Privacy Policy

In this policy, "personal information" means information about an identifiable individual, for example, your name and contact details. We take your privacy extremely seriously and are committed to ensuring that your personal information is protected in compliance with all applicable Australian laws.

This policy explains the types of personal information that we may collect and hold, how that information is protected and used and with whom the information is shared. It also sets out how you can contact us if you have any queries or concerns about this information. Some of our services also have their own privacy policy which provide details of the use of your information by that service. These service-specific policies may apply in addition to or instead of this policy.

Sony Australia Limited (Sony Australia) (ABN 59 001 215 354), is the Sony Group company responsible for Sony consumer and professional electronics products, services and websites in Australia, such as BRAVIA televisions, Cyber-shot cameras, Sony Stores and Sony Store, Online. We are registered and have our head office in Australia.

Please note that other companies in the Sony Group are responsible for personal information controlled outside Australia, such as Sony Corporation in Japan, or in connection with other Sony products and services, such as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited (Playstation), Sony Mobile, Sony Music, Sony Pictures and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. These companies may have their own privacy policies, which are generally available from the relevant websites for those products and services.

1. Information that we collect

We need to collect personal information from you in order for us to provide products, services and support to you. If you do not provide us with certain personal information when prompted, we may be unable to sell you products and/or provide certain services, including after sales services.

Sony Australia may collect personal information which is necessary for our functions or activities in several different ways. Please take care when submitting personal information to us, in particular when completing free text fields or uploading documents and other materials. Some of our services are automated and we may not recognise that you have accidentally provided us with incorrect or sensitive information.

1.1 The types of personal information that we collect and hold

We may collect the following types of personal information:

• name, address and contact details;
• date of birth;
• gender;
• interests;
• account and newsletter preferences;
• delivery date for a product you purchased from us, the place of purchase and information about your ownership of the product;
• information about any call to us, including a recording of the call, details about the product(s) you bought, the reason why you contacted us and the advice we gave you;
• information relating to your use of any of our loyalty programs and the rewards that you claim;
• your business contact details, place of employment and position;
• product reviews, comments, photos and forum posts that you have submitted;
• credit and financial checks;
• information about your social network profile such as your social network ID, profile picture, gender and location;
• the fact that you have clicked on a 'like', '+1' or 'tweet' or similar button in one of our websites or services or on of our pages on a social network site, and information about further interactions with this posted content (for example, if your contacts click on a link in the posted content), which we may associate with the details that we store about you;
• information about your visit to our website, such as your browser software, which pages you view and which items you 'clicked' on or added to your shopping basket;
• service, product or server logs, which hold technical information about your use of our service, product or websites, such as your IP address, domain, device and application settings, errors and hardware activity;
• information about where your device is physically located (for example, when you are using a geo-location service or application and you have provided consent to your location being shared);
• interests and preferences that you specify during setup of an Internet enabled product or service;
• (in the case of candidates seeking employment with us) information relevant to your employment history.

1.2 Ways we collect personal information

We collect personal information directly from you, from publicly available sources of information and from third parties:

• by using written forms;
• through contact in person or over the telephone, mobile or other messaging technology; and
• via the internet (including social media websites, online forms, our website).

1.3 Parties from whom we collect personal information

There are a range of people, organisations and sources from whom or from which we collect your personal information. These may be parties related to Sony Group or third parties. Some examples of the parties and sources from whom or which we collect your personal information are:

• other related bodies corporate within the Sony Group;
• Sony retailers;
• your linked Sony accounts; and
• publicly available sources of information.

2 Purposes of collecting personal information

2.1 General

Sony Australia may use information it collects for a wide range of purposes, including to:

• make changes to your account details, including to your Sony linked accounts;
• fulfil obligations under any sale and purchase contract and/or any other contract between you and Sony;
• provide you with a product or service you have requested, including checking that a payment is not made fraudulently, delivering your purchase to you or ensuring that you benefit from any relevant special offer or promotion (and fulfil its obligations under any other agreement it may have with you);
• render services related to Sony business such as providing customer care, warranty, returns, servicing Sony products and other after sales services;
• provide information about products, services and/or special offers;
• train staff and for quality assurance purposes, particularly in relation to our customer relations staff at our call, email and other support centres;
• obtain opinions or comments about Sony products and/or services, including conducting product surveys;
• facilitate and process your searches and requests for information when you contact us about Sony Australia and its products and services;
• conduct prize draws, contests and other promotional offers;
• consider employing you if you contact us via one of Sony Australia's job application websites; and;
• record statistical data for marketing analysis.

2.2 Marketing communications

Sony Australia may use your information to provide you with newsletters and other communications by post, email, telephone and/or text message (SMS), if you have provided your prior consent or we are otherwise permitted to do so under applicable law. See the Marketing Communication section below for more details.

2.3 Personalised and targeted content, recommendations and advertisements

Sony Australia may use the information it collects to personalise and more effectively target its stores, services, content, recommendations, adverts and communications. You may notice this personalisation and targeting when you use Sony products and services, when we contact you with marketing communications and when you visit our and third party websites and services that show advertisements from us or our advertising partners (for example, you might see an advertisement for a product that you have recently viewed on one of our websites).

The personalisation and targeting that you see on our websites or in our online advertisements and communications may make use of cookies set by us or our third party advertising partners. In other cases, our services may have specific settings to control personalised content and you should consult the privacy policy of the relevant service for more information.

2.4 Statistics

Sony Australia may use your information to create anonymous, aggregated statistics about the use of our websites, products, services and loyalty programs, which we may share with third parties and/or make available to the public.

2.5 Product Improvement

Sony Australia may use your information to develop and improve new and existing Sony products and services, recommendations, advertisements and other communications and learn more about customers' shopping preferences in general.

2.6 Publish your reviews, comments and content

Where you have uploaded product reviews, comments or content to our websites or services and made them publically visible, Sony Australia may link to, publish or publicise these materials elsewhere including in our own advertisements.

2.7 Secondary purposes

We will also use and disclose your personal information for a secondary purpose related to a purpose for which we collected it, where you would reasonably expect us to use or disclose your personal information for that secondary purpose. For example, we will disclose your personal information to third party service providers so that they can provide certain contracted services to Sony Group, such as information technology support or programming, hosting services, telephony services, mailing or sending of document to you digitally or otherwise.

2.8 Other

There will be other instances where we may use and disclose your personal information, including where:

• you have consented to the use or disclosure;
• we reasonably believe that the use or disclosure is reasonably necessary for an enforcement activity conducted by or on behalf of an enforcement body; or
• we are required or authorised by law to disclose your personal information, for example, to a court in response to a subpoena or court order.

2.9 Combining the information we collect

We may link or combine the information that we collect from the different sources outlined above in the "Information that we collect" section above (including information received from other Sony Group companies about your use of other Sony Group products and services). Information may be linked via a unique identifier, such as a cookie or account number . Alternatively, we may decide to combine two or more databases into a single database of customer information.

We may do this for your and/or our convenience (for example, to allow you to more easily register for a new service), to allow us to provide a more seamless customer support whenever you contact us and to provide you with better, personalised services, content, marketing and adverts.

3. Disclosure of personal information

3.1 Disclosure of information by Sony Australia

In general, Sony Australia does not sell, rent or otherwise disclose information about you to third parties without your consent. However, there are exceptions:

Other Sony Group companies

We will share your personal information with all companies that form a part of the Sony Group. If one Sony Group company collects your personal information, other Sony Group companies may use and disclose that personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, described in section 2.

Other Sony Group companies to whom we have disclosed your personal information for one of these purposes may combine this information with other details they hold about you. Unless that Sony Group company provides you with their own privacy policy, they may use your personal details for the purposes explained in this policy.

Our service providers

We may use third party service providers to process information on our behalf for the purposes outlined above. For example, fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and emails, sending text messages (SMS), providing marketing assistance, processing credit card payments, providing fraud checking services and providing customer services.

Our service providers operate only in accordance with our instructions, in line with this policy, and are subject to appropriate confidentiality and security obligations.

Our business partners

If you request or agree to receive information or newsletters from one of our business partners, we may provide that third party with your details so that they can respond to your request.

Legal and business purposes

We may disclose to third parties information about you:

• to government bodies and law enforcement agencies to prevent fraud, to comply with the law and to meet a reasonable request from such bodies;
• to third parties (including professional advisors) to enforce or defend the legal rights of any Sony Group company or the terms and conditions of any Sony product or service; and
• to a third party purchaser or seller, and its and our professional advisors, in connection with a corporate event such as a merger, business acquisition or insolvency situation.
• Anonymous statistics

We prepare anonymous, aggregate or generic data (including "generic" statistics) for a number of purposes, including for product and service development, business promotion and research purposes. As we consider that this is not personal information, we may share it with any third party (such as our partners, advertisers, industry bodies, the media and/or the general public).

We will also disclose your personal information as described in paragraphs 2.7 and 2.8 above.

3.2 Sharing of information by you

A number of our online services allow you to upload and share messages, photos, video and other content and links with others and/or create a publically accessible profile for your account. For example:

• the communities and forums area of our website, allows you to post comments (with your account name), which are visible to other users of that service; and
• other services allow you to share a link which if clicked on may allow the recipient to access your uploaded content.

You should not expect any information that you make available to others via Sony Australia's online services to be kept private or confidential. Content and links that you share might, for instance, be forwarded by your recipients to others. You should always exercise discretion when using such services.

3.3 Overseas disclosure

Sony Australia is part of the Sony Group, which is a global organisation. For the purposes explained in this policy, your information may be transferred to Sony Group companies (including service providers operating on their behalf) and other third parties in countries which do not have the same level of privacy laws as those in the country where you are located.

We may send your personal information overseas. Instances when we will do this include:

• when you have asked us to do so or we have your consent; and
• when we are authorised or required by an Australian law or a court/tribunal to do so.

In order to engage in our business activities and functions, we will disclose your personal information to parties in a number of countries, including Singapore, Australia, the United States of America, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Belgium.

We will need to from time to time disclose your personal information to parties in other countries not on this list. This will be on an ad hoc or case by case basis and for the purposes for which we collected your personal information.

4 Marketing communications

When you provide us with your contact details, such as when you purchase a product, contact our customer support call centres or create an account for one of our services, you may be given the opportunity to opt-in to receiving various direct marketing communications. Direct marketing involves the use and/or disclosure of personal information to communicate directly with an individual to promote goods and services. This includes newsletters and other communications by post, email, telephone and/or text message (SMS) from Sony Australia and/or other Sony Group companies, sending you details about the latest Sony products and services, such as upgrades and special offers in which you may be interested. Sony Australia may also give you the opportunity to opt-in to receiving more targeted direct marketing communications.

You can change your marketing communication preferences at any time:

• if you would like to unsubscribe from an email sent to you, follow the 'unsubscribe' link and/or instructions placed (typically) at the bottom of the email. But note that:
• if you use more than one e-mail address to shop or contact Sony Australia, you will need to unsubscribe separately for each email address; and
• this method will only unsubscribe for the newsletter or other communication that you have received and you should use one of the other methods if you wish to opt-out of all our marketing communications,
• if you have registered with Sony Australia online and have a "My Sony" account, you may log-in and amend your marketing communication preferences in the account settings; and
• you can contact us using the details in the "Contact us" section (section 11) in order to change your marketing communication preferences.

Please note that we may occasionally send you important information about Sony Australia products and services that you are using or have used (such as order confirmations, product safety announcements and service changes). These emails are not affected by your marketing communication preferences.

5 Security of your information

5.1 What we do to protect your information

We hold your personal information in:

• computer systems;
• electronic databases;
• digital archives;
• telephone recordings; and
• hard copy or paper files.

These storage mechanisms may be managed in a number of ways. These may be managed or administered internally by a company in the Sony Group and may be held locally in Australia, or, they could be managed by a third party storage provider with whom the Sony Group has a contractual relationship and be either managed locally or overseas. We will take all reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference and loss, as well as unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. The ways we do this , include:

• using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive information, such as credit card details (SSL encryption is designed to make the data unreadable by anyone but us);
• limiting physical access to our premises;
• limiting access to the information we collect about you (for instance, only those of our personnel who need your information to carry out our business activities are allowed access);
• requiring any third party providers to have acceptable security measures to keep personal information secure;
• putting in place physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in line with industry standards; and
• destroying or de-identifying personal information pursuant to the law and our record retention policies.

5.2 What you should do to protect your information

As general best practice on the Internet, it is recommended that individuals take great care with user accounts, and follow some basic rules:

• Do not use trivial passwords (such as single dictionary words).
• Do not use the same password for multiple accounts.
• Do use very long passwords (at least 10 characters, but preferably much longer).
• Do use passwords which contain a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters e.g. $%^& etc.
• Do keep passwords securely (never written down, or shared with anyone) and changed periodically.

6 Cookies and web beacons

Our websites use tracking technologies, such as "cookies" and "web beacons", to make use of the website and services as convenient as possible and to collect information about the use of our websites and email communications. For instance, these technologies may tell us which visitors clicked on key elements (such as links or graphics) on a website or email and recognise your browser the next time you visit our websites.

Most web browsers are set to accept tracking technologies such as cookies or web beacons. These tracking technologies do not themselves personally identify users, although they do identify a user's browser. These tracking technologies allow Sony Australia to monitor the items an individual may want to purchase as they move through the shopping site, and to record how many people are using the different parts of the site. It is possible to set your browser to refuse tracking technologies, however, this may limit the services provided by Sony's website.

7 Access to your information and your rights

Individuals have the right to request access to personal information we hold about them, and request us to correct any inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading personal information. If you would like to request access to the personal information that we hold about you in our customer databases, please contact us using the details given in the "Contact us" section below. You will be asked to provide some proof of identification so that we can verify that it is you making the request.

8 Complaints

If you are concerned that we have not complied with your legal rights or applicable privacy laws, you may bring a complaint internally through our complaints process or you may decide to make a formal complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (www.oaic.gov.au)(which is the regulator responsible for privacy in Australia).

We will deal with complaints as follows:

Step 1: let us know

If you would like to make a complaint, you should let us know by contacting our PIM Officer at the details set out in section 11 "Contact Us" below.

A response will be provided within a reasonable period.

Step 2: investigation of complaint

Your complaint will be investigated by our PIM Officer.

A response to your complaint will be provided in writing within a reasonable period.

Step 3: contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

We expect our procedures will deal fairly and promptly with your complaint. However, if you remain dissatisfied, you can also contact the office of the Privacy Commissioner as follows:

• 1. Via website: https://www.oaic.gov.au
• 2. By mail: Director of Compliance Office of the Australian
  Information Commissioner
  GPO Box 5218
  Sydney NSW 2001
  

9 Links to other sites

Some of our websites may contain links to other websites that are not operated by Sony Australia, including websites operated by other Sony Group companies.

While Sony Australia tries to link only to sites that share Sony Australia's high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content, security or privacy practices of those other websites. You should view the privacy and cookie policies displayed on those websites to find out how your personal information may be used.

10 Children's privacy

Sony Australia considers a child to be anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly seek or collect personal information from or about children without the consent of a parent or guardian.

If Sony Australia becomes aware that personal information that has been submitted relates to a child without the consent of a parent or guardian, Sony Australia will use reasonable efforts to:

• delete that personal information from its files as soon as possible; and
• ensure, where deletion is not possible, that this personal information is not used further for any purpose, nor disclosed further to any third party.

Any parent or guardian with queries regarding our processing of personal information relating to their child should contact us using the details provided in the "Contact us" section.

11 Contact us

If you need further assistance or would like to make a comment, you can contact us in a number of ways:

• 1. Via our online web form: Contact us at https://www.sony.com.au/section/contactus
• 2. By mail:
  Attn: Privacy Officer
  Sony Australia Limited
  Level 7, 73 Miller Street
  North Sydney NSW 2060
• 3. By telephone: Please dial 1300 13 SONY (7669) 8am to 6pm (AEST), Monday to Friday.
• 4. By email:privacy.au@ap.sony.com




Glossary

While we try our best to use plain and simple language, we recognise that there will be some jargon. This section aims to provide simple definitions for some of the common privacy terminology.

Applicable law: The legislation with which any personal information processing must comply.

Cookies: These are small pieces of data that are placed on your device (e.g. your browser when you access a website). Cookies are used for a variety of purposes, including enabling features on a website, helping us to understand which parts of our websites are the most popular, where website visitors are going, and how much time they spend there.

Encryption: Encryption, such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, is a system for protecting data, used when collecting or transferring sensitive data, such as credit card details or other personal information. Encryption is designed to make the data unreadable by anyone but the intended recipients.

MySony: The Australia website where you can register a Sony product and modify your newsletter preferences.

Personal Information: means information or an opinion, whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained, from the information or opinion. Examples include name, address, phone number, email address, credit card number, bank account number, physical traits, hobbies, usage patterns, family members and income.

Personal Information Management: or PIM, is the set of processes and controls used to ensure that personal information is handled appropriately, to meet our internal and legal requirements.

Privacy Act: means the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

Privacy policy: is a statement or a legal document that discloses how a company gathers, uses, discloses and manages the personal information provided by an individual (such as a customer, partner, employee or potential employee). While this is a legal document, a privacy policy aims to provide transparency about these information handling practices, so should ideally be written in clear and simple language.

Sony Australia: Sony Australia Limited is the Sony Group company responsible for Sony consumer electronics products and services, such as BRAVIA televisions, Cyber-shot cameras and the Sony Store online, in Australia. We are registered and have our head office in Sydney, NSW

Sony Group companies: Sony Group companies are Sony Corporation, and any entity, firm or corporation, the majority of whose shares or equity is owned or controlled directly or indirectly by Sony Corporation.

Third parties: These are non-Sony Group companies contracted to perform functions on our behalf, such as fulfilling orders, delivering packages, sending postal mail and e-mails, sending text messages (SMS), providing marketing assistance, etc.

Unsubscribe link: If you would like to unsubscribe from an email sent to you, follow the 'unsubscribe' link and/or instructions placed (typically) at the bottom of the mail. If you use more than one e-mail address to shop or contact us, you need to unsubscribe from each e-mail account that you use.

Web Beacons: Web beacons, also known as single pixel or clear gif technology, or action tags, tells us which visitors clicked on key elements (such as links or graphics) on a Sony web page or email.







Updated: 31 January, 2022 - New Australian Office Physical Address