Privacy Policy
Our Privacy Commitment
ConnectEast Pty Ltd ABN 99 101 213 263 and the other entities in the ConnectEast group (we or us) respect the privacy of our customers and other individuals we deal with in the course of our business, such as casual users of EastLink, customers of other tollroad operators or tolling product issuers and our investors (you).
This document sets out our policy about how we manage and protect personal information, including your personal information.
Personal information we hold about you
Personal information is information or an opinion (including information or an opinion forming part of a database) from which it is possible to determine your identity.
The personal information we hold about you may include your name, date of birth, current and previous addresses, telephone/mobile number, email address, bank account or credit card details, occupation, driver's licence number, vehicle details and your EastLink PIN, username or password.
For our investors, we also may hold personal information relating to your holdings of ConnectEast securities.
Occasionally, you may need to give us personal information about other people - for example, your family or other authorised representatives. If so, we rely on you to tell those individuals that you are giving their personal information to us and to tell them that they can contact us to obtain a copy of our privacy policy.
If you choose not to give certain personal information to us (eg, your driver’s licence number), we may not be able to provide you with the services or the level of service you require (eg, access to EastLink).
Health and sensitive information
We do not collect information about your health or sensitive information about you (for example, information about your racial or ethnic origin) unless we are authorised or required by law to do so or you have consented to us collecting that information from you for a particular purpose, in which case we will only use the information for that purpose.
How we collect your personal information
We collect personal information about you in a number of ways, including:
- directly from you - for example, when you provide information to us by phone, email, in an application for one of our products or through our websites (eg, during online registration for an EastLink account)
- from third parties, such as our related entities, our selling agents, credit reporting agencies or your representatives
- from our own records of how you use EastLink and our other services (see below)
- when we are required by law to do so.
We also collect personal information about our investors who provide us or our securities registry with information about an investment in ConnectEast.
Information about your use of EastLink
We may collect personal information about you when you use EastLink. For example, when your vehicle passes through the electronic toll collection points along EastLink, we may collect and record information about:
- your vehicle registration and other identifiers (such as your EastLink tag number)
- the location of your vehicle
- the direction that your vehicle was heading
- your account status (if applicable)
- an image or images of your vehicle.
We may also collect still and moving images of you or your vehicle from closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras when you use EastLink and our other services, or when you visit our premises or facilities.
The collection of this information over a period of time results in the generation of a series of records of transactions which could be analysed to provide such information as:
- records of your journey itineraries and patterns
- patterns of regular passages of your vehicle past a particular ETC point
- pattern (spatial or temporal) irregularities
- repeated violation records
- account payment history (if applicable).
We limit how this information is used and to whom it is disclosed. For example, while we may disclose the information to research institutions and traffic management authorities (among others), we will only do so once the information has been de-identified and de-linked from any personal information.
Our websites
We may collect personal information about you when you use and access our web sites.
When you visit our web sites, our systems may record certain information about your use of our web sites, such as which pages you visit, the time and date of your visit and the internet protocol (IP) address assigned to your computer. We do not use this information to identify you personally. Rather, we simply use this information to analyse and improve the performance of our web sites.
In addition, we may use “cookies” on our websites. Cookies are small text files that help a web site to track your web site usage and to remember your preferences. Using cookies is standard practice for most large websites. In some cases, the cookies we use may collect some personal information about you. We will treat this information in the same way as other personal information we collect about you.
If you prefer, you may be able to disable cookies through your internet browser. However, if you do so, you may not be able to access certain areas of our web sites or enjoy the improved web site experience that cookies offer.
How we use your personal information
We, and the organisations to whom we may disclose your personal information under this policy (see below), may use your personal information in order t
- verify your identity
- assist you to open an EastLink account or to become an EastLink customer
- provide the services you require (eg, use of EastLink)
- administer and manage those services, including charging, billing, account management and collecting debts
- provide you with access to our web sites and to administer and manage those web sites
- promote and market to you products, services, and special offers made available by us or our partners, licensees, and supplier
- provide you with news and information relating to EastLink and our other services
- conduct appropriate checks for creditworthiness and for fraud
- research and develop our products and services (existing or new)
- maintain and develop our systems and infrastructure, including our tolling systems for EastLink.
By giving us your personal information or using our services and web sites, you consent to your personal information being used in these ways.
If you do not wish to receive any marketing material from us or our marketing partners, please contact us and let us know (our contact details are below). Where you receive electronic marketing material from us, you will also be given the option of “unsubscribing”. Details about how to “unsubscribe” will be provided with all electronic marketing material.
We, and the organisations to whom we may disclose your personal information under this policy (see below), may use personal information held about our investors to administer your investment in ConnectEast and to provide you with information relevant to your investment in ConnectEast.
How your personal information may be disclosed
We may disclose your personal information to other entities in the ConnectEast group and to various outside organisations. Except as permitted or required by law, we will only disclose your personal information to the extent necessary for the purposes set out above.
Outside organisations we may disclose your personal information to include:
- your authorised representatives, including your legal advisers
- our EastLink joint venture partners
- the operators of other toll roads and parties who issue tags for use on other toll roads, to assist with monitoring and charging for your travel on those other toll roads
- organisations we have engaged to provide services or to carry out functions and activities on our behalf (eg, debt collection agencies)
- credit reporting and fraud checking agencies
- credit providers (for credit related purposes such as creditworthiness, credit rating, credit provision and financing)
- our professional advisers, including our legal advisers, accountants and auditors
- our marketing partners
- the Victorian Government, as required under our agreement with them for the construction, operation and maintenance of the EastLink motorway
- government and regulatory authorities involved in road and traffic enforcement or management (eg, VicRoads)
- other persons, including government and regulatory authorities, as required or authorised by law
- organisations that acquire all or part of our assets or businesses.
If any of these organisations are located outside Australia, you consent to us disclosing your personal information to those organisations.
Keeping information accurate and up to date
We take all reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold is accurate, complete and up-to-date. However, the accuracy of the information we hold depends to a large extent on the accuracy of the information provided to us by you and others.
Please help us to keep our records up to date by informing us of changes to your name, address or other personal information.
If you find that the personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date, please contact us immediately (our contact details are below) and we will take reasonable steps to ensure that it is corrected. Our investors may also update the personal information that we hold about them by contacting our securities registry.
Keeping information secure
We take all reasonable steps to maintain the security of your personal information and to protect it from unauthorised access.
However, we cannot and do not guarantee that unauthorised access to your personal information will not occur, either during transmission of that information to us or after we receive that information.
How you can access your information
You can contact us to request access to the personal information we hold about you (our contact details are below). For security reasons, we may ask you to put your request in writing.
In normal circumstances, we will give you full access to your information. However, in some cases there may be some legal or administrative reasons why this is not possible. If we do not allow you to access any part of the personal information we hold about you, we will tell you why.
We will not charge you for lodging a request for access to your personal information, but we may charge you a fee to cover our reasonable costs for searching for and providing access to your information.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
From time to time, we may need to change our Privacy Policy to reflect our changing business practices.
If we do so, we will post the new Privacy Policy on our website and will take reasonable steps to notify you of the change (in most cases, by posting a notice on our web site stating that a change has occurred).
All personal information collected and held by us will be governed by our most recent Privacy Policy, as posted on our web site. We encourage you to check our web site regularly and to read any updates posted there.
Privacy complaints
We take the protection of your privacy very seriously. If you have any privacy concerns, please let us know (our contact details are below) so that we can take steps to address them as soon as possible.
You can also contact the Victorian Privacy Commissioner if you wish to make a privacy complaint or would like further information about privacy issues in general. Details about how to contact the Victorian Privacy Commissioner are available on Privacy Victoria's web site at www.privacy.vic.gov.au.
If the nature of your complaint or enquiry is outside the responsibility of the Victorian Privacy Commissioner, you can also contact the Federal Privacy Commissioner. Details about how to contact the Federal Privacy Commissioner are available on the website of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.vic.gov.au.
How to contact us
If you have any questions in relation to this Privacy Policy or would like a copy sent to you, please write to our Privacy Officer at PO Box 744, Ringwood, VIC 3134, call 13 LINK (13 5465) or send an email to privacy@connecteast.com.au. This email address should not be used for general inquiries.
If you have a general inquiry or would like to know how to become an EastLink customer, please call 13 LINK (13 5465) or go to our web site at www.EastLink.com.au.