Privacy Policy

Our philosophy

The Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand Incorporated (“HOBANZ”) considers that protection of your privacy is of the utmost importance and will make every reasonable effort to safeguard your privacy.  We appreciate the trust you have placed in us and this policy explains how we may collect information about you and then use it in order to satisfy your particular requirements.  It also outlines some of the security measures that we take in order to protect your privacy and gives certain assurances on things that we will not do.

Receiving information from us

When we first obtain personal information from you, when you renew your membership subscription or take a new service from us, we will give you the opportunity to indicate if you do or do not (as applicable) wish to receive information from us about other services or products.  This will usually be done by way of a tick box on an application form or contract and will also allow you to indicate the preferred delivery method.

If you want to update or correct information held by us, including contact preferences, you can call our office on 09 360 8083 (9am to 4pm, Monday to Friday inclusive).

Collection of information

We may collect personal information from you in a number of ways, including when you:

  • Apply for membership to the Association;

  • Respond to surveys or requests for feedback on various topics either in person, by telephone email, facsimile or in written form;

  • Agree to take a service from us;

  • Contact us with an enquiry, or in response to a communication from us.

The type of information that may be collected includes, but not limited to:

  • Full name, date of birth, ethnicity, marital status and where applicable the number of dependents.

  • Employment status, job function and household income.

  • Contact details including residential and postal address, telephone, mobile phone, facsimile numbers and email address.

  • Address of any other properties owned as an investment and/or holiday home.

  • Bank and/or credit card information relevant to the payment of subscriptions or services provided by the Association.

  • General configuration and finishes of the homes you own and the details of the relevant mortgagee (where applicable), insurance, utility and services providers.

  • Where applicable the details of the Body Corporate Secretary.


 

Use of information

What we will do.

We may use personal information about you for a number of purposes, including:

  • To help to identify you when you telephone us to make an enquiry. For example, by asking we may ask you for your date of birth or telephone number so that we can avoid disclosing information to a person who is not authorised by you to receive it

  • To respond to enquiries from you

  • To help administer and contact you about the affairs of the Association or administration of any accounts, services and products provided by us previously, now or in the future

  • To help prevent or detect fraud or loss

  • To contact you by any means (including mail, email, telephone or text messages) to provide you newsletters, alerts or information about other services or products, where we think you would appreciate receiving from us

  • Gathering and aggregating personal information including information of your home, demographic, employment and any other relevant information for statistical and research purposes in support of any proposals or submissions put to Government agencies or industry bodies to meet the objectives of the Association

  • Carrying out marketing analysis and profiling

  • In some circumstances, we may do certain credit checks with licensed credit reference agencies when you apply to take a service or product. If this is applicable, then it will be stated in our terms and conditions of business.

What we won't do.

Unless specifically authorised by you we will not:

  • Send you communications that you do not expect to receive as part of your Membership subscription  or as otherwise requested or authorised

  • Disclose your personal information

  • Sell or rent contact information lists to parties who are not part of our Association or related business enterprises

Disclosure of information

The Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand Incorporated (HOBANZ) and any division, subsidiary, or joint venture companies that may exist from time to time will share information about members.

We may disclose information we hold about you to third parties where HOBANZ has contracted those third parties for the purpose of providing services to the Association or services you have requested, or as part of the process of sale of one or more of our businesses enterprises, or where legitimately requested for legal or regulatory purposes, as part of legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings.

  • We, and other third-party credit organisations, may also access information about you:

  • To help make decisions on credit, or credit related and insurance proposals and claims for you and other members of your household; and

  • To check your identity to prevent money laundering unless other satisfactory proof of identity is provided.

Security and Protection of information

We are committed to keeping secure the personal information you provide to us.  We will take all reasonable precautions to protect the personal information we hold about you from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Our security and protection measures include, but are not limited to:

  • Check your identity when you telephone us

  • Restricting access to our computer systems and physical records to authorised persons and preventing users from accessing information they have no need to access;

  • Requiring employees to use unique passwords to gain access to systems;

  • Encrypting data sent from your computer to our systems during Internet and customer access codes transmitted across networks;

  • Employing firewalls, intrusion detection systems and virus scanning tools to prevent unauthorised persons and viruses from entering our systems;

  • Using dedicated secure networks or encryption when we transmit electronic data for purposes of outsourcing; practising a clean desk policy in HOBANZ's premises and providing secure storage for physical records;

  • Regular backup’s of electronic data which is securely stored offsite;

  • Impose confidentiality and privacy conditions in staff employment and service provider contracts.

The Internet

If you communicate with us via the Internet, we may occasionally use email or text messaging to contact you about the affairs of the Association, alerts, our services and products.  When you first provide personal information to our Web Site we will usually give you the opportunity to indicate whether you would prefer us not to contact you in this way. However, you can always send us an email at any time to change your preferences.

Please be aware that communications over the Internet, such as emails/webmails, are not secure unless they have been encrypted.  Your communications may route through a number of countries before being delivered.  This is the nature of the World Wide Web/Internet. We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.

We may use 'cookies' to monitor website user traffic patterns and site usage.  They help us to understand how our members and potential members use our web sites so that we can develop and improve the design, layout and functionality of the sites.  A cookie is a piece of information that is stored on your computer's hard drive and which records your navigation of a web site so that, when you revisit that web site, it can present tailored options to you based upon the stored information about your last visit. 

If you do not want us to deploy cookies in your browser, you can normally set your browser to reject cookies, or to notify you when a website tries to put a cookie on your computer.  However, rejecting cookies may affect your ability to use some of the information sections, products and/or services at our website.

At our discretion and at any time we may implement and use display advertising. Third party vendors, including Google, show our ads on sites on the internet using Remarketing with Google Analytics. Third party vendors, including Google & DoubleClick, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website.

We and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together to inform, optimize, and serve ads based on someone's past visits to our website.

You have the option to opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page. (http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html). Alternatively, you can opt out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising - opt out of cookies by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt out page. (http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp)

The Associations website provides links to and content from other Internet sites and resources.   Because HOBANZ has no control over these sites and resources HOBANZ cannot promise that external Sites will be uninterrupted or entirely error free nor does it warrant the privacy or security of these sites.

Monitoring of calls

We may monitor and record communications we receive.  This may be done to improve the service which we provide, to ensure compliance with our practices and procedures and where, for example, a contract is entered into by that means, to provide evidence of the transaction.

Credit card details

When you join HOBANZ, renew your existing Membership, or respond to surveys or requests for feedback on various topics, your personal information and where applicable your credit card details are loaded into our secure information or Membership database and not held on our web server.

Credit card details are retained indefinitely when you elect to pay Membership renewals annually using that payment method; otherwise for one off payments we are required by tax law to retain remittance details for two years.

Our online payment facility is provided by PayPal. PayPal supports the following major credit cards including Visa, American Express and MasterCard as well as all banks in New Zealand (ANZ, ASB, BNZ, National Bank, Westpac). Our PayPal implementation currently does not support Diners Club. PayPal is a recognized system for secure credit card transactions widely accepted by banks.

Security of the payment facility is enabled via the 3 Data Encryption Standard (3DES) encryption protocol. 3DES is a widely-used method of data encryption.

Although we are confident your Credit card and anonymity are protected, we makes no warranty or take responsibility for events arising from unauthorised access of the information you provide.

To check the security of your connection, look at the lower right-hand corner of your browser window after accessing the server. If you see an unbroken key or a closed lock (depending on your browser), then SSL is active and your transaction is being conducted in secure mode. You can also double-check by looking at the URL line of your browser. When accessing a secure server, the first characters of the site address will change from "http" to "https."

Access to personal information

The Privacy Act 1993 gives you the right to access and correct personal information held by us.  Your information is held securely and will not be disclosed to any other person or organisation unless authorised by you.  To access your personal information call the Association on 09 360 8083 or email us at;  info@hobanz.org.nz.

When you contact us to make changes, by phone, online or at the HOBANZ offices, we will need to verify that you are the person authorised to obtain and update personal information.  We will therefore ask you some security information based on the information you have already provided the Association, surname and date of birth, telephone numbers etc and reserve the right not to provide any information or execute any changes to personal information held by the Association until we are satisfied that we are dealing with is the person subject to that information or a person with the appropriate written authority.

If your date of birth is not listed on your HOBANZ registration record, you will be asked to provide it when you ring the Association, or if you visit the HOBANZ Offices.  This is for your security, as it is intended that the date of birth is used as a password to control access to your information over the phone, at the HOBANZ Offices and online.

Further information

If you would like any further information or have any comments on our Privacy Policy, then please write to us at the address below.  We may amend this policy from time to time, in which case the amended version will be published on our website and a copy may be obtained by writing to:

The Secretary
HOBANZ
P O Box 47-281
Ponsonby
Auckland  1144
New Zealand

Email: Please use the email facility on our "Contact Us" page

Telephone: 64 9 360 8083
Fax: 64 9 376 5289

This Policy applies to personal information held about individuals. It does not apply to information we hold about companies and other organisations.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has further details of the New Zealand Privacy Act and how it protects personal information in New Zealand.

Making a privacy complaint

We recognise that even in the best run organisations things can go wrong.  Should you have a privacy complaint, please tell us because it gives us the opportunity to fix the problem. We will investigate the complaint, answer your questions and do all we can to regain your confidence.

To assist us in helping you, we ask you to follow a simple three-step process:

Gather all supporting documents about the matter of complaint, think about the questions you want answered and decide on what you want us to do.

Contact HOBANZ where your situation will be reviewed and if possible resolved straight away. A quick chat is all that's required to resolve most issues.

If at this stage the matter has not been resolved to your satisfaction, please contact our Office using the above contact details. Rest assured that a member of staff with the necessary authority will review your case. If you are still not satisfied, we will tell you about the dispute resolution avenues available to you.

Changes to our Privacy and Security of Information Policy

The Association reserves the right, at our sole and absolute discretion, to update or revise this Privacy and Security of Information Policy at any time. Changes to this Privacy and Security of Information Policy will take effect immediately once they are published on this website. 

Please check this Privacy and Security of Information Policy regularly for modifications and updates.  If you continue to use this website or if you provide any personal information after we post changes to this Privacy and Security of Information Policy, this will indicate your acceptance of any such changes.