Privacy policy

(a) AU Software PTY LTD respects your right to privacy and is committed to safeguarding the privacy of our customers and website visitors. This policy sets out how we collect and treat your personal information.

(b) We handle personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

(c) "Personal information" is information we hold which is identifiable as being about you. This includes information such as your name, email address, identification number, or any other type of information that can reasonably identify an individual, either directly or indirectly.

(d) You may contact us by emailing at support@citizenshiptest.com.au for further information about this Privacy Policy.

(a) AU Software PTY LTD will, from time to time, receive and store personal information you submit to our website, provided to us directly or given to us in other forms.

(b) You give us your email address so that we can create your account, send you information and updates, and process your order. Your payment card details are entered directly into our payment processor's own secure frame and are never sent to or stored by us, a subscription bought in our iPhone app is paid to Apple, and one bought in our Android app is paid to Google through Google Play - see section 9.

(c) We may collect additional information at other times, including but not limited to, when you provide feedback, when you provide information about your personal or business affairs, change your content or email preference, respond to surveys and/or promotions, provide financial or credit card information, or communicate with our customer support.

(d) Additionally, we may also collect any other information you provide while interacting with us.

(e) Separately from anything you submit to us, we collect information about how you use the website itself - the pages you view and how you interact with them. Section 14 explains what is collected, including the session recording described in section 14(c).

(a) AU Software PTY LTD collects personal information from you in a variety of ways, including when you interact with us electronically or in person, when you access our website and when we engage in business activities with you. We may receive personal information from third parties. If we do, we will protect it as set out in this Privacy Policy.

(b) By providing us with personal information, you consent to the supply of that information subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

(a) AU Software PTY LTD may use personal information collected from you to provide you with information about our products or services. We may also make you aware of new and additional products, services and opportunities available to you.

(b) AU Software PTY LTD will use personal information only for the purposes that you consent to. This may include to:

(i) provide you with products and services during the usual course of our business activities;

(ii) administer our business activities;

(iii) manage, research and develop our products and services;

(iv) provide you with information about our products and services;

(v) communicate with you by a variety of measures including, but not limited to, by telephone, email, sms or mail; and

(vi) investigate any complaints.

If you withhold your personal information, it may not be possible for us to provide you with our products and services or for you to fully access our website.

(c) We may disclose your personal information to comply with a legal requirement, such as a law, regulation, court order, subpoena, warrant, legal proceedings or in response to a law enforcement agency request.

(d) If there is a change of control in our business or a sale or transfer of business assets, we reserve the right to transfer to the extent permissible at law our user databases, together with any personal information and non-personal information contained in those databases.

(a) AU Software PTY LTD may disclose your personal information to any of our employees, officers, insurers, professional advisers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

(b) If we do disclose your personal information to a third party, we will protect it in accordance with this privacy policy.

(c) The third parties that receive information about your use of this website and our iPhone and Android apps are: our analytics providers, Google and Microsoft, described in section 14(c) (website only); Google, which also provides the reCAPTCHA anti-abuse check described in sections 14(c)(iii) and 15(c); our payment processors, Square, Apple and Google (Google Play), described in section 9; OpenAI, which writes AI Answers, described in section 16; TypeSafe, which decides whether a message typed in the study assistant opens a practice or goes to AI Answers, also described in section 16; and Netlify, which serves the website itself and records standard web server logs, described in section 8. Each handles that information under its own privacy policy, which is linked in the relevant section.

(a) We offer this service to people preparing for the Australian citizenship test, which is taken in Australia. We do not direct or market the service to people in the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, and we do not monitor the behaviour of people in those places.

(b) Wherever you are when you use the Website, we handle your personal information under the Australian Privacy Principles, and the rights described in section 7 are available to you.

(c) We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. The service is intended for people old enough to apply for Australian citizenship in their own right. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email support@citizenshiptest.com.au and we will delete it.

(d) We do not ask you for sensitive information as defined in the Privacy Act - such as information about your health, race, religion or political opinions - and you should not send it to us.

(a) See what we hold. You may ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you - see section 11.

(b) Correct it. If anything we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date or incomplete, tell us and we will correct it.

(c) Delete it. You can delete your account at any time from the account menu. It is deleted immediately and permanently, together with your test history, answers and starred questions. We keep records of the payments you made, because Australian tax law requires us to, and a record that the account was deleted, which does not include your email address. Section 5 of our Terms of use explains how deletion works.

