Privacy Policy and Notice

This is the privacy notice of The Graduate Choir NZ, a registered charitable trust in New Zealand. Throughout this document, “we”, “our”, or “us” refer to The Graduate Choir NZ.

At The Graduate Choir NZ, we are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring the confidentiality of any information that we collect from you or that you provide to us. This includes both personal information and non-personal information. We understand that our website users are rightfully concerned about the use of their data and its security, and we aim to provide a clear explanation of our practices in this regard. 

Our policy is designed to be both specific and strict, and it complies with New Zealand law. If you have any concerns about our policy or believe that we are not adhering to it, please do let us know. If there are any aspects of our policy that you do not agree with, we regret to inform you that your only option is to leave our website. We do not share, sell or disclose any personally identifiable information that we collect from our website to any third parties, except as outlined below.

Information we collect and why we need it:

Personal and business information. This includes basic identification and contact information, such as your name and contact details. We may also collect additional information provided by you during the course of our business relationship. We treat all such information with the utmost confidentiality, and it is not used for any other purpose than to provide services to you. We expect the same level of confidentiality from our clients as well.

1. The Graduate Choir NZ uses this information in the following ways:

  1. To provide you with the services you request.

  2. We collect information from you in order to provide the products or services that you have requested from us. This includes information necessary to process your payment and deliver the product or service to you.

2. To verify your identity for security purposes

  1. We may collect information from you in order to verify your identity for security purposes. This is to ensure that we are dealing with the correct person and to protect both you and us from fraudulent activity.

3. For marketing our services and products

  1. We may use your personal information to inform you about new products, services, or promotional offers that we think may be of interest to you.

4. To provide class information

  1. We may use non-personally identifiable information in a general way to provide class information, such as demographics or usage of a particular page or service, to ourselves or third parties.

  2. To keep information for a minimum of seven years

  3. We keep information that forms part of our organisation’s record for a minimum of seven years, as required by law.

6. To pass information to relevant persons

  1. When we obtain information from you specifically to enable you to buy a product or service offered on our website by some other person, we assume that in giving us your information, you are also giving us permission to pass it to the relevant person.

7. To correspond with you or deal with you as you expect

  1. We use your email address and domain name to correspond with you or deal with you as you expect.

8. To improve our website

  1. We use website usage information, such as pages viewed, how you reached them, and how you interact with them, to improve the quality of our website and provide better content to you.

9. To store information you post on our website 

  1. Information you post on our website, such as in a forum or blog, is stored on our servers. We reserve the right to use this information in any way we decide, as stated in our terms and conditions.

10. Financial information relating to your credit cards

  1. This information is never taken by us either through our website or otherwise. At the point of payment, you are transferred to a secure page on the website of WorldPay, SagePay, Paypal, Stripe, MoneyBookers or some other reputable payment service provider. That page may be dressed in our “livery”, but it is not controlled by us. Our staff and contractors never have access to it.

11. Note on padlock symbols and other trust marks

  1. Many companies offer certification and an icon or other small graphic to prove to website visitors that the website is safe. Some certify to a high level of safety. Others are more concerned to take our money than to provide a useful service. We do not handle information about your credit card so do not subscribe to any such service.

12. Financial information relating to your credit cards

  1. We may keep your financial information to provide you with a better shopping experience next time you visit us and to prevent fraud.

  2. We use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to verify your identity to your browser and to encrypt any data you give us when you buy. This includes financial information such as credit or debit card numbers. Our SSL certificate encryption level is 128-bit/256-bit. Whenever we ask for financial information, you can check that SSL is being used by looking for a closed padlock symbol or other trust mark in your browser URL bar or toolbar.

  3. We take the following measures to protect your financial information:

  4. We do not keep all your data, so as to prevent the possibility of our duplicating a transaction without a new instruction from you.

13. Credit reference

  1. To assist in combating fraud, we share information with credit reference agencies, so far as it relates to clients or customers who instruct their credit card issuer to cancel payment to us without having first provided an acceptable reason to us and given us the opportunity to refund their money.

14. Third party advertising

  1. Third parties may advertise on our website. In doing so, those parties, their agents or other companies working for them may use technology that automatically collects your IP address when they send an advertisement that appears on our website to your browser. They may also use other technology such as cookies or JavaScript to personalise the content of, and to measure the performance of their adverts. We do not have control over these technologies or the data that these parties obtain. Accordingly, this privacy notice does not cover the information practices of these third parties.

15. Third party content

  1. Our website is a publishing medium in that anyone may register and then publish information about himself or some other person. We do not moderate or control what is posted. If you complain about any of the content on our website, we shall investigate your complaint. If we feel it may be justified, we shall remove it while we investigate. Free speech is a fundamental right, so we have to make a judgement as to whose right will be obstructed: yours, or that of the person who posted the content which offends you. If we think your complaint is vexatious or without any basis, we shall not correspond with you about it.

16. Information we obtain from third parties

  1. Although we do not disclose your personal information to any third party (except as set out in this notice), we do receive data which is indirectly made up from your personal information, from software services such as Google Analytics and others. No such information is identifiable to you.

17. Content you provide to us with a view to be used by third party

  1. If you provide information to us with a view to it being read, copied, downloaded, or used by other people, we accept no responsibility for what that third party may do with it. It is up to you to satisfy yourself about the privacy level of every person who might see your information. If it is available to the World, neither we nor you have any control whatsoever as to how it is used.

