AHN Privacy Policy
Note: This policy is subject to change at any time. Please check all Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd (“AHN”) Policies on a regular basis for updates.
AHN is owned by MyStay International Pty Ltd (ABN 80 605 198 990).
This policy has been designed and implemented for users of Australian Homestay Network, or future entities that will come under the collective (Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd). For further information please go to: www.homestaynetwork.org
This privacy policy describes how Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd and its subsidiaries and licensees/franchisees and affiliated entities, manage the personal information (“PI”) you provide and are referred to under the term “Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd” within this policy.
Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd provides administrative and support services to hosts, students/guests/users, agents, educators and other persons involved in the homestay industry (“Services”) through various channels, including via our website/s and the Homestay Management System accessible through the Website/s.
We have created this privacy policy in order to demonstrate our commitment to the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (together, the “Australian Privacy Law”).
The type of PI we collect depends on your relationship with us, as follows:
Public: if you submit a query via our online ‘contact us’ form, or otherwise email or call Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd, we may collect your name, email address, phone number, address and location.
Registration: when you register with us as a host, student/guest/user, educator or agent, we will collect your name, your chosen username and password, email address, mailing address and profile picture (should you choose to provide one). If you register as a host, we will also ask you to provide information about your background to help us assess your suitability to be a host, and banking details for payments. If you register as a student/guest/user, we will also ask you to provide your bank or credit card details for payments, passport and nationality details, student/guest/user registration details, and other information about you that will help us to find the right placement for you.
Log Files: Any time you visit any of our websites, our servers automatically gather information from your browser (such as your IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, platform type, date/time stamp, and number of clicks) to analyse trends, administer the site, prevent fraud, track visitor movement in the aggregate, and gather broad demographic information. For example, we may log your IP address for system administration purposes. IP addresses are logged to track a user’s session. This gives us an idea of which parts of our site users are visiting. We do not share the log files externally.
Purchase Information. To process purchases, we will require your name, address, phone number, email address and credit card information. Such information is used to process your order or as otherwise described herein. Credit card transactions are processed through a PCI Level 1-certified industry leading provider, which only uses your information for that purpose.
To ensure in finding the most suitable placement for you, we may ask for additional Non-Sensitive Personally Identifiable Information. This information may include, but is not exclusive to:
Please be aware that some documentation may have Individual Healthcare Identifiers as defined in the “Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 “and we will adhere to applicable sections of the legislation through the fulfilment of the Services.
For clarity, it is not mandatory to provide this documentation or information, but it does optimise the ability for AHN to provide you and other persons involved in your arrangement with the Services.
We collect your PI as part of offering or providing our Services and answering your questions. This includes PI you provide through our Website (e.g. via our online contact us form, or when you register an account with us) and during telephone calls. Generally, we collect your PI directly from you but may also collect your PI from other people or organisations if you have given consent for them to do so (e.g. an Education Agent for student/guest/users)
Under data protection laws, we are only allowed to process your PI if we have a legal basis for doing so. We have set out below how and why we use your PI and our legal basis for doing so.
| How and why we use your PI | The legal basis for our doing so |
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We need your PI to provide you with our Services which include:
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The processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into that contract. Where we are processing any information about your nationality, ethnicity or medical conditions we will process that PI to perform our obligations under the contract only with your express consent, which you are asked to confirm at the time you supply the information to us. |
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We also process your PI to do the following:
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Subject to your rights set out below under the heading ‘Your rights’, the legitimate interest of providing Services to you and providing services via our Website. |
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To contact you for marketing purposes. |
Where you have used our services we may contact you via email and SMS to tell you about similar goods and services that we offer. You have the right to ask us not to use your PI in this way at any time. If you have not used our services but we have obtained your PI via an enquiry on the Website then we will only contact you for marketing purposes if we have received your consent to do so. |
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To comply with our legal obligations, including obligations relating to the protection of PI. |
This processing is necessary due to a legal obligation that we are subject to. |
We will, if practicable, allow you to use a pseudonym or to not identify yourself unless this is impractical or against the law.
In some instances, if you do not provide us with certain PI we may not be able to provide you with the relevant product, Service or information (including fulfilling the Main Purposes)). This may have an effect on whether we can begin or continue a relationship with you or allow you to use our Services.