(d) Opt out of analytics. Section 14(c) has an opt-out link for each analytics service, and explains how to block or delete cookies.

(e) Complain. Section 12 explains how to complain to us. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

(f) We may ask you to verify your identity before acting on any of these requests.

(a) Information that we collect may from time to time be stored, processed in or transferred between parties or sites located in countries outside of Australia.

(a1) Specifically, the analytics services described in section 14(c) process information in the United States: Google (Google Analytics 4) and Microsoft (Clarity). Our payment processors are described in section 9. Our website hosting is described in (c) below.

(b) Your account data stays in Australia. The application that runs your account - your email address, your test history and your saved questions - is hosted in Australia, and so is its database.

(c) The website itself is served from a global network. Our web hosting provider is Netlify, a United States company, which delivers the pages and files of this website from servers around the world and records standard web server logs including your IP address. Netlify's Privacy Policy: netlify.com/privacy

(d) Overseas recipients. The overseas parties that receive personal information are Google and Microsoft, in the United States, for the purposes described in section 14(c); OpenAI, in the United States, for AI Answers as described in section 16; TypeSafe, in the United States, for the study assistant as described in section 16; and Netlify as described in (c) above. Our payment processors, Square, Apple and Google (Google Play), are described in section 9. Before disclosing personal information to an overseas recipient we take steps that are reasonable in the circumstances, as Australian Privacy Principle 8 requires: in practice that means relying on each provider's published privacy commitments and configuring the service to send it as little personal information as possible. We do not have binding corporate rules or European Commission standard contractual clauses in place, and we do not claim to.

(a) We provide paid products and/or services within Service. In that case, we use third-party services for payment processing (e.g. payment processors).

(b) We will not store your payment card details. That information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy. These payment processors adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of payment information.

(c) The payment processors we work with are:

(i) Square, for subscriptions bought on our website. Their Privacy Policy can be viewed at: squareup.com/au/en/legal/general/privacy

(ii) Apple, for subscriptions bought in our iPhone app. Apple takes the payment under its own terms and we never see your payment details. We receive only what we need to give you access: a transaction reference, the subscription's status and its renewal or end date. Apple's Privacy Policy can be viewed at: apple.com/legal/privacy

(iii) Google, for subscriptions bought in our Android app through Google Play. Google takes the payment under its own terms and we never see your payment details. We receive only what we need to give you access: an order reference, the subscription's status and its renewal or end date. Google's Privacy Policy can be viewed at: policies.google.com/privacy

(a) AU Software PTY LTD is committed to ensuring that the information you provide to us is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure information and protect it from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure.

(b) Where we engage a service provider to handle personal information on our behalf, we do so on the basis that it has adequate technical and organisational measures in place to protect that information against misuse, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

(c) The transmission and exchange of information is carried out at your own risk. We cannot guarantee the security of any information that you transmit to us, or receive from us. Although we take measures to safeguard against unauthorised disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personal information that we collect will not be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

(a) You may request details of personal information that we hold about you in accordance with the provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). If you would like a copy of the information which we hold about you or believe that any information we hold on you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, please email us at support@citizenshiptest.com.au.

(b) We reserve the right to refuse to provide you with information that we hold about you, in certain circumstances set out in the Privacy Act or any other applicable law.

(a) If you have any complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to send in details of your complaints to support@citizenshiptest.com.au. We take complaints very seriously and will respond shortly after receiving written notice of your complaint.

(a) We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time. The current version is always published on this page, with the date it was last updated shown at the top. If we make a change that materially affects how we handle personal information we have already collected about you, we will tell you before it takes effect - by email to the address on your account, where you have one - and where the law requires your consent, we will ask for it.

(a) When you visit our website

When you come to our website (CitizenshipTest.com.au), we may collect certain information such as browser type, operating system, the website you visited immediately before coming to our site, the pages you view, and how you move through and interact with those pages. Most of this is used in an aggregated manner to analyse how people use our site, so that we can improve it. Some of it, as described in (c) below, is recorded at the level of an individual visit rather than in aggregate.

