Privacy Policy

•  To administer and/or improve our website or services
• If you are a client, to provide you with services and products
• When you apply to be employed, or contracted, by GNS Science, for recruitment, employment and contracting purposes
• To undertake research or statistical analysis (on an anonymised basis)
• To comply with our legal obligations
• Where we have your consent, emailing you updates, event invitations and publications that we think you may interest you
• To carry out our internal business and administrative purposes

We may disclose your personal information to:

• Any third party to achieve any of the purposes listed above
• Any business that supports our services and products, including any person that hosts or maintains any underlying IT system or data centre that we use to provide the website or other services and products
• Any other person authorised by you

A business that supports our services and products may be located outside of New Zealand.  This may mean your personal information is held and processed outside New Zealand.

Data collection and cookies

Website and social media

As you interact with our digital channels, we may use automatic data collection technologies, such as cookies, to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. We may also use an analytics services such as Google Analytics to assist us with understanding what content people use our website.

We may use Google Analytics on our websites to collect information using cookies or other mechanisms to track your activity. We may collect your IP Address, web browser, location, pages viewed, time spent on site and the number of times you visit.

Cookies are small text files that are stored on a user's device that can collect information about how you browse the website. Cookies may give us information on your location, IP address, browser and platform. If you do not want us to collect this information you can turn off cookies in your browser and deleting them from our device.

This information may be used by us or on behalf of us, to analyse and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, and better understand online activity.

Mobile Application

To submit a felt report on the GeoNet app, we collect and store your location at the time of submission using your device’s GPS, however this is not directly tied to any personally identifiable information. A geohash algorithm is used to derive an approximate location (up to 7 digit precision) from these coordinates which is then displayed on a public-facing map. 

The app does use third-party services that may collect information used to identify you. Please refer to the privacy policies of the third-party service providers used by the app for further information:

• Google Play Services(external link)
• Firebase Crashlytics(external link)

Security

To ensure compliance with legal requirements, such as “Security in the Government Sector (SIGS), the “NZ Information Security Manual” (NZISM) and ISO 27001, to maintain cyber security standards and to ensure the robust delivery of GNS Science IT services, our systems are subject to ongoing monitoring, including activity logging and analysis, as well as occasional formal audit.  The ongoing monitoring of GNS Science IT systems can occur through services provided by one or more specialist third parties.  Such third parties can access information processed by and stored on GNS Science systems.

If you follow a link from our website to any other website, including any social networking site, that site will have its own privacy policy.  You should review that site’s privacy policy before providing any personal information.

Your rights

Subject to certain exceptions under privacy legislation, you have the right to access your readily retrievable personal information and request correction of your personal information.  You may access and request correction of that information by contacting GNS Science.

This privacy statement may be updated by GNS Science at any time.  Last updated: April 2021