This Privacy Policy was last updated on 18 February 2009.
A. Overview
B. Information We Collect
C. Our Use and Disclosure of Information
D. Information Security
E. Accessing and Changing Your Information
F. Contacting Us
A. OverviewTo operate the PayPal service and to reduce the risk of fraud, PayPal Australia Pty Limited ABN 93 111 195 389 ("PayPal", "we" or "us") must ask you to provide us with information about yourself and your credit or debit card and/or bank account. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect and how we use that information. PayPal takes the privacy of your personal information very seriously and will use your information only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy. We will not sell or rent your personally-identifiable information or a list of our customers to third parties. However, as described in more detail in Part C below, there are limited circumstances in which some of your information will be shared with third parties, under strict restrictions, so it is important for you to review this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to all services that are hosted on the PayPal.com/au website, whether the services are offered by PayPal or by its related companies.
By accepting the Privacy Policy and User Agreement when you register for the PayPal Service, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to the terms of the PayPal User Agreement.
Please note that your personal information may be stored and processed on PayPal's or our related companies' computers in Australia, Singapore, Canada, or the United States. The laws on holding personal data in these other countries may not offer the same level of protections as the laws of Australia but PayPal will hold and transmit your personal information in a secure manner. If you object to your personal information being transferred or used as described in this Privacy Policy, please do not register for the PayPal service.
Other pages on the PayPal website include links to third-party websites. These sites are governed by their own privacy statements and PayPal is not responsible for their operations, including but not limited to their information practices. Users submitting information to or through these third-party websites should review the privacy statement of these sites before providing them with personally-identifiable information.
B. Information We CollectRequired InformationTo open a PayPal account, you must provide your name, residential address, phone number, date of birth, and email address. To make payments through PayPal may require your credit card, debit card or bank account information. We also ask you to choose two different security questions to answer (such as your city of birth or your pet's name). This required information is necessary for us to process transactions, issue a new password if you forget or lose your password, protect you against credit card fraud and bank account fraud, and to contact you if we need to, when administering your account
Transaction InformationWhen you use PayPal to send money to someone else or request money from someone else, we ask you to provide information related to each transaction, including the amount of the transaction, the type of transaction (purchase of goods, purchase of services, or simple money transfer ("quasi-cash")) and the email address or Skype ID of the third party. We retain this information for each of your transactions through PayPal. We also collect the Internet address (IP address) and other identifying information about the computer or device you use to access your PayPal account, to help detect potentially-unauthorised transactions.
Information About You From Third PartiesTo protect all our customers against potential fraud and to meet our legal obligations, we may use third parties to verify the information you provide. In the course of such verification we receive personally-identifiable information about you from such services. In particular, if you register a credit card or debit card with PayPal, we will use card authorisation and fraud screening services to verify that your card information and address matches the information that you supplied to PayPal and that the card has not been reported as lost or stolen.
If you send or receive high overall payment volumes through PayPal, in some circumstances we will conduct a background check on your business by obtaining information about you and your business from a credit bureau or a business information service such as Dun & Bradstreet. If you incur a debt to PayPal we will generally conduct a credit check on you by obtaining additional information about you from a credit bureau, to the extent permitted by law. PayPal, at its sole discretion, also reserves the right to periodically retrieve and review a business and/or consumer credit report for any account and reserves the right to close an account based on information obtained during this credit review process.
Additional VerificationIf we cannot verify the information that you provide, we ask you to send us additional information by fax (such as your driving licence, credit card statement and/or a recent utility bill or other information linking you to the applicable address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your information.
Website Traffic InformationBecause of the way that World Wide Web communication standards work, when you arrive at or leave the PayPal website, we automatically receive the Web address of the site that you came from or are going to. We also collect information on which pages of our website you visit while you are on the PayPal site, the type of browser you use and the times you access our website. We use this information to try to understand our customers' preferences better and to manage the load on our servers, so as to improve our service and your experience with PayPal.
Our Use of "Cookies""Cookies" are small files of data that reside on your computer and allow us to recognise you as a PayPal customer if you return to the PayPal site using the same computer and browser. We send a "session cookie" to your computer if and when you log in to your PayPal account by entering your email address and password. We use these cookies to recognise you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session, so that you don't need to re-enter your password multiple times. Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect.
We also use longer-lasting cookies to display your email address on our sign-in form so you don't have to retype the email address each time you log in to your PayPal account. Our cookie files are encoded so that your email address and other information can only be interpreted by PayPal. We may, however, share cookie information with certain merchants with whom we have an official co-marketing relationship regarding whether a user identified by the merchant is already registered with PayPal.
Customer Service CorrespondenceIf you send us correspondence, including emails and faxes, we retain such information in the records of your account. We will also retain customer service correspondence and other correspondence from PayPal to you. We retain these records so that we can measure and improve our customer service and investigate potential fraud and violations of our User Agreement. We may, over time, delete these records if permitted by law.
Questionnaires, Surveys and Profile DataFrom time to time, we offer optional questionnaires and surveys to our users for such purposes as collecting demographic information or assessing users' interests and needs. The use of the information collected will be explained in detail in the survey itself. If we collect personally-identifiable information from our users in these questionnaires and surveys, the users will be given notice of how the information will be used prior to their participation in the survey or questionnaire.
Non-member Recipients and RequestsWhen a member either sends a payment to, or requests a payment from, an individual who is not a registered member of PayPal, we will retain the information that the member submits to us, including, for example, the other party's email address, Skype ID, phone number and/or name. We do this for the benefit of the member who is attempting to contact the non-member, so that the member can see a complete record of his or her transactions, including uncompleted transactions. Although this information is stored indefinitely, we will not use or share this information to sell to the non-member in any way at any time. Additionally, these non-members have the same rights to access and correct information about themselves (assuming that their details were correct enough to reach them) as anyone else who uses PayPal.
C. Our Use and Disclosure of InformationInternal UsesWe may collect, store and process your personal information on servers operated by a related company located in Singapore or in the United States.
Our primary purpose in collecting personal information is to provide you with a safe, smooth, efficient, and customised experience. You agree that we may use your personal information to:
* provide the services and customer support you request;
* prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities, and enforce our User Agreement;
* customise, measure, and improve our services and the content and layout of our website;
* tell you about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences;
* provide the services and customer support you request;
* compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties.
Disclosure to Other PayPal CustomersIf you are a registered PayPal user, your name, email addresses, Skype ID (if applicable), date of sign-up and whether you have verified control of a bank account are displayed to other PayPal customers whom you have paid or who are attempting to pay you through PayPal. If you are a Business account holder, we will also display to other PayPal customers the website address (URL) and customer service contact information that you provide us. However, your credit card number, bank account and other financial information will NEVER be revealed to anyone whom you have paid or who has paid you through PayPal, except with your express permission or if we are required to do so pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process.
If you are buying goods or services and pay through PayPal, we may provide the seller with the shipping address for the goods and your confirmed credit card billing address to complete your transaction with the seller. The seller is not allowed to use this information to market their services to you unless you have agreed to it.
We work with third party merchants to enable them to accept PayPal payments from you. Merchants who offer this service will share personally-identifiable information you provide to them such as your email address with PayPal to validate your ability to pay with PayPal or the existence of your account. By accepting this Privacy Policy you permit PayPal to reply to the merchant with verification results of the validity of the personally-identifiable information that you provided to the merchant.
PayPal also discloses to other PayPal customers the number of payments you have received from Verified PayPal customers (as defined in the User Agreement on the
www.paypal.com.au site), as an indication of your reputation with other PayPal customers.
We may disclose to other PayPal customers and to third parties information that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity. For example, this means that if we conduct a fraud investigation and conclude that one side has engaged in deceptive practices, we can give that person or entity's contact information (but not bank account or credit card information) to victims who request it.
Disclosure to Third Parties Other Than PayPal CustomersPayPal will not sell or rent any of your personally-identifiable information to third parties. PayPal will not share any of your personally-identifiable information with third parties except in the limited circumstances described in paragraphs 1 to 8 below, or with your express permission (and with other PayPal customers as described above). These third parties are limited by law or by contract from using the information for secondary purposes beyond the purposes for which the information is shared.
1. We share information with companies that help us process the transactions you request or protect our customers' transactions from fraud. For example, we may report your credit card number to a service that screens for lost and stolen card numbers. See "Information About You From Third Parties" in Section B above. Additionally, if your balance with us goes into the negative, and you owe us money, we may share information with processing companies including collection agencies.
2. We may disclose the information we collect, as described in Section B above, to companies that perform marketing and other services on our behalf, such as companies that conduct user surveys. These companies are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit using the information except to market the specified PayPal-related products or services, unless you have affirmatively agreed or given your prior permission for other uses. We also require that these companies meet our standards in relation to maintaining adequate information security.
3. We disclose information that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity, or to conduct investigations of violations of our User Agreement. For example, this means that if we conduct a fraud investigation and conclude that one side has engaged in deceptive practices, we can give that person or entity's contact information (but not bank account or credit card information) to victims who request it.
4. We disclose information as required to comply with law, including but not limited to in response to a subpoena, warrant, court order, levy, attachment, order of a court-appointed receiver or other comparable legal process. As PayPal may outsource some of its functions, including data storage and processing, to related entities or service providers in foreign jurisdictions those related entities or service providers may be required to disclose your personal information pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process which originates in that foreign jurisdiction.
5. We disclose information to your agent or legal representative (such as the holder of a power of attorney that you grant, or a guardian appointed for you).
6. We share aggregated statistical data with our business partners or for public relations. For example, we may disclose that a specific percentage of our users live in Australia. However, this aggregated information is not tied to personally-identifiable information.
7. As with any other business, it is possible that PayPal in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by PayPal, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended as described in Section A above.
8. We share your information with members of the eBay Inc. corporate family—like eBay, Skype or Shopping.com—to provide joint content and services (like registration, transactions and customer support), to help detect and prevent potentially illegal acts or violations of our policies, and to guide decisions about their products, services and communications. Members of our corporate family will use this information to send you marketing communications only if you have requested their services. Some of these related companies are outside of Australia, including PayPal Singapore (Private) Limited (in Singapore) and PayPal, Inc. (in the USA) and eBay CS Vancouver Inc. (in Canada). By accepting this Privacy Policy you are consenting to the transfer of your personal information to the entities described in this section in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Our Contacts with PayPal CustomersWe send users regular emails to provide requested services and we also communicate by phone to resolve customer complaints or investigate suspicious transactions. We use your email address to confirm that you have opened a PayPal account, to send you notice of payments that you send or receive through PayPal to send information about important changes to our products and services and to send notices and other disclosures required by law. Generally, users cannot opt out of these communications, but they will mainly be for information purposes, rather than promotional.
We also use your email address to send you other types of communications that you can control, including the PayPal Periodical newsletter, auction tips, customer surveys and notice of special third-party promotions. You can choose whether to receive some, all or none of these communications when you complete the registration process, or at any time after that, by logging in to your account on the PayPal website and changing your preferences in the Profile page of the My Account tab. You can also use the same procedure to change your choices at any time.
In connection with independent audits of our financial statements and operations, the auditors may seek to contact a sample of our customers to confirm that our records are accurate. However, these auditors cannot use personally-identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Internet Address InformationWe use IP addresses, browser types and access times to analyse trends, administer the site, improve site performance and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
Your Use of Information and Our ServicesTo facilitate the transactions between PayPal members, our service allows you limited access other users' contact or postage information. As a seller you may have access to the name, email address and other contact or postage information of the purchaser and as a purchaser you may have access to the name, email address and other contact information of the seller.
By entering into our User Agreement, you agree that you will only use other users' personally-identifiable information which you obtain through the site or through a PayPal-related communication or PayPal-facilitated transaction, for: (a) PayPal-related communications that are not unsolicited commercial messages, (b) completing a transaction (e.g. postage of a purchased item or dispute resolution) and (c) any other purpose that such user expressly agrees to after adequate disclosure of the purpose(s).
In all cases, you must provide users with the opportunity to remove themselves from your database and review any information you have collected about them to comply with Australian privacy laws. In addition, under no circumstances, except as defined in this Section, can you disclose personally-identifiable information about another PayPal user to any third party without the consent of that other user after adequate disclosure. Note that law enforcement personnel and other rights holders are given different rights with respect to information they access.
Anti-SpamPayPal does not tolerate spam. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing, you may not add a PayPal user to your mail list (email or physical mail) without their express consent after adequate disclosure, even if said user has previously made a purchase from you. We strictly enforce this Policy. To report PayPal-related spam to PayPal, please contact us.
D. Information SecurityInformation SecurityPayPal is committed to dealing with your customer information with high standards of information security. We use computer safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption, we enforce physical access controls to our buildings and files, and we authorise access to personal information only to specific employees who need it to to fulfill their job responsibilities. For more information on PayPal's security practices, please visit the PayPal Security Centre.
The security of your PayPal account also relies on your protection of your PayPal password. You cannot share your PayPal password with anyone. If you do share your PayPal password with a third party for any reason, including because the third party has promised to provide you additional services such as account aggregation, the third party will have access to your account and some of your personal information and you may be responsible for actions taken by the third party using your password. If you believe someone else has obtained access to your password, please change it immediately by logging in to your account at
www.paypal.com/au/ and changing your Profile settings and also contact us right away as described in Section F below. PayPal will never ask you to send your password or other sensitive information to us in an email, though we may ask you to enter this type of information on the PayPal website, which will always have a URL beginning with
https://www.paypal.com/au.
Any email or other communication requesting your password, asking you to provide sensitive account information via email, or linking to a website with a URL that does not begin with
https://www.paypal.com/au should be treated as unauthorised and suspicious and should be reported to PayPal immediately by sending it to
spoof@paypal.com .
E. Accessing and Changing Your InformationYou can review the personal information you provided to us and make any desired changes to that information, or to the settings for your PayPal account, at any time by logging in to your account on the PayPal website and changing your preferences in the Profile page of the "My Account" tab. You can also close your account through the PayPal website. If you close your PayPal account, we will mark your account in our database as "Closed," but will keep your account information in our database. This is necessary to deter fraud, by ensuring that persons who try to commit fraud will not be able to avoid detection simply by closing their account and opening a new account. However, if you close your account, your personally-identifiable information will not be used by us for any further purposes, nor sold to or shared with third parties, except as necessary to prevent fraud and assist law enforcement, or as required by law.
F. Contacting UsIf you have any questions about this privacy statement, PayPal's information practices, or your dealings with PayPal, you can contact us on line using the contact form available from the footer of any PayPal page, call (02) 8223 9500. Hours of operation for Australian users are Monday to Saturday 6:00 am - 10:00 pm AEST, or write to us, "Attention: PayPal, Locked Bag 10, Australia Square PO, SYDNEY NSW 1215".
Concerning PayPal's privacy practices as a financial institution and our compliance with this Privacy Policy, PayPal is regulated by the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 and the National Privacy Principles.
You can obtain information about Australia's privacy laws at
http://www.privacy.gov.au.
https://www.paypal.com/au/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/policy_privacy-outside
