Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

AUWith (hereinafter referred to as "the Service") is committed to protecting the personal information of its users in accordance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and its 2024 amendments, including the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, hold, and disclose personal information.

2. Personal Information We Collect

The Service collects the following categories of personal information:

• Registration: Email address, nickname, password (stored encrypted), preferred region
• Google Social Login: Google account email, profile name, profile image URL
• Service Usage: Posts, comments, bookmarks, search history (when you create a post or comment, the IP address and browser information at the time of posting are recorded together)
• Automatically Collected: IP address, browser type, access time, cookies. We record IP addresses for the purposes of security, responding to fraudulent or unlawful conduct (fraud, threats, defamation, etc.), and preserving evidence to respond to lawful requests from law enforcement (Australian Police) and overseas diplomatic missions (embassies) where required or authorised by law. Non-logged-in (anonymous) visitors are also subject to this collection.

3. Purpose of Collection (APP 6)

Personal information collected is used for the following purposes:

• User identification and authentication
• Service provision and operation (forums, search, personalised content)
• Responding to user enquiries and delivering notices
• Statistical analysis for service improvement
• Fraud prevention and service security

4. Retention of Personal Information (APP 11)

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected. Specific retention periods are as follows:

Visitor access logs (including IP) are retained for 90 days and login history for 180 days, after which they are automatically deleted. Where a longer retention period is required by applicable law, we will retain the information for the required period.

5. Disclosure of Personal Information (APP 6)

We do not disclose personal information to third parties without your consent, except in the following circumstances:

• Where required or authorised by Australian law or a court/tribunal order
• Disclosure to law enforcement and diplomatic missions (Law Enforcement Disclosure): We do not voluntarily disclose records such as IP addresses to third parties without your consent. However, we may disclose them to law enforcement agencies (Australian Police) and overseas diplomatic missions (embassies) only where required or permitted by a court order, warrant, or law (APP 6). This also covers permitted general situations under section 16A of the Privacy Act (e.g. to lessen or prevent a serious threat to life, health, or safety).
• For law enforcement purposes in accordance with APP 6.2(e)

6. Cookies

The Service uses cookies to enhance user experience. In accordance with the Privacy Act 2024 amendments, non-essential cookies are activated only after obtaining your explicit consent.

You can manage your cookie preferences at any time via the Cookie Settings page. You may also configure cookies through your browser settings; however, blocking cookies may limit certain features of the Service.

7. Security of Personal Information (APP 11)

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification, and disclosure, including:

• Password encryption using bcrypt hashing
• HTTPS encryption for all data in transit
• Access control management and log monitoring
• Regular security reviews and assessments

8. Your Rights Under the APPs

Under the Australian Privacy Principles, you have the following rights:

• Right of Access (APP 12): You may request access to the personal information we hold about you.
• Right of Correction (APP 13): You may request correction of any inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, or misleading personal information.
• Right of Deletion: You may request deletion of your personal information by deleting your account.
• Right to Complain: You may lodge a complaint about our handling of your personal information using the contact details below.

9. Cross-border Disclosure (APP 8)

In order to operate the Service, we use the following external services which may involve the transfer of personal information to overseas servers:

• Google Analytics (United States): Anonymised visitor statistics (only when analytics cookies are consented to)
• Google OAuth (United States): Social login authentication processing
• Cloudinary (United States/Europe): Image hosting and optimisation

In addition, personal information may be transferred to overseas servers through Cloudflare (edge network — IP address processing) and Sentry (error log collection). Before disclosing personal information to an overseas recipient, we take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles, in accordance with APP 8.

10. Automated Decision-Making

The Service performs the following automated processing which may affect your experience:

• Trending Algorithm: Automatically selects and displays popular posts based on aggregated interaction data (views, comments, likes). No personal information is directly used.
• Personalised Content: Displays posts from your selected region of interest as a priority.
• Automated Security Analysis (Bot / IP Reputation Classification): To protect the service, we may automatically analyse technical characteristics of access requests (the User-Agent and the presence of standard supplementary headers that browsers send automatically) and per-IP access patterns to classify bot/automated traffic. This classification may be used for statistics and security analysis, for excluding fraudulent clicks from partner settlements, for requesting an additional security check (CAPTCHA) during sign-up to prevent spam, and as a supporting signal when assessing restrictions on abnormal connections (IP); it does not block the viewing of pages themselves. The original values of supplementary headers (client hints and language settings) are not stored — only derived classification results are retained, and the User-Agent is kept separately as part of the access log (see the table in Section 4).

The Service does not engage in fully automated decision-making that has a significant effect on your legal rights.

11. Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB Scheme)

In the event of an eligible data breach as defined under Part IIIC of the Privacy Act 1988, we will:

• Conduct a reasonable and expeditious assessment within 30 days of becoming aware of the breach
• Notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) if the breach is likely to result in serious harm
• Notify affected individuals as soon as practicable, including a description of the breach and recommended steps

11. Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB Scheme)

In the event of an eligible data breach as defined under Part IIIC of the Privacy Act 1988, we will:

• Email: [email protected]

You may also lodge a complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC): www.oaic.gov.au