Privacy policy

Future Earth Australia is a website operated by the Australian Academy of the Science. The Australian Academy of Science (the Academy) is an ‘agency’ for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and as such complies with the obligations of the Privacy Act within that meaning.

There are a number of ways the Academy collects information through Future Earth Australia.

Information you provide to us

We collect information that you provide directly to us. For example, we collect information that you provide when you create a profile, subscribe to our mailing list or communicate with users. The types of information that we may collect include your name, password, email address, location, organisation, position, expertise, photos, and any other information that you choose to provide. All profile information can be edited or removed by the profile's owner. All profiles are reviewed by the Academy prior to publication on Future Earth Australia.

All collected profile information, except for password, is publicly available. Depending on your privacy selection your email address will either be (1) publicly listed on your profile and/or (2) stored by the Academy and utilised when a user uses the contact form to message a profile owner.

If at any stage you provide us with your email address, we will only use your email address for the purposes for which it was provided. We will not subscribe your email address to any mailing list without your consent. A representative from the Academy may follow up with you through the provided email address for feedback about Future Earth Australia.

The Academy uses Campaign Monitor to manage mailing lists and event registrations. You can access Campaign Monitors’s privacy notice here. When subscribing to the Future Earth Australia mailing list, you will be asked to give your express consent that Campaign Monitor may use your data for analytics purposes. Analytics are performed when you click on links in the email, or when you download the images in the email. They include which emails you open, which links you click, your mail client (e.g. ‘Outlook 2016’ or ‘iPhone’), if your action occurred on ‘mobile’ or ‘desktop’, and the country geolocation of your IP address (the IP address itself is not stored).

Information we collect automatically when you use the platform

When you visit Future Earth Australia, the Australian Academy of Science servers collect routine logging information such as the pages visited, the time of your visit, the web browser that you are using, and the IP address associated with your request.

The Academy uses this information for statistical purposes and for system administration tasks to maintain this service and to improve our understanding of the needs of users. We do not attempt to identify individuals, however, in the unlikely event of an investigation, the Academy, a law enforcement agency or other government agency may exercise its legal authority to inspect our server logs.

Future Earth Australia uses cookies to enhance site functionality. Cookies are small data files transferred onto computers or devices by websites for record-keeping purposes and to enhance functionality on the website. You may use your browser preferences to disable cookies but this may affect your experience of the web site.

Future Earth Australia uses Google Analytics or other third-party tools to better understand how people use the site. This makes information similar to that of routine server logs available to Google or other third-party statistics providers. The analytic reports that are produced are aggregated and do not identify people. The types of data we collect with these tools include:

  • your device's IP address (collected and stored in an anonymised format)
  • device screen size
  • device type, operating system and browser information
  • geographic location (country only)
  • referring domain and out link if applicable
  • search terms and pages visited
  • date and time when website pages were accessed