SBS Privacy Policy

In this article

Introduction

Special Broadcasting Service Corporation (ABN: 91 314 398 574) (SBS, we, our, us) is committed to protecting your privacy. We comply with our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Privacy Act), including the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) concerning personal information of individuals.

SBS program material and content is not subject to the Privacy Act. SBS  is committed to high standards of privacy protection in relation to its program material and content under the SBS Code of Practice, which set out how SBS manages the privacy of individuals.

This Privacy Policy describes how SBS collects, handles, uses and discloses your personal information. By providing us with your personal information, you consent to us using and disclosing it for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

We will update this Privacy Policy when our information handling practices change, or when required. Any updates will be published on our website so it’s a good idea to come back and read through them again from time to time. We may also issue specific privacy statements relating to particular services or activities.

This policy is in addition to the Terms and Conditions for use of the SBS website and digital services.

Our functions and activities

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

  • Carrying out our functions and activities under the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991 (Cth), including under our Charter, to provide multilingual and multicultural radio, television and digital media services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians, and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society;
  • Providing and administering our services, including verifying your identity and processing payments if applicable;
  • Monitoring, developing and improving our services and your experience, including creating, acquiring, curating and delivering content and personalising the content you see;
  • Delivering more relevant advertising based on your interests and experiences and selling advertising space so that we can continue to provide our services to you at no charge;
  • Informing and conducting marketing and advertising activities including to promote our services, using a range of technologies and on various platforms;
  • To conduct research to improve our services and marketing activities, and generate audience insights;
  • Providing customer support, including conducting, investigating and responding to enquiries, surveys, feedback and complaints;
  • Operating our competitions, promotions and events including determining entry eligibility, distributing prizes and publishing or otherwise making available a list of prize winners;
  • Distributing our newsletters and other communications either alone or with the assistance of third party service providers on information about us and our related services, your account and your use of our services;
  • Consulting, communicating and engaging with the public, community, stakeholders, organisations and the media including through newsletters, functions and events, websites and social media;
  • Managing and carrying out our business and operational functions, including on HR management and business and programming decisions; and
  • Maintaining records and complying with our legal obligations.

Information we collect

The types of personal information that we collect about you will depend on our relationship with you, the circumstances of collection and the type of service you request from us. We will only collect personal information from you that we need for our business activities, or as is volunteered by you. We may collect your name, address, postcode, email address, date of birth or year of birth, gender, telephone number and payment details. We may collect additional personal information from you from time to time.

We may also collect or receive certain information associated with you automatically through your use of our websites or services. This includes information about your interests and use of our websites or services automatically collected through tracking technologies such as cookies. Please see our section on Cookies and other tracking technologies for more information.

If you choose to register or log in to an SBS service using your social media account, or to connect an SBS service to a third party social media platform, we may also collect your social media account information and any other information that social media platform is permitted to share with us. The social media platform will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These platforms have their own privacy policies and SBS recommends that you read and familiarise yourself with the privacy policies and settings of these social media platforms.

We generally do not collect sensitive information about you, unless you provide it to us voluntarily. For example, when you complete an application to be a member of a studio audience or when you make a comment on a particular topic on our websites or social media platforms, you may provide sensitive information such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinion or membership or affiliation information. If you voluntarily provide sensitive information to us, you consent to us collecting it and handling it as personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

SBS is committed to providing a safe and welcoming digital environment, with free access for people of all ages. Some of our activities, such as SBS Learn activations or events, are directed to children and young people. We may collect personal information directly from children and young people for the purpose of these activities. SBS may seek or require consent from a parent or guardian where SBS considers this appropriate. If you are a parent or guardian, you should read and explain this Privacy Policy to your child if you think they may not understand how it applies. If you are a child, you should discuss this Privacy Policy with your parent or guardian. SBS highly recommends that parents or guardians monitor and assist with their child’s use of SBS services.

You don’t have to give us all the information we ask you to provide, but if you do not provide us with some or all of the personal information required, you may not be able to access some of our services. You may also miss out on receiving valuable information about us and our services. You may engage with us anonymously or using a pseudonym if it is feasible to do so. For example, if you wish to give feedback without requiring a response from us, there are methods of doing so without the need to provide a full name or email address, such as via a phone call or post. However, for some of our functions and activities, we require your name, contact information and other personal information.

How we collect information

We collect personal information when you:

  • Register for and use our online services, including telling us about your preferences in your user profile or that we learn through your use of the services;
  • Contact us to make an enquiry or provide feedback, comments or suggestions on programs and on our other activities and functions, including through our websites or social media platforms;
  • Submit an entry to a competition or giveaway, vote in one of our polls or participate in one of our surveys;
  • Interact or engage with us and the SBS community through our websites, social media platforms, involvement in audience research or at one of our events or community workshops;
  • Complete any application forms, including to attend an event or be an audience member;
  • Attend one of our events or community workshops (either by a recording, or attendance information);
  • Request communications from us such as updates or newsletters;
  • Visit our studio and offices, including via manual or electronic visitor sign-in and security surveillance of our premises;
  • Apply for a job with us, or become a contributor, distributor, supplier or contractor that provides a service or product to SBS;
  • Otherwise interact with us or disclose your personal information to us.

We may also collect or receive certain information associated with you automatically through the use of cookies and other tracking technologies on our websites or services. Please see our section on Cookies and other tracking technologies for more information.

As well as collecting information directly from you, there may be occasions when we may collect information from reputable data sources, publicly available sources or from third parties such as social media platforms (such as Facebook), marketing companies, data analysis and data matching partners, and advertising technology partners (such as Google). We may combine this information with information we already have about you to help us understand trends, user attributes, usage, behaviour, viewing patterns and preferences. Where we receive information about you indirectly from others, we require that the third party has collected and shared that information in accordance with the Privacy Act.

Third parties may include people or organisations who:

  • Conduct our surveys for us;
  • Run competitions, giveaways and other promotions for us;
  • Provide marketing leads, marketing and data analysis services to us;
  • Help us deliver more relevant advertising on our websites and services;
  • Are producers, publicists, location and talent agencies, distributors and other broadcasters and news agencies that provide your personal information to us on your behalf, or otherwise interact with us on your behalf when you provide services or products to SBS.

Cookies and other tracking technologies

We (and third parties authorised by SBS) may use cookies and other similar tracking technologies, such as local storage, pixels, web beacons and web server logs, to collect, store and monitor visitor traffic information and actions on our websites and digital services. Cookies are small data files which are placed on your device that allows our websites to “remember you” when you return to our websites. Similarly, local storage is used to store small amounts of information about you in your browser to “remember you” next time you visit our website.

The information collected by these technologies may include geolocation data, the IP address of the device you are using, browser/device type or operating system, information about your activity on our websites or digital services, such as information about the website that your IP address has come from, the pages accessed on our website, audio or video consumption, or advertisements viewed or clicked.

This activity-based information is collected whether or not you are registered and/or logged in with an SBS account. If you have an SBS account, the information collected by these may be connected with your account registration information in order to enhance your experience and display more relevant personalised content and advertising. Where this activity-based information is combined with the personal information associated with your account registration, we will treat it in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We may use and combine this information to:

  • Maintain, secure and improve our websites and digital services, for example detecting any problems with use of our websites or digital services;
  • Enhance your experience when using our websites and digital services, including to display and deliver relevant services and personalised content recommendations and remembering your place in a video so you can continue to watch it across different devices;
  • Display and deliver relevant interest-based advertising and marketing on the basis of broader audience segments;
  • Understand the effectiveness of our marketing and advertising (including direct marketing and online ads on third party websites). For example, we receive information about the content users engage with or ignore, and manage the number and relevance of advertisements users are served.

In addition to the cookies and tracking technologies provided by SBS, we also use trusted third party service providers to provide some of the cookies and other tracking technologies used on SBS websites and digital services. They may have access to the information collected by these technologies but not the personal information you provide to SBS. The privacy policies of key trusted third party service providers are provided below.

Types of cookies and other tracking technologies

We use the following types of cookies and other tracking technologies on our websites and digital services:

Strictly necessary: These are essential for the operation of our website and digital services, for example providing access to log into your SBS account, or detecting any problems with the use of our websites or services. Key trusted service providers who provide strictly necessary cookies and tracking technologies include:

Functionality: These enable us to recognise you when you return to our websites and digital services and remember your preferences and settings, such as remembering your place in a video, or remembering your language or subtitling preferences. The functionality cookies and tracking technologies are provided by SBS as cookies or local storage.

