Privacy Policy

• Autonomy first. You decide what you share with us, and when.
• No noise, no sale. We do not sell your personal information and we do not use it for advertising.
• Only what is needed. We collect the least we can while still being able to reply to you and send what you asked for.

Information you give us:

• Sign ups and the waitlist. Your first name and email address, and where on the site you joined from. If you choose to, you may also add a contact number and the season of motherhood you are in. These extra details are optional.
• Enquiries. Your name, email address, the kind of enquiry, and your message, so we can reply.
• Stories you submit. If you send a story for our Voices page, we keep what you wrote along with the display name, season and location you chose to include.
• Account details. If you have an account, your email address and sign in records. Accounts are used for the member area and for team and administrator access.

What stays with you. Reflections, moods and check ins you use on the page stay in your own browser. They are not sent to us or stored on our systems.

Quiet Kindness is a wellbeing space, so you may choose to tell us something personal, for example in an enquiry, a support request or a story. We never require it.

• Where information you volunteer is sensitive information or health information under Australian privacy law, we handle it with additional care: it is kept to the smallest number of people who need to read it in order to help you, it is never published without your clear agreement, and it is deleted on request.
• Not everything written about how you are feeling is health information, and we do not treat it as a health record.
• Quiet Kindness is not a medical or health service. We do not diagnose, treat or give clinical advice, and this website is not for emergencies. Crisis numbers are listed on our Support page.

Like most websites, some technical information is recorded when you visit, by us or by the providers who host and protect the site. This may include your IP address, browser type and version, device and operating system, the pages you visited, the date, time and duration of your visit, the page that referred you, and diagnostic or security related information such as error reports and blocked requests.

This information is used to:

• keep the website running and fix problems;
• protect the site against abuse, spam and unauthorised access;
• understand, in aggregate, which pages people find useful;
• improve performance and the overall experience.

We do not use this information to build a profile of you or to target advertising at you.

We keep this simple and use only what the website needs:

• Necessary. Storage that keeps you signed in and keeps forms secure. Without these, signing in will not work.
• Functionality. Small preferences kept in your own browser, such as a reminder you chose to save. These stay on your device.
• Analytics. Basic, aggregated measurement of page visits provided by our hosting platform. It is not linked to your name.

We do not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or cross site tracking. You can block or clear cookies and site data in your browser settings at any time; if you block them entirely, signing in and some saved preferences will not work.

• to provide and maintain the website;
• to manage waitlist and sign up participation;
• to respond to your enquiries and requests for support;
• to send the letters, reminders and resources you asked for;
• to publish a story where you submitted it for that purpose;
• to keep the site secure and to understand how it is used;
• to manage privacy requests and complaints;
• to meet our legal obligations.

We use your information for the reason you gave it to us and for closely related purposes you would reasonably expect. If we ever want to use it for something meaningfully different, we will ask first.

• Service emails. Sign in links, account and security notices, and replies to your enquiry. These are part of using the site and are not marketing.
• Optional letters and reminders. Sent only if you asked for them. Every one includes a way to unsubscribe, and you can write to us at any time and we will remove you.

Sign ups, communications and notifications are handled through the Quiet Kindness studio address, quietkindnessstudio@gmail.com.

• Service providers. We use trusted providers for website and application hosting, the database, authentication and sign in, email delivery, and basic security and performance monitoring. They may only handle your information in order to provide that service to us, and are bound by their own confidentiality and security obligations. We will tell you which providers we currently use if you ask.
• Our small team. Only where needed to reply to you or keep the platform running.
• No one else, unless you ask us to, or in the limited circumstances described in section 12.

There are no payments on this website, and we do not receive or store card or bank details.

Our hosting, database and email providers operate global infrastructure. Your personal information may therefore be stored on, or accessed from, servers located outside Australia, and overseas providers may process it on our behalf. Based on the services we use, this is most likely to involve the United States and other regions where those providers operate data centres.

Where information is handled overseas we take reasonable steps and rely on appropriate safeguards, including the providers' contractual commitments and security obligations, consistent with applicable privacy requirements. We do not treat your use of this website as blanket consent to every overseas disclosure.

• Information is held in a managed database with access rules that limit each record to the person it belongs to and, where necessary, to an administrator.
• Traffic to and from the website is encrypted in transit.
• Sign in uses single use email links or a password, and administrator access additionally requires a code from an authenticator app.
• Sign in and administrative activity is recorded so unusual activity can be reviewed.
• Public forms are checked on our server, with limits that reduce spam and automated abuse.

No method of transmitting information over the internet, and no method of electronic storage, is completely secure. We cannot promise absolute security. If a data breach occurs that is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required.

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes it was collected for, unless a longer period is required or permitted by law. In practice this means:

• sign up and waitlist details while you are subscribed, and a minimal record afterwards so we do not contact you again by mistake;
• enquiries for a reasonable period after we have finished helping you;
• stories while they remain published, or until you ask us to remove them;
• account details while the account exists.

Technical and security information may be kept for a different period where that is needed for security, troubleshooting, analytics or legal reasons. When information is no longer needed we delete it or remove the details that identify you.

We may disclose personal information where it is reasonably necessary or legally required, including:

• to meet a legal obligation, court order or lawful request;
• to respond to a government, regulatory or law enforcement authority acting within its powers;
• in connection with legal proceedings;
• to lessen or prevent a serious threat to someone's life, health or safety, or to protect rights, safety or property.

These situations are rare. Where we are able to tell you, we will. We do not read what you write looking for reasons to disclose it.

• Access. You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and for an explanation of how it is handled.
• Correction. If something is wrong, incomplete or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
• Deletion. You can ask us to close your account and delete your personal information. We will do so, except where we are required or genuinely need to keep a record for legal or operational reasons, for example an unsubscribe record or a security log. We will tell you what has been kept and why.

Write to quietkindnessstudio@gmail.com. We respond as promptly as we reasonably can, and we may ask you to confirm your identity first so that no one else can access or delete your information.

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, please write to quietkindnessstudio@gmail.com with "privacy complaint" in the subject line. It helps if you tell us what happened, when, the email address you used with us, and the outcome you are hoping for.

We will acknowledge your complaint, look into it properly, ask you for anything else we need to understand it, and give you a written response explaining what we found and what we will do. We will keep you informed about timing rather than promise a fixed deadline we have not formally set.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

We sometimes point to outside wellbeing, health, professional and crisis support services because they may help you. Those websites and services are not ours. They have their own privacy policies and their own practices, and we do not control how they handle information. Please read their privacy policy before giving them your details.

This website is intended for adult women. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, please contact us and we will delete it.

If Quiet Kindness is ever restructured, or its assets transferred to another organisation, personal information may be transferred as part of that change. Any recipient would be required to handle it in a way consistent with this policy.

We may update this policy when our practices, services or legal obligations change. The current version is always available here and the date at the top shows when it last changed. Where a change is significant, we will let people know through the website or by email.

Quiet Kindness, Australia. For anything about your privacy, including access, correction, deletion and complaints, write to quietkindnessstudio@gmail.com.