Privacy Policy

This policy applies to all people who interact with The Independent Advisor, including:

• General visitors — people who browse the public website or submit an enquiry;
• Trial users — people who request a free trial of the portal;
• Registered subscribers — people who create an account and subscribe (monthly, annual, or Founding Member); and
• Manually granted users — people granted access by the editor directly.

General enquiries. If you submit an enquiry or appointment request, we collect your name, email address, phone number, the type of advice you are looking for, any details you choose to share about your situation, and your general location or region.

Trial requests. If you request a free trial, we collect your name and email address.

Subscriber registration. When you create a subscriber account, we collect your full name, email address, mobile number, occupation, company or business name (optional), and your reason for subscribing. We also record the date and time you agreed to this Privacy Policy.

Subscription and payment. When you subscribe, your payment is processed by Stripe. We do not store your card details. We hold a record of your subscription plan, status, and billing period.

Usage data. We automatically collect some technical information when you visit our website, such as pages viewed and general usage data, through analytics tools (see "Cookies and analytics" below).

We collect personal information directly from you when you fill in a form on our website, create an account, subscribe to the portal, or contact us by phone or email. We do not collect personal information about you from other sources without telling you.

We use your personal information to:

• create and manage your subscriber account and provide access to the portal;
• process your subscription and manage billing through Stripe;
• respond to your enquiry or trial request;
• communicate with you about your account, subscription, or changes to the portal;
• understand who is using the portal and improve its content and relevance; and
• comply with our legal obligations.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not disclose it to third parties for their own marketing purposes.

We use the following third-party service providers to operate the portal and process subscriptions:

• Stripe — payment processing. Stripe stores your payment card details and billing information on servers that may be located outside Australia. See stripe.com/au/privacy.
• Hosting and infrastructure providers — our website and subscriber database are hosted on cloud infrastructure that may store data on servers outside Australia, including in the United States.
• Analytics providers — we use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site. See "Cookies and analytics" below.

We only share the information necessary for these providers to perform their function, and we expect them to handle your information securely.

Our website uses cookies and Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site and to help us improve it. Analytics data is aggregated and does not identify you personally. You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings, though some parts of the site may not work as intended if you do. A cookie consent notice is displayed on your first visit.

We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold from misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. Subscriber accounts are protected by password authentication. Subscriber profile data is stored in a secured private data store. Payment processing is handled entirely by Stripe and we do not store card details.

We keep subscriber account and profile information for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period afterwards in case you resubscribe or have a query. Enquiry information is kept for as long as reasonably necessary to respond to you. You may request deletion of your account and associated data by contacting us.

You can ask us for access to the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it if it is wrong, by contacting us using the details below. We will respond within a reasonable time.

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, contact us first using the details below and we will do our best to resolve it. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at www.oaic.gov.au.

We may update this policy from time to time, including when we change how we collect or use personal information. The current version will always be available on this page, with the date it was last updated shown at the top. Continued use of the portal after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your personal information, contact us at: