What we collect, and why

This is worth saying first because it is unusual, and because it means most of what a privacy policy normally has to warn you about does not apply here.

• No analytics. We do not use Google Analytics or any other measurement service. We do not know who you are, which pages you read, or where you came from.
• No advertising or social tracking. There is no Meta pixel, no advertising tag, and no “like” or “share” button that reports back.
• No cookies on the public pages. Browsing this site sets none at all. The only cookie this site can set is the sign-in cookie for staff using the editing screen, and it exists only once somebody signs in there.
• Nothing loads from anywhere else. The fonts, the images and the scripts are all served from this site, with no exceptions. Paying takes you to PayPal’s own website; nothing of theirs runs on ours.

That is enforced by the site itself, not just intended: the browser is instructed to refuse connections to anywhere other than this site at all, so a tracker could not be added by accident.

Links to YouTube and to Google Maps are ordinary links. Nothing from either is embedded in these pages, so neither knows you were here unless you click through — and then you are on their site, under their terms.

Only where you fill something in. None of it is gathered in the background.

When you book a retreat

Your name, email address and phone number; how many places; whether you are staying overnight; and — only if you tell us — any dietary requirements and anything we should know to make the retreat accessible to you, plus any note you add.

Those last two deserve their own sentence. They are often health information, or point at it. We ask because the kitchen has to cook for you and because we need to know whether the room we give you is one you can use. They are seen by the people who do those two jobs, they are not used for anything else, and you are welcome to ring the office and give them over the phone instead if you would rather not type them into a website.

When you subscribe to the newsletter

Your email address, optionally your name, and — as evidence that the consent was really yours — the time you asked and the network address you asked from. Nobody is added by filling in the form: we email you a link, and you are subscribed only if you click it. Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link that works immediately and without signing in to anything.

When you give

Your name and email address, the amount, and what you asked it to go towards. For a Mass offering, the intention you write and the name it is offered for.

We never see your card. Payments are handled entirely by PayPal: you are taken to their website, your card or account details go to them and not to us, and what comes back to this site is a reference and the fact that the payment succeeded. You do not need a PayPal account to pay with a card. If you pay by bank transfer instead, we see what your bank shows on the statement.

When you send a message

Your name, email address, phone number if you give one, and what you wrote.

Server records

The web server keeps a short technical log of requests, which includes the network address they came from. It is used to keep the site running and to see whether it is being attacked. It is not linked to anything you filled in, and the logs are overwritten as they grow rather than kept indefinitely.

Everything above is stored on a server in Sydney, in Australia. It is not copied to any other country by us.

Inside the centre, it is seen by the people who need it: the office, and for a booking, the kitchen and whoever allocates rooms. Everyone with access signs in with their own account, so the centre can tell who changed what.

Three outside services necessarily touch some of it:

• PayPal — payments, if you make one. PayPal is an international company and your payment details are handled under their terms and their privacy policy. For a monthly gift they also hold the standing arrangement, which you can stop from your PayPal account at any time without asking us.
• Our email provider — to deliver your confirmation, receipt or newsletter. An email necessarily passes through whoever sends it and whoever receives it.
• Our hosting provider — the Australian company whose machine the site runs on.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not give it to anyone for advertising or marketing. We would disclose something only where the law requires it, or where somebody was at risk of serious harm.

Backups of the site are taken nightly and kept for a fortnight, then deleted. They are kept on the same server, in Australia.

Ring or email the office and ask. You do not need to give a reason and it costs nothing.

• To see what we hold about you — ask, and we will tell you.
• To correct something — tell us what is wrong and we will fix it.
• To have it deleted — ask, and we will, unless we are required to keep it (a giving record for the accounts, for example). We will say which, and why.
• To stop the newsletter — the unsubscribe link in any newsletter, which works immediately. No need to ask anyone.

Please give us a fortnight. The centre is a small community and the person who can answer may be on retreat.

Tell us first — write to the office at info@divineretreatcentre.org or ring 0451 318 173. We will look into it and write back.

If we do not resolve it, you can take a privacy complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, at oaic.gov.au. They will normally expect you to have raised it with us first.

Families come on retreat, and children come with them. Where a booking includes a child, we collect the same details from the parent or guardian making the booking, and we ask for nothing directly from the child. This website is not aimed at children and has nothing on it for a child to sign up to.

If we change how any of this works, we change this page at the same time. There is no archive of previous versions; if you want to know what it said when you booked, ask and we will tell you.