We may disclose your PI to our service providers and partners in order to assist us in providing the Services to you. We use a network of global third-party service providers in order to ensure that the Services we provide to you are of the best possible standard. Some of our service providers, or the services they provide (like cloud-based storage solutions), are based outside of Australia. If your PI is transferred outside of Australia we will take all reasonable steps in accordance with the requirements of the relevant data protection laws, that adequate procedures are in place to ensure the security of your PI.
PI may be communicated electronically or verbally by phone. We may also disclose your PI in other ways with your consent or as required or permitted by law.
Disclosure to Other Users. As an integral part of providing our services to you, we may disclose your profile information to other students, guests and users. Photos and other profile information posted by you or supplied to us to post on your profile will be available to registered profiles that are matched with you. PI may be communicated to your matches electronically or verbally by phone. We will also share your PI with other companies within our group of companies (which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries or to any prospective buyer or seller (and their representatives) in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets.
Disclosure By Law. You acknowledge and agree that we may disclose information you provide if required to do so by law, at the request of a third party, or if we, in our sole discretion, believe that disclosure is reasonable to (1) comply with the law, requests or orders from law enforcement, or any legal process (whether or not such disclosure is required by applicable law); (2) protect or defend Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd, or a third party’s, rights or property; or (3) protect someone’s health or safety, such as when harm or violence against any person (including you) is threatened.
We take all reasonable steps to keep the PI we hold secure and to ensure it is protected against misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or inappropriate disclosure. We may hold PI in both hard copy and electronic forms in secure systems accessible only to authorised personnel.
Our software may issue ‘cookies’ (small text files) to your device when you access and use the Website and you will be asked to consent to this at the time (e.g. when you first visit our website). Cookies do not affect your privacy and security since a cookie cannot read data off your system or read cookie files created by other sites.
Our Website uses cookies and other tracking and monitoring software to: distinguish our users from one another; collect standard Internet log information; and to collect visitor behaviour information. The information is used to track user interactions with the Website and allows us to provide you with a good experience when you access the Website, helps us to improve our Website, and allows us to compile statistical reports on Website visitors and Website activity.
You can set your system not to accept cookies if you wish (for example by changing your browser settings so cookies are not accepted), however please note that some of our Website features may not function if you remove cookies from your system. For further general information about cookies please visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
Our Website may contain links to other websites. Unless the other website is one of our websites, we are not responsible for the privacy practices of the owners of those websites. We recommend that you read the privacy policy of any website that asks you to provide your PI.
Because many users tend to use our service at different points of their student or accommodation needs, we retain your personal information for continued service and convenience purposes until you advise us not to do so (See section “Contacting us about privacy” below). Notwithstanding the foregoing, we may retain personal information in order to comply with applicable laws, keep accurate records, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, enforce our Terms and Conditions of Service or other agreements, or for any other legally permissible purpose.
AHN is committed to managing personal information in accordance with privacy principles. We have systems and processes in place to ensure your data is secured and appropriately managed, including in the event of a suspected or known data breach. Any questions about data security can directed to us via the contact details below.
You have the right
You are responsible for ensuring that your PI is accurate, current and complete. If you have a registered account with us, you can update or change your PI and email preferences at any time via your account’s profile page.
If you have a question or want to make a complaint about how we handle your PI, please contact us using the details below. We will review your complaint and will respond to you after we have carefully considered it. We may require further information from you in order to resolve any complaints. Requests may take up to 20 working days to complete.
We can be contacted via:
If you wish for Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd to provide you with your currently held “PI” on your profile, across any of our services, please contact us as below:
If you wish for Australian Homestay Network Pty Ltd to remove your “PI” from our system, across any of our services, please contact us as below:
Please note that such removal may impact on your ability to access or use the Services that we provide.
If you have any concerns about how we collect or process your PI then you have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, which for Australia is Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time and may notify you if there are significant changes. Therefore, it’s important that you check this Privacy Policy from time to time to see if any changes have been made.
Your use of our website(s), including any dispute concerning privacy, is subject to this privacy statement and the applicable Terms and Conditions of Service. BY USING OUR WEBSITE, YOU ARE ACCEPTING THE PRACTICES SET OUT IN THIS PRIVACY STATEMENT AND THE APPLICABLE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE.
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement page and any other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, or by other means, such as e-mail, at our discretion.
Your continued use of any portion of our website following posting of the updated privacy statement will constitute your acceptance of the changes.
This privacy statement was last revised on 1 August 2024
