Privacy policy

Village Guide (we, us, our) is committed to protecting the personal information of the users of our website (www.villageguide.co.nz). We comply with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (the Act) and the associated privacy regulations and principles when dealing with personal information.

This policy sets out how we will collect, store, use, disclose and protect your personal information as well as informing how you can access or correct your personal information.

This policy does not limit or exclude any of your rights under the Act. If you wish to seek further information on the Act, see www.privacy.org.nz.

We may change this policy by uploading a revised policy onto our website. The change will apply from the date that we upload the revised policy.

Personal information is information about an identifiable individual (a natural person), examples of personal information that we may collect are as follows:

• your name, age, phone number, residential address and email address;
• your IP address (when you visit our website);
• any communication you have with us (either directly, by phone or email); and
• any other information you submit to us through your use of the website and/or services and products.

If you can not be identified from the information that we collect (for example, when personal data has been anonymised) then this privacy policy does not apply.

By accessing our website and/or using our services and products you are consenting to the collection, use, disclosure, storage and processing of your personal information in accordance with this policy.

We collect personal information about you:

• from you directly, when you provide that personal information to us, including via the website and any related service, through any registration or subscription process, through any contact with us (e.g. telephone call or email), when you provide feedback, or when you use Village Guide or related services and products;
• automatically, when you visit our website and/or use our services and products. This information includes your IP address, device type, what pages you are visiting on our website and any links you click on while using our website. This information is used to gain a better understanding of how people are using our website and how we can better this experience for our customers; and
• third parties where you have authorised this or the information is publicly available. This information is used to supplement the personal information we already hold about you, in order to personalise and improve our services and products, and to validate the personal information you have already provided to us.

If possible, we will collect personal information from you directly. You do not have to provide us with your personal information if you do not want to. Although, if you choose not to you may be unable to use some parts or all of our website and/or related products and services.

We do not collect any other personal information about you, including details about your race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political information or any other genetic or biometric data.

When you make a village or care home enquiry through our website your contact details are passed on to the facility you are enquiring about so they can contact you directly. Any further personal information you provide directly to the facility will be governed by the facility’s privacy policy.

We will use your personal information:

• to provide our website and related services and products to you;
• to market our website and related services and products to you, including contacting you electronically (e.g. by text or email for this purpose);
• to provide you with newsletters or other publications that you have subscribed to;
• to improve our website and related services and products that we provide to you;
• to respond to communications from you, including a complaint or any assistance you have requested from us in relation to your use of the website or related services and products;
• to conduct research and statistical analysis (on an anonymised basis);
• to protect and/or enforce our legal rights and interests, including defending any claim; and
• for any other purpose authorised by you or the Act.

The information you provide us is stored in our database and used by us in accordance with this policy.

You will not receive communications from us unless you select the 'tick box' agreeing to be added to our database. If you no longer want to receive communications from us, you may opt-out via the unsubscribe link included in our communications to you. We do not:

• provide customer lists or contact details (other than contact details to retirement villages and care home operators as authorised by you) to our advertisers or business partners; or
• sell or distribute our membership database.

Unless expressly authorised by you or under this policy, we will not disclose your personal information to any third party except in the course of providing our services and products to you. We may disclose your personal information to:

• any business that supports our services and products, including any person that hosts or maintains any underlying IT system or data centre that we use to provide the website or other services and products;
• retirement villages and rest homes as authorised by you;
• other third parties (for anonymised statistical information);
• a person who can require us to supply your personal information (e.g. a regulatory authority)<;/li>
• any other person authorised by the Act or another law (e.g. a law enforcement agency); and
• any other person authorised by you.

Third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose.

Where you have expressly requested a free property report through our website and provided your email address, phone number and residential address through the online form, this information is provided to Barfoot & Thompson for the purposes of preparing the property report and providing this to you via email. Where you have provided this Personal Information, it will be held by Barfoot & Thompson subject to its own privacy policy.

Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country you live in (for example, countries which our servers are located). Although these countries may have different privacy laws, we ensure that your personal information remains protected to the same standard it would if it was being held in the country you live in.

Your personal information will only be transferred or disclosed to third parties or countries that have appropriate privacy laws and regulations in place and provide sufficient protection for your information where we are confident that your personal information will be protected. To ensure that these third parties will protect your personal information we may require them to enter into a contract enforcing contractual clauses relating to the Act.

We have processes and policies in place to ensure that your personal information is stored in a secure environment protected from unauthorised access and have security measures in place to ensure that the Act is adhered to.

The personal information that we collect from you is stored digitally in the form of cloud storage. This information may be accessed by our employees if requested by you or in connection with the provision of our services to you, otherwise we ensure that access to this information is restricted. We have appropriate systems in place to protect against unauthorised access, copying or disclosure of any personal information. We carry out ongoing reviews of the security measures in place to ensure that your information is securely held.

We will take all reasonable steps to ensure the personal information used or disclosed in accordance with this policy is accurate, complete, relevant, up to date and not misleading.

We will hold your personal information while we provide our products and services to you and after the provision of the products and services for so long as we are legally entitled to do so. This length of time will depend on whether we have an ongoing business need to retain it (for example, to comply with any applicable legal requirements). Once we no longer need to retain your personal information, we will ensure that this is deleted or anonymised.

Subject to certain grounds for refusal set out in the Act, you have the right to request the following:

• A correction to your personal information.
• Access to your personal information.
• The deletion or removal of your personal information.
• To request a transfer of your personal information to you or a third party.
• To withdraw consent to the use of your personal information.

Before you exercise these rights, we will need evidence to confirm that you are the individual to whom the personal information relates.

In respect of a request for correction, if we think the correction is reasonable and we are reasonably able to change the personal information, we will make the correction. If we do not make the correction, we will take reasonable steps to note on the personal information that you requested the correction.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, email us at info@villageguide.co.nz. Your email should provide evidence of who you are and set out the details of your request

We may charge you our reasonable costs of carrying out any of the above requests.

While we take reasonable steps to maintain secure internet connections, if you provide us with personal information over the internet, the provision of that information is at your own risk.

If you follow a link on our website to another site, the owner of that site will have its own privacy policy relating to your personal information. We encourage you to review that site’s privacy policy before you provide personal information. We have no responsibility and we will have no liability for the content and activity of these linked sites.

We use cookies (an alphanumeric identifier that we transfer to your computer’s hard drive so that we can recognise your browser) to monitor your use of the website. You may disable cookies by changing the settings on your browser, although this may mean that you cannot use all of the features of our website.

We use re-marketing features within Google Analytics. This allows us to show our display advertising across the internet, on other websites, via third-party ad serving vendors, including Google.

Village Guide and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together to inform, optimise, and serve ads based on past visits to our website.

You can opt-out of Google Analytics tracking for Display Advertising and customise the Google Display Network ads shown to you using the Google Ads Preferences Manager.

Any privacy concerns you may have can be resolved quickly by contacting us at info@villageguide.co.nz

If you feel as if we have not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, please get in touch with the Office of the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner.