Terms of Use & Privacy Policy

This Terms of Use and Privacy Policy applies to:

a) The Victoria Walks website www.victoriawalks.org.au;
b) Walking Maps website www.walkingmaps.com.au;
c) Social media channels including but not limited to:

a. Victoria Walks Facebook Page;
b. Victoria Walks on Twitter; and
c. Victoria Walks on Tumblr.

These various sites are hereafter referred to as ‘the Websites’.

By registering, using or viewing the Websites, you hereby agree to the following terms and conditions:

You agree, by registering, viewing or otherwise using the Websites in any way, that:

1. You will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law;

2. You will not post any copyrighted material, unless the copyright is owned by you or you have consent from the owner of the copyrighted material;

3. You will not post messages that could be interpreted as spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other solicitation;

4. You will immediately notify Victoria Walks or a forum moderator of any post, photo or image that you find objectionable personally or otherwise. Further, that you will flag such comments as inappropriate immediately;

5. You remain solely responsible for any material or content that you post to the site or its forum, including comments, links to third party sites etc. and that you will indemnify and hold harmless Victoria Walks in respect of any such material or content;

6. If registering on the Websites, you will choose a username that is appropriate and inoffensive;

7. You will never give provide or otherwise make available your password to another individual, for your protection and for validity reasons. You also agree to never use another member's account to post messages or browse this forum;

8. You will not be entitled to any monetary benefit in the event that Victoria Walks highlights or otherwise selects your content or walks to be featured on the Websites (eg. showing your walk as a 'Staff Pick'); and

9. You accept that any promotional activities, giveaways or prizes conducted by sponsors on the Websites shall be the responsibility of the sponsor and not Victoria Walks.

10. You will not make posts or create walks on Victoria Walks social media or websites that advertises or promotes commercial businesses without the prior approval of Victoria Walks.      

Content
If you post content or load a walk map onto the Websites, including Walkability Action Group pages, you are giving Victoria Walks non exclusive rights to promote and distribute this content, in whole or in part, on an ongoing basis. All content contributors to the Websites are also informed and in agreement that their work will be archived by the National Library of Australia in PANDORA.

If you are posting content or walks that you discovered in another walking book or website, please ensure the content or walks you contribute are based on your interpretation and not copied directly (word for word) from the source. You can also credit the original source in your walk summary.

Changes
Victoria Walks reserves the right to add, modify, or remove any of these rules at any time without prior notice.  Rule changes apply to past, current and future posts.

Victoria Walks retains the right to remove or edit content that it reasonably regards as objectionable, defamatory or outside the stated purposes of Victoria Walks, at any time and at its sole discretion, if it determines that removal is necessary.  Content may be partly or entirely removed or edited immediately or at any later time.  This policy extends to member profile information and Walkability Action Groups as well.

Victoria Walks reserves the right to delete a walk created on Walking Maps that: does not reasonably constitute a walk (e.g. the walk is plotted across buildings or is mostly a photo/point of interest plotted on a map without a reasonable walk); appears as a ’test’ walk; has remained unpublished (in draft) fpor longer than 3 months, or has a very low rating and has very few views over an extended period of time.

Anti-Spam Policy
The Websites are operated in accordance with this Anti-Spam policy.  This policy has been formed to steer members away from posting content that degrade the theme of the forums, contain malicious or derogatory comments and/or otherwise portray Victoria Walks, the Websites or the forums in a negative light.  Such topics and replies include personal message threads and contentious content that should be dealt with through other means of communication.  Any post identified by Victoria Walks as spam will be deleted without warning.

Moderation
Victoria Walks reserves the right to moderate any content it determines to be in contravention of these rules. Victoria Walks does not believe in silencing people, and advocates freedom of speech.   However, Victoria Walks will remove content that is outside the stated purposes of Victoria Walks or could otherwise be in breach of these rules.   Victoria Walks reserves its rights to remove or edit content at any time, including a period after the offending material was posted.

Links
The Websites may contain links or references to other Internet sites beyond Victoria Walks’ control. / Victoria Walks disclaims all liability whatsoever for the content of these sites, and notes that the Victoria Walks privacy statement does not apply to these sites.  Victoria Walks encourages all users to read the privacy statements and terms and conditions of linked or referenced sites you enter.

By providing your personal details to Victoria Walks you signify your acceptance of this Privacy Statement.
If you do not agree to this Privacy Statement, please do not provide your personal details.  This Privacy Statement is incorporated into, and is part of, the Terms and Conditions that govern your use of the Websites in general.

Victoria Walks will use your information for the purposes set out in paragraph 2 below.  You can unsubscribe whenever you receive a communication from Victoria Walks (e.g. our monthly newsletter: http://www.victoriawalks.org.au/Newsletters/), or by sending an email to info[At]victoriawalks.org.au with ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject box.

Victoria Walks may need to update this Privacy Statement from time to time.  Please check this page regularly to ensure that you have read the most recent version.

1. Collecting personal information
Victoria Walks will only collect the personal information that you choose to provide to us.    Where possible, Victoria Walks will enable you to select how this information will be used.  You may choose to provide personal information if, for example, you: make an enquiry; register on the Websites, fill out a survey or other form with your personal information included; request information; enter a competition; post information to public areas of the Websites; or participate in a promotion.

By providing any personal information to Victoria Walks, you fully understand and clearly consent to the transfer of such personal information to, and the collection and processing of such information in, other countries or territories.  Any such transfer and processing by Victoria Walks will be in accordance with this Privacy Statement.  Third parties (including but not limited to software providers, advertisers and ad placement agencies) may also use tracking technologies by or through the Websites. We have no responsibility or liability for any tracking, data collection or other activities of such third parties.

If users Login to the Walking Maps website www.walkingmaps.com.au using their Facebook profile, their data is collected, processed and used in the following ways for these purposes:

• Facebook ID
  • saved to database
  • this is used to identify the user
• email address
  • saved to database
  • this is used to send a verification email so that a walk that has been created can be published
• first name 
  • saved to database
  • this is used as the Display name on a published walk (users are able to change their Display name on Walking Maps)
• last name
  • ot saved to database
  • this is not used.

Users personal data will be deleted on request via this Contact form.

2. Our use of personal information

Victoria Walks will use information collected from you in the following ways:

Marketing purposes - Victoria Walks may use information for internal marketing analysis, for example, to assess trends amongst our visitors or to measure the amount of traffic to the Websites.  Victoria Walks may also use your personal information in order to communicate with you about its services or those of its affiliates or walking in general. However, you will be able to choose whether or not to receive such communications when you first provide personal information to Victoria Walks.

Transactional purposes - Victoria Walks may use your personal information in order to respond to your queries and requests.

Public (or Interactive) Areas of the Websites -  Information that you post on or through the public areas of the Websites (e.g., chat rooms, bulletin boards and discussion groups) are generally accessible to, and may be collected and used by, others and may result in unsolicited messages or other contact from others. Users of the Websites are encouraged to exercise caution when providing personal information about themselves in public areas of the Websites.

Administration and Data Management -Victoria Walks may transfer your personal information to third parties under confidentiality obligations when the performance of any service in relation to the activities above is sub-contracted (e.g. the administration of a marketing campaign for Victoria Walks).

Legal purposes - Victoria Walks may disclose your personal information if permitted by law or required to do so by law or where Victoria Walks believes such action is necessary in order to protect or defend its interests or the interests of customers or users of our Websites.

3. Use of cookies
In common with many websites, Victoria Walks uses "cookies" to help us gather the following information from visitors for example:
• the IP address from which you access the Websites
• the type of browser and operating system used to access the Websites
• the date and time of your access to the Websites
• the pages you visit
• the internet address of the website from which you accessed the Websites

A cookie is a small data file that our server sends to your browser when you visit the Websites. The use of cookies helps Victoria Walks to assist your use of certain aspects of the Websites. You can delete cookies at any time or you can set your browser to reject or disable cookies. If you do disable cookies some functions on the Websites may not work correctly.  Victoria Walks uses information from cookies, for example, to learn about the number of visitors to our Websites and the type of technology that our visitors use. Cookies help us to monitor what sort of content is popular and to assess visitors browsing habits.  When a user revisits the Websites, Victoria Walks may recognise the user by the cookie and customise the user’s experience accordingly.  Victoria Walks can use this information to continually improve the content and usability of the Websites.  Victoria Walks may compile and report to third parties (such as evaluators) aggregate statistics about our users in terms of numbers, traffic patterns and related Website information.  Victoria Walks does not connect the information collected through cookies with other information that is personally identifiable, unless required or permitted to do so by law or to enforce the Terms & Conditions.

4. How we protect your information
Victoria Walks takes security seriously and exercises precautions to keep your personal information secure. Victoria Walks has put in place appropriate physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard the information collected.  However, due to the open communication nature of the Internet, Victoria Walks cannot guarantee that communications between you and Victoria Walks, or information stored on Victoria Walks servers, will be free from unauthorised access by third parties.

5. Your details and contacting us
You can check what personal information Victoria Walks holds about you, update your information, ask Victoria Walks to remove your information, correct any inaccuracies in such personal information or ask Victoria Walks questions about our Privacy Statement, by contacting info[AT]victoriawalks.org.au  and 03 9662 3975.  Victoria Walks will make every effort to respond to your request in a timely manner.

Please read our Disclaimer for more information.