service providers and ratings agencies) and advisers involved in any sale of our debts, securitisation or other financing arrangement (e.g. if we sell debts you owe us to another party)
  
  
• Other parties as required or permitted by law 
  
  
• For the purposes of facilitating or implementing a transfer/ sale of all or part of our assets or business.

Depending on the Telstra products and services you use, we may also disclose your personal information to:

In some cases, the organisations that we may disclose your information to may be based outside the location where the information is collected. For example, we may share your information with other parties in Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, countries within the European Union, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, the UAE, Ukraine, United Kingdom, the United States of America and Vietnam.

Where we do this, we require these parties to take appropriate measures to protect that information and to restrict how they can use that information.

We might collect credit information from you or give your information to credit reporting bodies (e.g. when we are checking your credit worthiness).

Credit information we collect includes: 

• Identification information
  
  
• Details about information requests made about you to credit reporting bodies
  
  
• Current and historical details about your credit applications and credit arrangements 
  
  
• Information about overdue payments, default listings and serious credit infringements, and information about payments or subsequent arrangements in relation to either of these
  
  
• Publicly available information about you, your bankruptcy history and credit-related court judgments against you
  
  
• Your credit scores or assessments of your credit worthiness.
  
  

Credit information relates primarily to your dealings with other credit providers (e.g. banks, other financial institutions, or other organisations that may provide you with credit in connection with their products or services). It may also include certain credit worthiness information that we derive from the data that we receive from a credit reporting body. We may collect this information about you from other credit providers (see How do we collect your information? for further detail).

We may disclose your credit information to credit reporting bodies. They in turn may include it in credit reporting information they provide to other credit providers to assist them to assess your credit worthiness.

We may use or disclose your credit information for purposes such as:

• Developing our own credit assessment and credit worthiness rating system
  
  
• Processing credit-related applications and managing credit that we provide
  
  
• Helping you to avoid defaulting on credit arrangements
  
  
• Collecting amounts you may owe us in relation to such credit arrangements and dealing with serious credit infringements
  
  
• Assigning our debts or acting in connection with any securitisation or other financing arrangement (e.g, if we assign debts you owe us to another party)
  
  
• Participating in the credit reporting system
  
  
• Dealing with complaints or regulatory matters relating to credit or credit reporting
  
  
• When required or permitted by another law
  
  
• Other purposes under How do we use your information? and When do we share your information? (except in relation to information we collect from credit reporting bodies which we will only use and disclose as described above).
  
  

You have the right to request credit reporting bodies not to:

• Use your credit eligibility information to determine whether credit providers (like us) can send you direct marketing material; and
  
  
• Use or disclose your credit eligibility information if you have been or are likely to be a victim of fraud.

To ensure that we can provide you with the best products and services possible, it’s important that you make sure the personal information we hold about you is accurate, up-to-date and complete. You also have the right to request a copy of your information that we hold about you. There is no charge to submit a request or to correct information, however we may charge you an administrative fee for providing access to your personal information on request. If you need to update your details or you wish to access personal information we hold about you, please:

• For Telstra (including Telstra Energy) – go to My Telstra or contact us using the contact details in the How to contact us? section below. You can access some personal information directly from your My Telstra.
  
  
• For Belong – contact us at complaints@belong.com.au

You can also use our contact details to notify us of any privacy complaints you have against us. We are committed to acknowledging your complaint in a prompt manner and will give you an estimated timeframe for when we will respond to your complaint.

If your complaint is in relation to a credit reporting issue we will acknowledge your complaint in writing as soon as possible and in any event within 7 days. We will aim to investigate and resolve your complaint within 30 days of receiving it. If we need more time, we will notify you about the reasons for the delay and indicate a new estimate timeframe. We may need to consult with a credit reporting body or another credit provider to investigate your complaint. 

While we hope that we will be able to resolve any complaints you may have, you can also lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. 

You can also lodge a complaint with the following regulators: