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Privacy Policy

Introduction

Realtime Research is a division of Rushton Services Pty Ltd T/A The Human Network - ABN 36 625 846 460 - a wholly owned Australian company established in 1999 to primarily conduct market research recruitment on behalf of its clients and to provide an internet based capability to host questionnaires.

The Human Network is a member of ADIA and respects and upholds your rights under the Australian Privacy Principles contained in the Privacy Act 1988.

The Human Network also adheres to the Privacy (Market and Social Research) Code 2021 and the Research Society’s Code of Professional Behaviour.

For more information about the Privacy Act, the Australian Privacy Principles and the Code click here.

This Privacy Policy for The Human Network lets you know:

  • What personal information of yours we hold, how we collect it, what we do with it, who we will disclose it to
  • How you can access the personal information we hold about you and how to change inaccurate personal information
  • How to opt out of receiving communications from us
  • How to inquire or complain about The Human Network and its application of the Australian Privacy Principles

We make our Privacy Policy easily accessible and available on our website as part of the Privacy section.

 

What personal information about you does The Human Network collect and hold?

(a)  Registration:

The information The Human Network collects at registration will include: your first and last name, year of birth, contact phone number, email address and residential suburb and postcode.

For the purposes of identifying the correct participant and in order to participate in Market and Social Research, it is not possible to remain anonymous or to be identified by a pseudonym. This is also not possible when we receive your contact details from a third party or where the research data itself may potentially allow for identification.

(b) Screening / Recruitment:

Depending on the nature of the research we are recruiting for, we may also collect sensitive information from you, including political opinion or health information etc. Sensitive information will only be collected with your prior consent and only if it is directly related to, or reasonably necessary for, the research being conducted by our client.

 

How does The Human Network collect and hold your personal information?

The Human Network will generally collect your personal information directly from you in the course of you registering with Realtime Research and when participating in our screening questionnaires. However, we may also from time to time collect personal information about you from third parties, such as organisations that provide lists of potential candidates for research. If so, we will inform you as soon as practicable of this collection and the circumstances of this collection.

 

What are the purposes for which The Human Network uses, handles and discloses your personal information?

We will only use and disclose your personal information for the purpose of conducting our clients’ research 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 client’s 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 client’s research, you will only be re-contacted by them if you have given your permission.

 

Who will the Human Network disclose your personal information to?

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 to our client. We will not disclose any personal information or personally identifiable research information to a third party for a purpose other than conducting our client’s research unless we have your express prior consent or are required to do so by an Australian law or court/tribunal order.

In the course of conducting our client’s research we may rely on third party service providers to host or store the data we collect who are located overseas. In most cases, this survey data and research information will not be personally identifiable. We will also take reasonable steps to ensure any service providers (and their employees and contractors) comply with the Privacy Act and this Privacy Policy and/or are subject to similar privacy laws and you have the ability to enforce those rights.

 

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). A fee may be charged to cover the cost of retrieval. However this fee will not be excessive and will only apply to the facilitation of your request.

If at any time you believe that personal information (registration information) we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, you are able to amend this by accessing our website using your unique PIN number to do this. You may request amendment of it and we will either amend the information or make a record of your comment, as we think appropriate.

 

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, the APPs or the Code, then we ask that you contact us immediately using the following contact details:

Privacy Officer ben@thn.com.au

We will respond and advise whether we agree with your complaint or not. If we do not agree, we will provide reasons. If we do agree, we will advise what (if any) action we consider it appropriate to take in response. If you are still not satisfied after having contacted us and given us a reasonable time to respond, then we suggest that you contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner by:

Phone: 1300 363 992 (local call cost, but calls from mobile and pay phones may incur higher charges). If calling from overseas (including Norfolk Island): +61 2 9284 9749

TTY: 1800 620 241 (this number is dedicated to the hearing impaired only, no voice calls)

TIS: Translating and Interpreting Service: 131 450 (If you don’t speak English or English is your second language and you need assistance and ask for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner)

Post: GPO Box 2999 Canberra ACT 2601
Fax: +61 2 9284 9666
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au

 

Realtime Research (The Human Network) Website

When visiting Realtime Research’s web site, 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 site regularly and tailor the site to their interests and requirements;
  • The date and time of the visit to the site – this is important for identifying the website’s busy times and ensuring maintenance on the site is conducted outside these periods;
  • Pages accessed and documents downloaded – this indicates to The Human Network 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 The Realtime Research site is to candidates; the type of browser used – this is important for browser specific coding
  • In order to optimize the Realtime Research web site and better understand it’s 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 Realtime Research web site does not use persistent cookies. Upon closing your browser the session cookie set by this web site is destroyed and no Personal Information is maintained which might identify you should you visit our web site at a later date.

 

Retention and destruction of Personal Information

The Human Network will destroy or de-identify your personal information as soon as practicable once it is no longer needed for the purpose for our client’s research purposes. However, we may in certain circumstances be required by law to retain your personal information after the 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.

 

Security of Information

The Human Network will take reasonable steps to protect your personally identifiable 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, you should keep in mind that the transmission of information over the Internet is not completely secure or error-free. 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.

 

Miscellaneous

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

This policy is effective from 1 January 2022. 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 The Human Network in any way. From time to time we may regard it as necessary or desirable to act outside the policy. The Human Network 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.