We don’t collect any of your personal information when you interact with our website. Because we don’t collect your personal information, we can’t use, hold or disclose it. It’s that simple.
This policy sets out how and why Lookaroo Pty Ltd (we, us, or our) collect, use, hold and disclose personal information or personal data (which we collectively refer to as ‘personal information’ in this policy).
This policy sets out how we comply with privacy obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the European Union General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which we comply with even though we may not be required to.
In short, we don’t collect any of your personal information when you interact with our website, www.lookaroo.com.au (Website). Because we don’t collect your personal information, we can’t use, hold or disclose it. It’s that simple.
What is personal information?
We appreciate how important privacy is and that people are tired of search engines tracking them and disclosing their personal information (e.g. user agents, IP addresses etc.) to other businesses. That’s why we don’t collect any personal information when you use our search engine or interact with our website.
We also adopt the following measures to protect your privacy:
- We don’t store any personal information or data on users or their searches. We take this one step further by not storing deidentified data (let alone identified data that many other search engines store), as we know that data cannot be completely deidentified.
- When a search is run via our Website, we strip the search query of unnecessary metadata and other information about you. We don’t store a history of your searches. With no record of your search history, we cannot inadvertently disclose anyone’s search history like other search engines have done in the past. While we do save searches, we do not do so in a way that can identify you or that can be used to link your searches together (as we don’t store IP addresses or other unique information on our users). We use the history of searches on an aggregated (and non-personalised way) to improve things on the Website, but again, this limited information we store is not linked to you in any way.
- We route/redirect your searches through our servers with no user data attached. In order to return search results, your search terms and rough location (which is only accurate to around a 100km radius) are sent to our servers and pooled with other users’ request before the request is sent to third parties (currently Microsoft, OpenWeatherMap, and Foursquare) that produce the search results. This provides further anonymity.
- When you use our search engine, we don’t know who you are and we cannot tie any of your searches together. Even though your Web browser automatically sends information to us about your computer when you access our website, we do not store (or log) it at all. While some personal information may be displayed in our systems while we route your search results via our severs, none of that information is stored on our systems. No IP addresses are logged or stored, no ifs or buts about it.
- While statistics are collected regarding the number of requests that come through our servers, we do not store any search results or any user data.
- We do not use cookies to track your sessions. If we update our website to allow users to select settings in the future, then we may use cookies to store any changes you have made to the settings, but if we do that then we will not store any cookies in a personally identifiable way.
We are committed to being transparent about our management of your personal information and take all reasonable steps to ensure our practices and procedures relating to our activities comply with any applicable requirements in the Privacy Act and GDPR, including by complying with this policy.
Further details
When you use the Website we won’t ask or collect any personal information from you, save for the limited exceptions above (such as collecting your search term and very rough location, which is hardly personal information). To provide you with peace of mind when using our Website without the stress of having your life tracked, please see below our approach to cookies, searches and our general privacy practices:
Cookies — As mentioned above, we do not use cookies to track your sessions. If we update our Website to allow you to save preferences and the like in the future, then we may use cookies to store those changes (but we will do so in a way that cannot personally identify you).
Searches — We don’t save any search histories in a way that is linked to other information of our users (e.g. our systems don’t save things like the date and time of the search or any information about your computer such as IP addresses etc.), which most other search engines tend to store. Most search engines also store your personal information through any emails you might be logged into (e.g., your name, email address and other account information), but our Website simply doesn’t allow that to occur. Due to this we cannot ever lose your personal information. Our principle is, what we don’t collect can’t be stolen, lost or leaked. For this reason, no personal information can be hacked into, accidentally exposed through security loopholes or transferred to anyone else.
Disclosure — In the very unlikely event we are legally compelled to disclose information or records to police, courts or other authorities, we will of course have to comply with our legal obligations. However, we expect these requests to be very rare because we do not collect personal information. Also, we will not voluntarily agree to being part of a surveillance program unless absolutely required by government intervention.
Tracking — Most websites track what you do online and provide tailored ads and offerings. We do not track or profile our users in any way.
Information we may collect — This privacy policy focuses on how you interact with our Website, as well as how our search engine and systems operate. If you or someone else provides us with your personal information via other means (e.g. you send us an email about job opportunities, contact us over the phone or via email to discuss the great things we are doing and leave your name and number for us to contact you etc.), then we may keep a record of the personal information provided to us. In those circumstances, we will use and disclose the personal information we receive for the purposes that it was provided to us and any related purposes (but always in accordance with applicable laws).
Storing information — Although we generally do not store any personal information when you interact with our Website (and our best not to collect any personal information), if we do so the information may be stored electronically on our computer systems and networks and on our customer relationship management platforms, our accounting platforms or our email servers. Our digital systems are protected by mechanisms which may include passwords, antivirus software, scheduled password changes, internal access limitation processes and internal monitoring, depending on the relevant system.
International matters — As Lookaroo is based in Australia, we do not intend to disclose any information overseas. There may only be some circumstances where we may disclose information overseas such as to secure cloud storage services that may have servers located overseas. For our users that are in the European Economic Area (EEA), any information you provide us may be transferred outside the EEA. Where your information is transferred outside the EEA, we will make reasonable attempts to ensure that the countries where such information is being transferred to, is able to provide reasonable or adequate protection of EEA data (like Australia).
Your privacy concerns and making a complaint
Contacting us — If you have any concerns or are unhappy about how your information is handled, please contact us at:
info@lookaroo.com.au
Contacting the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — If you would like more information regarding Australian privacy laws, or to make a complaint, refer to the Office of the Australian information Commissioner who can be contacted at:
