Our Commitment to your Privacy

Fairfax Community Newspapers will not sell, trade or rent any personally identifiable information obtained from you to a third party unless you consent.

It is our policy to allow our users to provide as much - or as little - personal information to us as they feel comfortable doing. As a user or customer of the Fairfax Community Newspaper Online Network we pledge to provide you with some important rights:

1. Decide what personally identifiable information we collect.
2. Our total commitment to your privacy.
3. Not to receive e-mail from the FCN Online Network you have not consented to receive.

The FCN Online Network

The information provided in this Privacy Policy Statement covers your use of the following sites;

Fcnonline ( including fcn.biz )
The Journal
Knox Journal
Maroondah Journal
Yarra Ranges Journal
Werribee Banner
The Telegraph
The Express Telegraph
Altona Laverton Mail
Maroondah Journal
Williamstown Advertiser
The Flier
Footscray Mail
The Sunshine Advocate
Blacktown Sun
Camden Wollondilly Advertiser
Hills News
Fairfield Champion
Liverpool Champion
Macarthur Advertiser
Parramatta Sun
Penrith Star
St George Sutherland Leader
StMarys Star
EasyFind



Information Gathered

Unless you specifically tell us, the FCN Online Network will never know who you are.

You may, however, elect to tell us things that you want us to remember. We hope that, like many of our users and customers, you will want to provide information about yourself to the FCN Online Network because it will help us to make our sites and services more valuable to you.

The choice of how much personally identifiable information about yourself you disclose to the FCN Online Network is left completely up to you, our valued customer. But however you choose to interact with the FCN Online Network, you have our commitment to your privacy, as stated above.

What information does the FCN Online Network gather?

If you are comfortable providing us with information about yourself, enhanced services become available to you, but in most cases it will not be possible for us to offer them to anonymous users.

All the information we gather is stored by FCN on a secure site protected by state of the art 'firewalls' and never shared with anyone.

We track traffic patterns throughout sites.

Companies placing advertising on our sites and the sites of other web publishers may have the ability to assign a different cookie to you by a process that the FCN Online Network does not control. However as cookies don't identify individuals (you'll just be a number to them), companies will not know who you are - and The FCN Online Network will not tell them.

Why do we gather the information and how will we use it?

The FCN Online Network aims to provide you with better services and more compelling reasons to come back and visit our sites:
In the future, we may use the information you provide us with to provide personalised portions of our sites to you that are intended to provide just the information you are interested in receiving.

We analyse what our users and customers like and don't like about the content, products and services on Fairfax Community Newspaper sites so that we can constantly improve them for your use.

In the future, we may also use information you have given us to help focus the advertisements that are shown on our sites, hopefully to make them of more interest to you.

We develop summary - not individual - reports for our advertisers. An example of a summary report might be "2,000 people clicked on advertisement "X" today and they were in the headlines section of the site." The people that help make it possible for the Fairfax Community Newspaper Online Network to provide our sites for free - our advertisers - use this information to determine how effective their advertising investments are. We do not tell our advertisers who it was that saw or clicked on their advertisements and do not sell, trade or rent them any of your personal information.

Occasionally, we will send you e-mail communications to provide information which we think you will find useful, including information about new products and services from the Fairfax Community Newspaper Online Network. It is our policy only to send e-mail to customers who give us permission to do so. In every such e-mail, we will also have instructions on how you may unsubscribe from the e-mail list so that you will not receive any future e-mails if you do not wish to - see the "Opt-out Policy " below.

Opt-In/Opt-Out policy

The Fairfax Community Newspaper Online Network puts control over communications directed to you where it belongs, in your hands:
We only send our e-mail newsletters to users who ask to receive them.

Once you are on the list - you can easily get off. Each e-mail newsletter you receive has simple instructions on how to immediately unsubscribe from our newsletter list. To do this you must use the e-mail addresses you specified at the time of becoming a Member or joining an e-mail newsletter list.

If you change or move e-mail addresses please let us know so we can redirect your e-mail to your new address.

In Summary

The Fairfax Community Newspaper Online Network is committed to protecting your privacy.
We use the information we collect on our sites to make our services the best they can be and to enhance your overall experience.
We do not sell, trade or rent your personal information to others.
Your consent

By using our sites, you consent to the collection and use of this information by Fairfax Community Newspapers Online Network. If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page so that you are always aware of what information we collect and how we use it.

Tell us what you think

The Fairfax Community Newspapers Online Network welcomes your questions and comments about privacy. Please send e-mail to fcnonline@fcnvic.fairfax.com.au