Octopus Research Privacy Policy

April 2023

1. Introduction

At Octopus Research, we value your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information.  We respect and uphold your rights under the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Privacy Act”) and adhere to the Privacy (Market and Social Research) Code 2021 (“Code”).

This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal information.

2. The personal data we collect and hold

As a market research company, we gather information on people's opinions, behaviours and attitudes towards products and services our clients would like to explore. As part of this, we may also collect personal information such as your name, email address, phone number, demographic information or any other information you voluntarily provide to us.

When providing personal information you have the option of remaining anonymous or use a pseudonym to be identified by. However, in rare circumstances, such as where we receive your contact details from a third party or where the research data itself may potentially allow for identification, this may not be practicable.

Sensitive information will only be collected with your prior consent and only if it is directly related to, or reasonably necessary for, the research we conduct.

The majority of information collected will be opinions gathered via our own Octopus Surveys panel, governed by the following privacy policy https://octopusgroup.com.au/privacy.cshtml 

3. How do we use your information?

We will generally collect your personal information directly from you via our Octopus Surveys panel while you are participating in our research and/or surveys. However, we may also from time to time collect personal information about you from third parties, such as organisations that provide us with a list of potential candidates for a research project.  If so, we will inform you as soon as practicable of this collection and the circumstances of this collection.

4. What are the purposes for which we use, handle and disclose your personal information?

We will only use and disclose your personal information for the purpose of conducting our research to maintain the quality of our panel/s and in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We will not use or disclose your personally identifiable information for the purpose of advertising, promotions or direct marketing activities.  If you declined to participate in our research, we may use your personal information to re-contact you for a research purpose if we have valid reasons to believe a genuine research concern warrants such re-contact.  If you have participated in our research, we will only re-contact you if you were informed of this or we have valid reasons to believe a genuine research concern warrants such re-contact.

5. Disclosure to Third Parties

We will not disclose any personally identifiable research information we collect from you unless we have your express prior consent and will only report the information you provide in an aggregate form that will not personally identify you. We will not disclose any personal information or personally identifiable research information to a third party for a purpose other than conducting our research unless we have your express prior consent or are required to do so by an Australian law or court/tribunal order.

6. Openness

You have the right to request access to any personal information we hold about you. You can request this information by contacting the Privacy Officer at the details listed below. Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will respond to your request in a reasonable time and endeavour to provide you with a suitable range of choices as to how access is provided (eg, emailing or mailing it to you). If at any time you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, then you may request amendment of it and we will either amend the information or make a record of your comment, as we think appropriate.

7. Questions and complaints

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or believe that we have at any time failed to keep one of our commitments to you to handle your personal information in the manner required by the Privacy Act or the APPs, then we ask that you contact us immediately.

Privacy Officer: privacy@octopusgroup.com.au 

8. Octopus Research Website  

When visiting our website, the site server makes a record of the visit and logs the following information for statistical and administrative purposes:

• the user’s server address – to consider the users who use the sites regularly and tailor the sites to their interests and requirements;
• the date and time of the visit to the site – this is important for identifying a website’s busy times and ensuring maintenance on the sites is conducted outside these periods;
• pages accessed and documents downloaded – this indicates to us which pages or documents are most important to users and also helps identify important information that may be difficult to find;
• duration of the visit – this indicates to us how interesting and informative our site is to candidates; the type of browser used – this is important for browser specific coding
• In order to optimise the website and better understand its usage, we collect the visiting domain name or IP address, Computer Operating System, Browser Type and Screen Resolution.

A cookie is a piece of information that an Internet web site sends to your browser when you access information at that site. Cookies are either stored in memory (session cookies) or placed on your hard disk (persistent cookies). The Octopus Research website does not use persistent cookies. Upon closing your browser the session cookie set by this website is destroyed and no Personal Information is maintained which might identify you should you visit our web site at a later date.

9. Retention and destruction of Personal Information

Octopus Research will destroy or de-identify your personal information as soon as practicable once it is no longer needed for our research purposes. However, we may in certain circumstances be required by law to retain your personal information after our research has been completed. In this case your personal information will continue to be protected in accordance with this Policy. If we destroy personal information we will do so by taking reasonable steps and using up-to-date techniques and processes.

10. Security of Information

We take reasonable measures to protect your personal information as you transmit your information from your computer to our website and to protect such information from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.

However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage can be entirely error free, therefore, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information.

In particular, e-mail sent to or from this website may not be secure, and you should therefore take special care in deciding what information you send to us via e-mail.

11. Miscellaneous

In this policy “personal information” has the same meaning as under the Privacy Act.

This policy is effective from 5 April 2023. We may change this policy from time to time. Although we intend to observe this Privacy Policy at all times, it is not legally binding on Octopus Research. From time to time we may regard it as necessary or desirable to act outside the policy. Octopus Research may do so, subject only to any other applicable contractual rights you have and any statutory rights you have under the Privacy Act or other applicable legislation.