18. Cookies

  1. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer's hard drive through your web browser when you visit any website. They are widely used to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the website.

  2. Like all other users of cookies, we may request the return of information from your computer when your browser requests a web page from our server. Cookies enable our web server to identify you to us, and to track your actions and the pages you visit while you use our website. The cookies we use may last for a single visit to our website (they are deleted from your computer when you close your browser), or may remain on your computer until you delete them or until a defined period of time has passed.

  3. Although your browser software enables you to disable cookies, we recommend that you allow the use of cookies in order to take advantage of the features of our website that rely on their use. If you prevent their use, you will not be able to use all the functionality of our website. Here are the ways we use cookies:

  4. to record whether you have accepted the use of cookies on our website. This is solely to comply with the law. If you have chosen not to accept cookies, we will not use cookies for your visit, but unfortunately, our website will also not work well for you.

  5. to allow essential parts of our website to operate for you.

  6. to operate our content management system.

  7. to operate the online notification form - the form that you use to contact us for any reason. This cookie is set on your arrival at our website and deleted when you close your browser.

  8. to enhance security on our contact form. It is set for use only through the contact form. This cookie is deleted when you close your browser.

  9. to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to improve your experience of our website and enable us to increase sales. This cookie collects information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the website, where visitors have come to the website from, and the pages they visited.

  10. to record that a user has viewed a webcast. It collects information in an anonymous form. This cookie expires when you close your browser.

  11. to record your activity during a webcast. An example is as to whether you have asked a question or provided an opinion by ticking a box. This information is retained so that we can serve your information to you when you return to the website. This cookie will record an anonymous ID for each user, but it will not use the information for any other purpose. This cookie will last for three months, when it will be deleted automatically.

  12. to store your personal information so that you do not have to provide it afresh when you visit the website next time. This cookie will last for [90] days.

  13. to enable you to watch videos we have placed on YouTube. YouTube will not store personally identifiable cookie information when you use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode.

19. Calling our helpline

  1. When you call our helpline, we collect Calling Line Identification (CLI) information. We use this information to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our help line.

20. Sending a message to our support system

  1. When you send a message, we collect the data you have given to us in that message in order to obtain confirmation that you are entitled to receive the information and to provide to you the information you need. We record your request and our reply in order to increase the efficiency of our business / organisation. We do not keep any personally identifiable information associated with your message, such as your name or email address.

21. Complaining

  1. When we receive a complaint, we record all the information you have given to us. We use that information to resolve your complaint. If your complaint reasonably requires us to contact some other person, we may decide to give to that other person some of the information contained in your complaint. We do this as infrequently as possible, but it is a matter for our sole discretion as to whether we do give information, and if we do, what that information is.

  2. We may also compile statistics showing information obtained from this source to assess the level of service we provide, but not in a way that could identify you or any other person.

22. Job application and employment

  1. If you send us information in connection with a job application, we may keep it for up to three years in case we decide to contact you at a later date.

  2. If we employ you, we collect information about you and your work from time to time throughout the period of your employment. This information will be used only for purposes directly relevant to your employment. After your employment has ended, we will keep your file for seven years before destroying or deleting it.

23. Marketing information

  1. With your permission we pass your email address and name to selected associates whom we consider may provide services or products you would find useful. You may opt out of this service at any time by instructing us at www.The Graduate Choir NZ.co.nz

24. Re-marketing

  1. We may use remarketing from time to time. This involves Google or some other supplier placing a tag or marker on our website in order to be able to serve you an advert for our products / services when you visit some other website.

25. Affiliate information

  1. This is information given to us by you in your capacity as an affiliate of us or a customer or client of ours. Such information is retained for business use only. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the information and of the terms of our relationship. It is not used for any other purpose. We expect any affiliate to agree to reciprocate this policy. As an exception to this, we have the right to disclose your first name and URL of your affiliate connection to other affiliates and to any other person or organisation, on and off the website. The reason is solely to enable us to mention winners and others whose performance as an affiliate is in some way outstanding.

26. Use of the website by children

  1. We do not market to children, nor do we sell products or services for purchase by children. We do sell products and services for end use by children, but for purchase by adults. If you are under 18, you may use our website only with consent from a parent or guardian.

  2. Such child users and visitors will inevitably visit other parts of the website and will be subject to whatever on-site marketing they find, wherever they visit.

27. Disclosure to Government and their agencies

  1. We are subject to the law like everyone else. We may be required to give information to legal authorities if they so request or if they have the proper authorisation such as a search warrant or court order.

28. Compliance with the law

  1. This privacy policy has been compiled so as to comply with the law of every jurisdiction in which we aim to do business. If you think it fails to satisfy the law of your country, we would like to hear from you, but ultimately it is your choice as to whether you wish to use our website.

29. Review or update personally identifiable information

  1. At any time you may review or update the personally identifiable information that we hold about you, by contacting us at the address below. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.

30. Removal of your information

  1. If you wish us to remove personally identifiable information from our website, you may contact us at www.graduatechoirnz.org. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.

31. Data may be “processed” outside New Zealand

  1. Our website is hosted by Squarespace,com. We also use outsourced services in countries outside New Zealand from time to time in other aspects of our business. Accordingly data obtained within New Zealand may be “processed” outside New Zealand and data obtained in any other country may be processed within or outside that country.

  2. If you have any questions regarding the privacy policy, please contact us through the contact page.