Information Privacy Policy

For information about how the Commissioner collects and manages personal, sensitive and health-related information, visit our Information Privacy Policy page.

Website Privacy Statement

This privacy statement applies only to the website rentingcommissioner.vic.gov.au and does not apply to any linked or other websites.

The Commissioner for Residential Tenancies (Commissioner) and the Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety (the department) value the privacy of every individual and are committed to handling personal information in accordance with the privacy principles contained in the Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014.

Collection of personal information

You can use the Commissioner’s website anonymously without disclosing any of your personal information to the Commissioner. 

However, for some functions of the website the collection of personal information about you or another person is necessary or unavoidable for the Commissioner or the department to provide a service for you. 

You will know if rentingcommissoner.vic.gov.au is collecting personal information from you because you will be asked to provide it. There are two exceptions to this. 

The first exception is where someone else provides rentingcommissoner.vic.gov.au with your personal information. The Commissioner cannot prevent this. However, you are entitled to access and correct any personal information about you collected by the website. 

The second exception is where rentingcommissoner.vic.gov.au collects statistics using software techniques. For an explanation of these techniques and how they are used, see Web statistics data collection on this page.

Use and disclosure of personal information

The Commissioner will not use or disclose any personal information collected through its websites unless the use or disclosure is:

  • for the primary purpose the information was collected
  • for a related secondary purpose, which an individual ought reasonably to expect in the circumstances
  • required or authorised by law
  • for any other purpose permitted under the Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 or the Victorian Health Records Act 2001

The Commissioner will not use any of your personal information collected through the website rentingcommissioner.vic.gov.au to add you to a mailing list without your consent. 

Personal information which you provide to the Commissioner’s website using any web service may be accessible to other users of the web service who are not officers, employees or contractors of the Commissioner or the department. Other users of, and third parties which provide, such web services may use or disclose your personal information for any purpose including the purpose of sending you unsolicited electronic communications. You acknowledge and agree that the Commissioner and the department are not responsible for any such use or disclosure.

Web statistics data collection

The Commissioner and the department use web analytics software to collect usage statistics for the Commissioner's website. This information is not used to identify you or match your identity with any of your personal information.

Clickstream data

The following non-personal information may be automatically recorded by the web server of the Commissioner’s website or any of the department’s websites for statistical and system administration purposes:

  • your server address 
  • your top-level domain name (e.g. .com, .gov)
  • the date and time of your visit to the site
  • the pages you accessed and downloaded
  • the address of the last site you visited
  • your operating system
  • the type of browser you’re using.

Cookies

Like many others, the Commissioner’s web services may use cookies. Cookies are small data files that a website places on a user’s hard drive to record aspects of that user’s experience of the website. Cookies are not used to identify you or record any of your personal information. The default settings of your browser may allow some or all cookies, but you can easily take steps to erase cookies from your hard drive, block all cookies or receive a warning before a cookie is stored on your hard drive. However, a website may not function fully if you disallow cookies.

Security

When accessing or using the Commissioner’s website or any of the department’s websites, you should be aware that there are risks in transmitting information across the Internet. The Commissioner and the department take reasonable steps to protect personal information collected through the Commissioner's website from misuse and loss from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. The Commissioner and the department also takes reasonable steps to remove personal information from their systems when it is no longer required.