The Humanitarian Frontiers Lab (HFL) is committed to ensuring that your personal details are protected when you use our websites or subscribe to our mailing lists. This privacy policy sets out how we use and protect any information that you provide. It includes:

  • What information HFL may collect about you;
  • What HFL does with the information we gather about you;
  • When HFL may use your details to contact you;
  • Whether HFL will disclose your details to anyone else;
  • Your choices regarding the personal information you have provided; and
  • HFL’s commitment to keeping your details secure.

HFL is the data controller for HFL newsletters and any subscriber data.

We process your personal data in relation to your subscription by consent when you subscribe electronically. Where we send you postal mail, we do so through our legitimate interests as we believe that doing so does not unduly harm your privacy rights. You can opt out at any point by contacting us.

Whenever you provide personal information to us, we are legally obliged to use this information by all laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the Australian Privacy Act of 1988, the New South Wales Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998, and the Australian Spam Act 2003 (these laws are referred to collectively in this Privacy Policy as the ‘data protection laws’).

Be aware that HFL’s website contains links to other websites of interest operated by third parties. These third-party websites have their privacy policies, including cookies, and we recommend that you review them as they will govern the use of personal information you submit while visiting these websites.

We do not accept any liability for the privacy practices of such third-party websites.

Information will be requested from you when you subscribe to receive one of our newsletters, post a comment to the HFL blog, purchase any of our products, or sign up to attend any HFL events.

By entering your details in the fields requested, you enable HFL and its service providers to deliver the services you select. We may collect the following information:

  • Name, organisation and job title;
  • Contact information, including email address;
  •  Demographic information such as address and post code;
  •  Preferences and interests;
  •  Employment history, education, skills and references (if applying for a position or placement at HFL);
  •  Other information relevant to user surveys.

This website uses cookies to access particular services throughout your time on the HFL website to track site usage.

A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may, however, prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

The website also uses traffic logs and cookies to identify which pages you visit or files you download. We use Google Analytics to collect this information. This helps us analyse data about webpage traffic and improve our website to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes. We retain your data on Google Analytics for 38 months. Read more about Google Analytics security and privacy principles.

HFL will use your personal information to:

  • Periodically send you news updates, event invitations, publications announcements or other information you may find interesting;
  • Pass to a selection panel for consideration (in the case of online job applications);
  • Contact you for service administration purposes (for instance, if you have forgotten your password or if you have posted a comment on our blog);
  • Refine the outputs and services we offer; Employment history, education, skills and references (if applying for a position or placement at HFL);
  • Check that our records are correct;
  • Invite you to participate in or contribute to specific research projects being undertaken by HFL researchers (participation is always voluntary).

We do look to see how many people are opening our emails but do not use this data to profile you individually.

Please note that HFL hosts a number of websites and mailing lists (e.g. HFL e-newsletters, HFL events and others).

You will have the option to unsubscribe from these HFL lists if you wish, and you may opt to receive mailings from only one list.

You will also be given the opportunity to withhold or withdraw your consent for use other than those listed above.

We do not share your data with anyone other than our newsletter service provider MailChimp and some of our newsletters and publications are run out by organisations that are wholly owned by HFL.

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or disclosure is required by law. In some instances, however, HFL may use third parties to process your information.

On these occasions, we will require that these third parties comply strictly with our policy and will prohibit the use of your personal information for their own business purposes.

We do look to see how many people are opening our emails but do not use this data to profile you individually.

We use a third-party provider, MailChimp, to deliver our newsletter. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. MailChimp provides more information on their services on their website.

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

While we strive to keep the information that you supply secure, because of the nature of the internet, we cannot guarantee that your information will remain 100% secure at all times.

We will come back to you every couple of years to renew consent where we ask for this – otherwise, we will bring the privacy notice to your attention every couple of years.

If you delete your account or request to be removed from a particular mailing list, your profile is tagged as inactive’ and, while people cannot use the personal information, it stays on the system so that we know not to send you a newsletter again.

You may request details of personal information held about you. If you would like a copy of your personal information that we hold, please write to the Humanitarian Frontiers Lab, Rm 415, Civil Engineering Building (J05), The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006 Australia or email [email protected]

If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please write to or email us as soon as possible and we will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

If you have any comments or questions about the HFL’s privacy policy you can contact us:

By email: [email protected]
By post: Humanitarian Frontiers Lab, Rm 415, Civil Engineering Building (J05), The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006 Australia
By phone: +61 2 9351 3504

HFL reserves the right to amend this policy by updating this page. For this reason, you may want to check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from July 2018.