Analytics: These enable us to collect information about how users engaged with SBS, and user trends and behaviour on our websites and digital services, for example we may collect information about how you engaged with SBS, which SBS websites you visited or the video or audio consumed. We use this information to better understand the user experience and improve your experience on our websites and digital services. Key trusted service providers who provide analytics cookies and tracking technologies include:

Advertising: These enable us to collect information about the content and pages you visited on our websites and digital services. We use this information to deliver and display content and advertisement based on your interests, and to assess the effectiveness of advertisement campaigns. Key trusted service providers who provide advertising cookies and tracking technologies include:

SBS’s use of interest-based advertising

SBS is committed to bringing Australians premium, often exclusive, programming from Australia and across the world for free. However, as a hybrid-funded public broadcaster (meaning a public broadcaster funded both by direct appropriation from Government and own-source commercial revenue, principally from advertising and sponsorship), we must look at a range of ways to deliver on this commitment and to be able to pay for high quality content. The revenue made from displaying targeted advertising based on your interests and behaviours on our websites and digital services helps to fund SBS’s content and services.

We may share and receive some of the data collected by these technologies with third parties for the purpose of serving advertising, for example with our advertising technology partners who help us to serve advertisements. The information shared for the purpose of serving advertising is de-identified or anonymised. Our advertising technology partners may use the information we share with them to match with other information they hold to display relevant advertising based upon your user attributes, interests, preferences, and behaviours.

Your advertising choices

The interest-based advertisements displayed on our websites and digital services are served by SBS and our advertising technology partners. If you do not want to receive interest-based advertisements on SBS, you can follow the steps below to opt-out.  If you choose to opt out of interest-based advertising, this does not mean that you will not receive advertising on our sites and services, it just means that the advertising you see will be less relevant to you and your interests.

  • You can opt out of SBS’s personalisation services such as content recommendations and interest-based advertising by adjusting your preferences here. This will opt you out of personalisation based on SBS audience segments through our Adobe analytics cookies.
  • You can also change your internet browser settings to remove, disable or block the use of cookies in your browser. Please visit the relevant “Help” pages for your browser to learn more. However if you do so, please note that you may not be able to access all or parts of our websites, or you may experience reduced functionality when accessing certain services (for example, automatic account log in may not function properly).
  • For iOS devices, you can opt out of interest-based advertisements on the SBS On Demand App through the App settings under “Advertising”. You can also decide whether to “Allow Tracking” by the SBS App through the iOS and SBS pop up prompts.
  • For Android devices, you can opt out of interest-based advertisements on the SBS On Demand App through the App settings under “Advertising”.
  • For Connected TVs, you may be able to opt out of interest-based advertisements on the SBS On Demand App on your TV through the App settings. Alternatively, your TV itself may have the functionality to disable interest-based advertisement depending on the brand and model. Please refer to your TV’s instruction manual for more information.
  • You can find out more about how to opt out of cookies provided by our key advertising technology partners from:
  • You can adjust your Facebook advertising settings from within your Facebook account and opt-out of advertisements from within the Facebook application.
  • You can also visit the Your Online Choices website to opt out from the advertising technology providers signed up to that website:  https://www.youronlinechoices.com/ie/your-ad-choices

Please note that the opt outs above are browser and/or device-specific so if you access SBS websites and digital services through a number of devices, you will need to opt out on each of those devices.

Even if you have opted out of interest-based advertising, SBS and its trusted third party service providers may still collect data about you for the purposes of analytics and research. Also, the above opt outs may not stop all interest-based advertising being served on our sites and services, including by advertisers who may have obtained information about you from other sources.

Disclosure of personal information

We may disclose your personal information to third parties as follow:

  • To sponsors and partners when you enter a competition, giveaway, promotion, attend an event, or use any SBS services that are sponsored;
  • To third parties acting on our behalf such as our employees, contractors, supplier, agents and service providers. These third parties help us deliver, administer and support our activities and functions, including but not limited to:
    • Hosting our servers and websites;
    • Supplying software and technology solutions;
    • Providing user support;
    • Managing HR information;
    • Delivering marketing and digital marketing services;
    • Serving advertising;
    • Providing event management services;
    • Conducting data analysis and data matching services;
    • Conducting market research, surveys and analysis;
    • Providing IT services;
    • Data processing, storage and back-up; or
    • Processing payments.
  • As part of our legal obligations as a government agency, including during Parliamentary enquiries and as part of the freedom of information (FOI) process. Some of this information may be sensitive information. We will de-identify, anonymise or aggregate the information as statistics where possible; or
  • When we may be required by law from time to time.

We may also disclose de-identified, anonymous, or aggregated statistical information to:

  • Content creators, suppliers and distributors to support the long-term creation of content;
  • Advertisers to sell advertising space so that we can continue to provide our services to you at no charge; or
  • As part of general statistical information about our services’ user base, sales patterns, audience measurement, traffic volumes and related matters. For instance, Nielsen Digital Measurement Technology (more information here).

These details will not include information personally identifying you.

SBS may also use and disclose de-identified information for the purpose of data matching with trusted third party service providers or advertising partners in order to gain better insights into our audience or to delivering interest-based advertising. SBS ensures that data matching environments have appropriate security controls and privacy protections to keep your data secure and ensure that the data can only be used for the purpose for which it was shared.

Some of the third parties we disclose your personal information to may have servers located overseas in various countries, including USA, Singapore and Europe.

Direct Marketing

SBS may, from time to time, send direct marketing communications to you about our activities and services and other material that we consider you would find interesting or useful. If you do not wish to receive such direct marketing communications, you can always opt out. If you are receiving email communications from us, there will be a mechanism to opt out contained in each of those emails. If you subscribe to SBS email newsletters or have created an SBS account, you can log in to your SBS account on the SBS website and change your account settings through the newsletter subscription preferences page. You can disable push notifications on our apps by changing the notification setting on your mobile device or through the app. To stop receiving other communications from us, you can contact us at privacy@sbs.com.au.

If you choose to opt out of all direct marketing communications, please note that SBS may still contact you for other reasonable purposes, including information that SBS is legally required to send, notifications of changes to SBS services or policies and information regarding the use, rights, benefits or obligations of users of our services.

Please note that opting out of direct marketing communications will not opt you out of interest-based marketing advertising from SBS. Please see the Cookies and other tracking technologies section for more information on opting out of interest-based advertising.

SBS Employees and other Workers

This section explains how SBS handles the personal information of our prospective employees, employees and other workers.  This includes contractors, sub-contractors, labour hire employees, cadets, interns, volunteers and work experience students.

Information we may collect

The type of personal information we collect and hold about our employees and contractors includes but is not limited to:

  • Employee contact details (name, address, postcode, email address, date of birth, gender, telephone number);
  • Applications for employment and supporting documents;
  • Referee contact details;
  • Emergency contact details;
  • Taxation details;
  • Banking information necessary to pay salary and wages;
  • Superannuation information;
  • Proof of Australian citizenship or right to work information (passport and visa details);
  • Qualifications;
  • Employment history and experience;
  • Records relating to salary, employment benefits and leave;
  • Health information.

We may need to also collect sensitive information about you, for example, personnel records may include sensitive information such as disabilities, health information or racial or ethnic origin. If you provide us with sensitive information, you consent to us collecting it and handling it as personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We will also collect additional personal information about you during the course of your employment or performance of a contract to manage the ongoing employment/contractor relationship including leave requests, medical certificates, performance reviews, your use of SBS equipment (including computers) and time attendance.  We may also collect information about your ingress and egress of SBS property and information about your use of email to ensure you comply with our policies.

How we collect your information

In most circumstances, personal information will be collected directly from you when you apply for or commence work at SBS.

We may also collect information about you from third parties, for example from your supervisors, previous employers, other employees, referees or intermediaries such as recruitment agents and personnel providers.

Purposes for which SBS handles your personal information

The primary purpose for collecting, holding and using the personal information is to maintain employee and worker records and to administer the individual’s employment or engagement, salary or fees and superannuation.  Personal information is also collected, held and used for other related HR and operational processes, including to process employment applications, payroll, performance reviews, disciplinary action, claims relating to injuries or illnesses, workers compensation claims, investigations and any purposes related to such processes.

SBS may also need to collect your information if we are legally required to do so such as under the working with children legislation in the relevant State or Territory or to check visa status through the Commonwealth’s Visa Entitlement Verification Online service.

SBS may also collect, hold and use personal information to obtain professional services including legal, human resources, industrial relations, accounting and insurance services and otherwise with your consent.

Disclosure of personal information

We will generally only disclose your personal information to third parties if you have authorised us to do so or if we have told you of our requirement to do so.  However, to achieve the above purposes, SBS may disclose your personal information from time to time as follows:

  • To hotels, airlines, drivers, local fixers and other providers when you travel;
  • To third parties acting on our behalf such as our employees, contractors, supplier, agents and service providers who help us deliver, administer and support our activities and functions, including:
    • Technology service providers who provide the systems and software that SBS requires to perform our functions, for example who provide our travel management or payroll systems.
    • External consultants who provide services to SBS, for example accounting, legal, insurance or industrial relations;
  • As part of our legal obligations as a government agency, including during Parliamentary enquiries, to Comcare (the national authority for work health and safety, and workers' compensation) or as part of the FOI process. Some of this information may be sensitive information. We will de-identify, anonymise or aggregate the information as statistics where possible;
  • When we may be required by law from time to time (e.g. subpoenas, court orders, workers compensation orders, the ATO, Centrelink);
  • If there are reasonable grounds to believe that the disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the life or health of any individual.

This section should be read in conjunction with the other relevant sections of this policy, including the following sections on access and correction of personal information, deleting personal information and making a privacy complaint.

How we hold information and keep it secure

SBS holds your personal information both in hard copy and electronically, on our own servers and those of our service providers.

SBS takes the security of your personal information seriously and we implement a range of technical, administrative, personnel and physical measures to safeguard your personal information against loss, interference and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure, and misuse, including using electronic and physical access restrictions to files containing personal information and ensuring encryption of personal information sent and received.

We require that all third parties, to whom we disclose personal information or who may have access to personal information, have appropriate controls to protect your personal information in a manner that is consistent with our Privacy Policy, including in relation to privacy, security and confidentiality. They must only use your personal information for authorised purposes.

Access and correction of information about you

It is important to us that the information we hold about you is up-to-date, accurate and complete, and we will try to confirm your details through our communications with you and promptly add updated or new personal information to existing records when we are advised. If any of your details change, please notify us as soon as you can.

You have a right to access the personal information that we hold about you, and can ask that we correct that personal information. If you subscribe to SBS email newsletters or have created an SBS account, you can access and correct your information at any time by logging in to your SBS account on the SBS website. If you believe we are holding information about you that is inaccurate, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, you can ask us to correct it. If you would like to access your personal information, or request us to delete, update or correct it, you can do so by contacting us in writing and verifying your identity. We will do our best to respond to your request within 30 days. We will only refuse access in exceptional circumstances, and if this is the case, we will advise you of our reasons for doing so. Deletion requests are subject to SBS’s record-keeping obligations, including the Archives Act 1983 (Cth).

If you would like to delete your SBS account, you can do this by selecting “Delete Account” in your SBS account settings on the SBS website.

Privacy complaints and further information

We take your complaints seriously and will attempt to resolve your issue quickly and fairly.

If you think that an act or practice of SBS has interfered with your privacy in relation to your personal information:

  • You may make a complaint addressed to the SBS Privacy Officer. The complaint must identify you and be in written form.
  • The SBS Privacy Officer will investigate your complaint and will endeavour to provide a response setting out SBS’s decision in writing within 30 days of receipt of your complaint.
  • If SBS is unable to satisfactorily resolve your concerns you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner on their website www.oaic.gov.au.

If you think that an SBS program or content has interfered with your privacy, you may make a complaint under the SBS Code of Practice. The complaint process is available here: http://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/complaints

Our contact details

If you require any further information or have any questions or comments about this Privacy Policy or if you wish to access or correct your personal information or make a complaint about our handling of that information, please contact the SBS Privacy Officer as follows:

Submit an online request here

Email: privacy@sbs.com.au

Telephone:

You can call us toll free on 1800 500 727 (available AEST/AEDT business hours).
If you need assistance contacting SBS through the National Relay Service (a service provided by the Australian Government to assist people who are Deaf or have a hearing or speech impairment) call 1800 555 677 and ask for 1800 500 727.

Post:

Privacy Officer
SBS Corporate Affairs
Locked Bag 028
Crows Nest NSW 1585