When you ask us for advice we will ask you for personal details and information about your problem with Centrelink. As a legal practice we have a strict duty of confidentiality and will not disclose any information you provide to us without your permission except in very limited circumstances, such as complying with a court order or if we think you or someone else is at immediate risk of serious harm.

All staff, volunteers and students on placement, are bound by these rules.

Sometimes we write anonymous case studies about the experiences of our clients for use in our community education and law reform work, but we always change names and other recognisable details to protect the confidentiality of our clients. Wherever possible, we will seek the person’s permission to use their case study even though it will be de-identified.

Website Inquiry Form

If you initially access our casework through our website enquiry form, the information you provide will be treated as part of our casework practice and is confidential (see above).

Information logged

When you visit our site, the following information provided by your browser may be logged:

• Type of browser and operating system
• Top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk)
• Dates and times of visits
• Pages viewed and documents downloaded
• Address of the referring site (for example, the previous site that you visited)
• Your server's IP address

This information is used only for statistical analysis or systems administration purposes. We analyse these statistics to improve and refine the operation of our website. For example, we can see the percentage of people who have accessed our site using a phone and the percentage of people who have used a computer. This helps us design information so it is as accessible as possible. Web statistics may also be compiled in reports to our funding organisations, such as Legal Aid NSW. We would not attempt to identify individual users or their browsing activities, except in the very unlikely event of an investigation where a law enforcement agency exercises a warrant.

Our site uses Google Analytics to better understand how people use the site. We use this information to improve the site and make sure we match the information and services available with the needs of the people using it. For example, we can see if there is a lot of interest in a particular page on the website, and can consider whether we should be doing more to provide information about that subject area. We do not use any information reported by Google Analytics to identify any individual user of our site.

If you don’t want your information collected in this way, you can:

• use Google’s Ad Settings to opt out of Display Advertising; or
• use Google's Browser add-on to opt out of Google Analytics

We will only record your email address if you supply it to us, and will use it only for the purpose for which you provided it. For example, if you provide your email address to attend a community legal education session, we will use it to contact you about that session, other future training events and Welfare Rights Centre News & Updates. You are welcome to tell us if you do not want it to be used to contact you again, or you can unsubscribe if you do not wish to receive further notices.

We will not disclose your email address without your consent.