Privacy Policy

Draft — not yet legally reviewed. This policy was prepared as a first-pass draft and has not been reviewed by a qualified Australian lawyer. It should not be relied on as CARSAROUND.COM.AU PTY. LTD.'s final privacy policy until that review is complete.

CARSAROUND.COM.AU PTY. LTD. trading as DealerData (ABN 21 632 989 863) (“DealerData”, “we”, “us”) operates dealerdata.com.au. This policy explains how we collect, hold, use and disclose personal information, in line with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

Information we collect

Depending on how you use DealerData, we may collect:

Account information — name, email address and a hashed (never plaintext) password, for customer, dealer and team accounts.
Dealership information — business name, ABN, motor dealer licence number, address, contact details, owner/point-of-contact details, and any logo, photos or video a dealer uploads, for dealer accounts creating or claiming a listing.
Reviews and reports — content you submit, and your name/email unless you choose to report anonymously.
Technical information — IP address and request metadata, collected automatically to operate rate limiting and bot protection (reCAPTCHA) on public forms.
Publicly available business information — for dealerships not yet claimed, we compile publicly available business data (see our Disclaimer) rather than collecting it directly from the business.

How we collect it

Directly from you when you create an account, list or claim a dealership, write a review, or lodge a report. Some technical information (IP address) is collected automatically by our servers and by Google reCAPTCHA when you submit a public form.

Why we collect and use it

To operate your account and show you the right dashboard for your role (customer/dealer/team).
To display dealership listings, reviews and verification status to the public.
To verify a dealership's motor dealer licence, ABN, premises and point of contact (spec §6.2's six checks) before showing a Verified badge.
To investigate reports lodged against a listing.
To send account-related and status-change notifications (e.g. verification decisions, review replies).
To protect the platform from spam, fraud and automated abuse (rate limiting, reCAPTCHA).

Disclosure to third parties

We disclose limited personal information to the following service providers, only as needed to run the platform:

Google — reCAPTCHA (bot protection on public forms) and the Maps/Places APIs (geocoding, live rating sync). Google may process this data outside Australia.
Resend — our transactional email provider, to deliver notification emails.
Cloud infrastructure providers (database, object storage, hosting) — to store and run the platform. Uploaded logos/photos are stored in object storage that may be located outside Australia depending on the hosting region in use at the time.

We do not sell personal information to third parties, and do not disclose dealer or customer personal information to other dealers beyond what is necessary (e.g. a dealer can see reviews and reports against their own listing, not other customers' account details).

Overseas disclosure

Some of the service providers above may store or process personal information on servers located outside Australia. Where this occurs, we take reasonable steps to ensure your information continues to be handled in a manner consistent with the APPs.

Data security

Passwords are stored as salted argon2id hashes, never in plain text. Access to administrative functions is restricted by account role, and every sensitive action (verification decisions, account changes, bulk imports) is recorded in an internal audit log. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Access and correction

You can request access to, or correction of, personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting team@dealerdata.com.au. Dealers can also correct most of their own listing information directly via their dashboard's “Edit my listing” page.

Cookies and similar technologies

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in. We do not currently use third-party advertising or analytics cookies. Google reCAPTCHA may set its own cookies when active on a form.

Children's privacy

DealerData is not directed at children, and account holders must be capable of entering a binding agreement (generally 18 years or older in Australia).

Complaints

If you believe we have mishandled your personal information, contact us at team@dealerdata.com.au in the first instance. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date of the current version will be noted here once this draft is finalised.

Contact us

CARSAROUND.COM.AU PTY. LTD. trading as DealerData (ABN 21 632 989 863) — team@dealerdata.com.au.