Privacy Policy
Version 1.0 Date: 18 July 2021
This is the privacy notice of the District Grand Lodge of North Island New Zealand. In this document, “we”, “our”, or “us” refer to the District Grand Lodge of North Island New Zealand.
Our office is at 9a Ellerslie Street, Ellerslie, Auckland New Zealand.
This privacy notice aims to inform you about how we collect and handle any information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us. It covers both information that could identify you (“personal information”) and information that could not.
We are extremely concerned to protect your privacy and confidentiality. We understand that all users of our website are quite rightly concerned to know that their data will not be used for any purpose unintended by them, and will not accidentally fall into the hands of a third party. Our policy is both specific and strict. It complies with New Zealand law. If you think our policy falls short of your expectations or that we are failing to abide by our policy, do please tell us.
We regret that if there are one or more points below with which you are not happy, your only recourse is to leave our website immediately.
Except as set out below, we do not share, or sell, or disclose to a third party, any personally identifiable information collected at our website.
Here is a list of the information we collect from you, either through our website or because you give it to us in some other way, and why it is necessary to collect it:
1. Business and personal information
This includes basic identification and contact information, such as your name and contact details and also includes all information given to us in the course of your business and ours, such as information you give us in your capacity as our client. 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 you to reciprocate this policy.
This information is used:
1.1 to provide you with the services which you request;
1.2 for verifying your identity for security purposes;
1.3 for marketing our services and products;
1.4 information which does not identify any individual may be used in a general way by us or third parties, to provide class information, for example relating to demographics or usage of a particular page or service.
We keep information, which forms part of our business record for a minimum of seven years. That is because we may need it in some way to support a claim or defence in court. That is also the period within which our tax collecting authorities may demand to know it.
2. Your domain name and e-mail address
This information is recognised by our servers and the pages that you visit are recorded. We shall not under any circumstances, divulge your e-mail address to any person who is not an employee or contractor of ours and who does not need to know, either generally or specifically. This information is used:
2.1 to correspond with you or deal with you as you expect;
2.2 in a collective way not referable to any particular individual, for the purpose of quality control and improvement of our website;
2.3 to send you news about the services to which you have signed up;
2.4 to tell you about other of our services or services of sister websites.
3. Information you post on our website
Information you send to us by posting to a forum or blog or in your advertisement, is stored on our servers. We do not specifically use that information except to allow it to be read, but you will see in our terms and conditions that we reserve a right to use it in any way we decide.
4. Website usage information
We may use software embedded in our website (such as JavaScript) to collect information about pages you view and how you have reached them, what you do when you visit a page, the length of time you remain on the page, and how we perform in providing content to you. We do not presently associate such information with an identifiable person.
5. Credit reference
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.
6. Third party advertising
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.
7. Third party content
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 judgment 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.
8. Information we obtain from third parties
Although we do not disclose your personal information to any third party (except as set out in this notice), we do receive data that is indirectly made up from your personal information, from software services such as Google Analytics and others. No such information is identifiable to you.
9. Content you provide to us with a view to be used by third parties
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.
10. Cookies
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device 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.
Like all other users of cookies, we may request the return of information from your computer or mobile device 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 or mobile device when you close your browser), or may remain on your computer until you delete them or until a defined period of time has passed.
Our cookies enable us to:
- Make our website work as expected
- Improve the speed/security of the site
- Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook and Twitter
- Continuously improve our website for you
- Track visits to the sites articles so we know what kind of information is popular for our visitors
We do not use cookies to:
- Collect any personally identifiable information
- Collect any sensitive information
- Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
- You can learn more about all the cookies we use below
Granting us permission to use cookies
If the settings on your web browser are set to accept cookies we understand because of that, and your continued use of our website, you are in agreement of how we use cookies. Should you wish to remove or disable cookies please follow the instructions below, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.
More about Cookies
Our own cookies
We use cookies to make certain functions on our website work including:
- Allowing you to vote in polls
- Blocking the ip addresses of known or potential hackers
There is no way to prevent these cookies being set other than to not use our site or disabling them in your browser settings.
Third party functions
Like most websites we include functionality provided by third parties. A common example is embedding past issues of the magazine using Issuu. Our site includes the following which may use cookies:
- Back issues (powered by Issuu)
- Videos (powered by YouTube)
- Google Maps
- Other embedded content
- Disabling these cookies will likely break the functions offered by these third parties
Visitor Statistics Cookies
We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using (e.g. Mac OS X or Windows PC) which helps to identify how our site works on particular platforms. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These so called “analytics” programs also tell us, on an anonymous basis, how people reached this site (e.g. from google) and whether they have been here before helping us develop our services.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console
You can opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics (we’d prefer you didn’t though as this data is helpful to us in improving our website and therefore your experience on it https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout)
Google reCAPTCHA
We use reCAPTCHA for our inquiry forms for human verification.
Turning cookies off
You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies. Doing so however will likely limit the functionality of our, and a large proportion of the world’s, websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.
Mozilla Firefox
To block cookies or change cookie settings in Firefox, select ‘options’ then choose ‘privacy’. Since Firefox accepts cookies by default, select “use custom settings for history”. This will bring up additional options where you can uncheck ‘accept cookies from sites’ or set exceptions, ‘accept third party cookies’, and decide how long cookies will be stored (till they expire, till you close the browser, or ask you every time). You can also see the list of stored cookies and delete those you don’t want manually. You also have the option of deleting all cookies either from the history window or the privacy window. Permissions for blocking or allowing cookies for single sites can also be set via the Permissions tab.
Google Chrome
To block cookies or change cookie settings in Google Chrome, click on the wrench (spanner) on the browser toolbar. Choose ‘settings’, then ‘under the hood’. Find the ‘privacy’ section and click on ‘content settings’. Then click on ‘cookies’ and you will get four options allowing you to delete cookies, allow or block all cookies by default or set cookie preferences for particular sites or domains.
Internet Explorer
To block cookies or change cookie settings in Internet Explorer, select Tools (or the gear icon), Internet Options, Privacy. You can choose from a number of security settings including Accept All Cookies, Block All Cookies and intermediate settings that affect cookie storage based on privacy and whether cookies set allow third parties to contact you without your explicit consent.
Safari
To block cookies or change cookie settings in Safari 5.0 and earlier, go to Preferences, Security and then Accept Cookies. You can choose from Always, Only from sites you navigate to or Never. In Safari 5.1 and later go to Preferences, Privacy. In the Block cookies section choose Always, Never or From third parties and advertisers.
You now have all the information you need to manage and delete cookies, but please don’t forget that doing so might mean the web doesn’t look quite the way you would expect.
11. Calling us
When you call us, we collect Calling Line Identification (CLI) information. We use this information to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our service.
12. Sending a message to our support system
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 organisation. We do not keep any personally identifiable information associated with your message, such as your name or email address.
13. Complaining
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.
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.
14. Use of the website by children
We do not market to children, nor do we sell products or services for purchase by children. If you are under 18, you may use our website only with consent from a parent or guardian.
15. Disclosure to Government and their agencies
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.
16. Compliance with the law
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.
17. Review or update personally identifiable information
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.
18. Removal of your information
If you wish us to remove personally identifiable information from our website, you may contact us at secretary@freemasons.org.nz. To better safeguard your information, we will also take reasonable steps to verify your identity before granting access or making corrections to your information.
19. Data may be “processed” outside New Zealand
We also use outsourced services in countries outside New Zealand from time to time in other aspects of our business. Accordingly, data obtained within the New Zealand may be “processed” outside New Zealand and data obtained in any other country may be processed within or outside that country.
If you have any question regarding the privacy policy, please contact us through the contact page.
Now take me back where I was before reading this.