Legal
Privacy Policy
1. Introduction
Prisoncall Australia is committed to protecting the privacy of our customers. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, how we use it, with whom we share it, and your rights under Australian privacy law. We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).
By using the Prisoncall service, you agree to the collection and use of your information as described in this policy.
2. What Personal Information We Collect
We collect the following categories of personal information:
- Your full name
- Your Australian mobile number (your nominated forwarding number)
- Payment card details (collected and processed directly by Stripe; see section 6)
- The name and state of the correctional facility associated with your subscription
- Your email address and account credentials for the My Prisoncall customer portal
3. How We Collect Personal Information
Personal information is collected in the following ways:
- Through the checkout form when you purchase a Prisoncall plan
- Through the My Prisoncall customer portal when you manage or update your account details
- Through communications you initiate with our support team
4. Why We Collect It and How We Use It
We collect and use your personal information to:
- Provision and activate your Prisoncall phone number
- Forward incoming calls from correctional facilities to your nominated Australian mobile number
- Manage your account and subscription, including billing and renewals
- Send SMS notifications relating to your account, such as number activation confirmations and subscription reminders
- Respond to customer support enquiries
- Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
We do not use your personal information for direct marketing without your explicit consent. We do not sell your personal information to third parties.
5. Who We Share Your Information With
We share personal information with the following third-party service providers, strictly to the extent required to deliver the Prisoncall service:
- Stripe — payment processing. Stripe collects and processes your payment card information directly on our behalf. We do not store your payment card details.
- Our SMS provider — SMS notifications. We share your mobile number with our SMS provider to deliver account-related SMS messages.
- Our telephony provider — phone number provisioning. We share your nominated mobile number and prison details with our telephony provider to provision your Prisoncall number.
- Our telephony provider — call routing. We use our telephony provider to manage call forwarding from your Prisoncall number to your nominated mobile number.
All third-party service providers are contractually required to handle your personal information only for the purpose of providing their respective services and in accordance with applicable privacy laws.
6. Payment Information
Payment card details are collected and processed entirely by Stripe. Prisoncall Australia does not store, handle, or have access to your full payment card details at any time. Stripe's privacy practices are governed by Stripe's Privacy Policy, available at stripe.com/au/privacy.
7. Data Retention
We retain your personal information for as long as your subscription remains active.
Upon cancellation of your subscription, your assigned Prisoncall number enters a 5-day grace period. At the end of this grace period, the number is permanently released. Following permanent release of your number, we retain your personal data for a further 12 months to meet our legal and compliance obligations. After this 12-month period, your personal data is permanently deleted from our systems.
8. Your Privacy Rights
Under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), you have the right to:
- Request access to the personal information we hold about you
- Request correction of any personal information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date
- Request deletion of your personal information, subject to any legal obligations that require us to retain it
To exercise any of these rights, please Contact us. We will respond within a reasonable time.
9. Privacy Enquiries and Complaints
If you have a privacy enquiry or wish to make a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please Contact us.
We will acknowledge your complaint and provide a substantive response within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at www.oaic.gov.au.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable law. The current version of this policy is always available on our website. Your continued use of the Prisoncall service after any update constitutes your acceptance of the revised policy.
11. Social Media
Prisoncall Australia maintains pages on Facebook and Instagram. Any interactions you have with us on these platforms, including messages, comments, and reactions, are subject to the privacy policies of those platforms. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of Facebook and Instagram directly. Prisoncall Australia is not responsible for the data practices of these platforms.
12. Intervention Orders and Court Orders
Prisoncall Australia must not be used to contact any person protected by a Family Violence Intervention Order (FVIO) or Personal Safety Intervention Order (PSIO) in Victoria, an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) in New South Wales, or any equivalent court order in any other Australian jurisdiction.
It is the sole responsibility of the subscriber and/or the inmate to ensure that no calls are made in breach of any active court order.
Prisoncall Australia and The Freebird & Co Pty Ltd accept no liability whatsoever for any calls made through the Prisoncall service that breach an active court order.
Any legal proceedings, fines, penalties, or consequences arising from a breach of a court order via use of the Prisoncall service are the sole responsibility of the subscriber and/or the inmate.
No refund will be issued where a subscription is cancelled or suspended as a result of a breach of a court order.
Prisoncall Australia reserves the right to immediately cancel any subscription without refund if it becomes aware the service is being used in breach of a court order.
13. Subscriber Plan Fee and Prison Call Charges
Your Prisoncall subscription fee covers unlimited incoming calls and minutes to your nominated mobile number. As a subscriber, you pay no per-minute charges for calls you receive from prison through the Prisoncall service.
The prisoner calling from prison continues to incur the prison's standard call charges for every call they make. Those charges are set by the correctional facility and its telecommunications provider. Prisoncall Australia has no control over those charges and accepts no responsibility for them.
The cost saving Prisoncall provides is achieved by assigning you a local landline number geographically close to your loved one's correctional facility. This means the prisoner is charged the prison's standard landline rate for each call, rather than the higher mobile rate that would otherwise apply. This is how Prisoncall reduces the cost of prison calls — it is a reduction in the rate the prisoner is charged per call, not a waiver of the prison's call charges.