(b) Cookies

We may from time to time use cookies on our website. Cookies are very small files which a website uses to identify you when you come back to the site and to store details about your use of the site. Cookies are not malicious programs that access or damage your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can choose to reject cookies by changing your browser settings. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of our website. Our website may from time to time use cookies to analyse website traffic and help us provide a better website visitor experience. In addition, cookies may be used to serve relevant ads to website visitors through third party services such as Google Analytics and Google reCaptcha.

(c) Analytics and session recording

We use two third party analytics services on this website. Both set cookies and both process the information they collect outside Australia, in the United States. We do not sell this information, and we do not use it to make decisions about individuals.

(i) Google Analytics 4, provided by Google. This tells us how many people visit, where they arrive from, which pages they read, and how many people start a practice test, create an account or make a purchase. It is used in aggregate. Google does not store full IP addresses for this service, and we do not send it your name, your email address or your test answers. Google's Privacy Policy: policies.google.com/privacy. You can opt out across all websites using Google's browser add-on: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

(ii) Microsoft Clarity, provided by Microsoft. Clarity goes further than counting visits: it records individual browsing sessions. That recording can include your mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, the pages you view and the content displayed on them, which on this website includes practice questions and the answers you select. It also produces heatmaps showing where visitors click and scroll. We use this to find parts of the site that are confusing or broken. Microsoft may also use the data it collects in accordance with its own privacy statement. Microsoft's Privacy Statement: privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement. You can opt out of Clarity using Microsoft's opt-out page: choice.clarity.ms

(iii) reCAPTCHA Enterprise, provided by Google. This runs on our sign-in, registration, password reset, contact and practice test pages to tell real people apart from automated abuse. To do that, Google collects device and browser information and how you interact with the page, and processes it in the United States. Google's Privacy Policy: policies.google.com/privacy

We ask Clarity to mask information typed into form fields, and payment card details are never visible to it because they are entered directly into our payment processor's own secure frame. Even so, session recording is a more detailed form of collection than ordinary web analytics, and we think you should be told about it plainly rather than have it covered by a general reference to "analytics".

If you would prefer not to be included in either service, you can use the opt-out links above, or block or delete cookies through your browser settings as described in (b).

(d) Third party sites

Our site may from time to time have links to other websites not owned or controlled by us. These links are meant for your convenience only. Links to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship or endorsement or approval of these websites. Please be aware that AU Software PTY LTD is not responsible for the privacy practises of other such websites. We encourage our users to be aware, when they leave our website, to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personal identifiable information.

(a) Our iPhone and Android apps use the same account as the website and keep the same account data: your email address, your test history, your saved questions and the questions you ask AI Answers. Sections 1 to 13 apply to them in the same way.

(b) The apps have no analytics, session recording or advertising, and do not use your device's advertising identifier. Section 14(c) applies to the website only.

(c) When you create an account or sign in, the apps use Google's reCAPTCHA Enterprise check to block automated abuse. It sends Google information about your device and the app to make that check, under Google's Privacy Policy.

(d) If you subscribe in the iPhone app, Apple takes the payment - see section 9(c)(ii). If you subscribe in the Android app, Google takes the payment through Google Play - see section 9(c)(iii).

(e) You can delete your account from the app's account menu, and your data is deleted as described in section 7.

(a) When you ask AI Answers a question, we send its text, together with passages from Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, to OpenAI in the United States, which writes the answer. Translations of answers are made by OpenAI in the same way. We do not send OpenAI your name or email address.

(b) In the study assistant, each message you type is first sent to TypeSafe in the United States, which works out whether you want to open a practice (for example, Part 2 practice) or get an answer from AI Answers, as in (a). We send TypeSafe only that message, your previous message in the assistant and the name of the practice on your screen - never your name, email address or results. TypeSafe handles it for us under a data processing agreement, and does not use it to train its models.

(c) In our iPhone and Android apps we ask you before your first message on each device, and nothing is sent until you allow it. On the website, a notice beside the question box tells you this before you ask. If you would rather not, simply don't use AI Answers or the study assistant - its practice buttons work without sending anything.

(d) Our server records each question and message you send with your account, which we use to apply the daily limit, investigate problems and improve answers.

(e) Please don't include personal details such as your name, contact details or visa information in your questions.

(f) OpenAI and TypeSafe handle what they receive under their own policies: openai.com/policies/privacy-policy and typesafe.ai/legal/privacy-policy