1. Hugo Wines is committed to best-practice privacy standards

We are committed to protecting your personal information and letting you know the type of information we collect and how this information is used. Our Policy is based on the National Privacy Principles, developed by the Office of the Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner which came into effect 21 December 2001. Hugo Wines also intends to comply with any guidelines or laws introduced in Australia to strengthen protections for your privacy.

2. Collecting information about you

The amount of information we collect about you depends on your use of our website. The only personal information we collect is what you tell us about yourself, for instance through surveys and newsletter registrations.

We use your personal information for research or to improve our site and the services we offer you. We analyse the data for certain trends and statistics, such as which parts of our site users are visiting and how long they spend there. This information is compiled and analysed on an aggregated basis. We may share this aggregated information with our content providers to assist them in understanding our services but we do not give our content providers aggregated information that would allow them to identify you personally.

3. Our use of 'cookies'

Some of the pages found on the Hugo Wines website use 'cookies' to help us remember who you are. Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer's hard drive for record-keeping purposes. Cookies help us to provide you with services and features that are tailored to your needs when you visit the Hugo Wines website again.

Cookies in themselves do not personally identify users, although they do identify a user's browsers. The cookies simply operate as a unique identifier.

This lets us know what you find interesting and useful, which allows us to keep improving our web site and provide you with a personalised service.

Most web browsers are set to accept cookies. If you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to refuse them, although this means you may not be able to use certain features on our site and you may be required to re-enter your password more frequently during a session.

4. Our use and disclosure of your personal information

Hugo Wines will not use or disclose any information about you without your consent unless legally required to do so or if we consider it necessary to:

• provide you with the service you have requested
• protect the rights or property of Hugo Wines any user of Hugo Wines or any member of the public; or
• lessen or prevent a serious threat to a person's life, health or safety.

Hugo Wines will seek to take all reasonable steps to keep any information we hold about you secure, accurate and up to date. Your information is stored on secure servers that are protected in controlled facilities.

Hugo Wines will take all reasonable steps to ensure that our employees and contractors respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by Hugo Wines. You should contact us immediately if there is any unauthorised use of your account or any other breach of security. However, Hugo Wines does not accept responsibility for any consequences of the unauthorised access to your information.

5. What else you should know about privacy

You should always close your browser upon leaving the website, especially if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place to ensure that others cannot access your personal information and correspondence. You are responsible for the security of and access to your own computer.

To the extent that you disclose information on the Internet to parties other than Hugo Wines, different rules may apply to the use and disclosure of your personal information. Since we do not control the privacy policies of third parties, you are subject to their privacy customs and policies. We encourage you to ask questions before you disclose your personal information to others.

Ultimately you are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your username and passwords and any account information.

6. If you have a problem

Our customers are very valuable to us. If you have an inquiry relating to privacy or our Terms of Use, please email us. If you have any problems with our website or a general problem or complaint, please contact us. We take these issues seriously and will endeavour to address your concerns in the shortest possible time.

7. More on privacy

You can obtain further information about privacy in Australia and the protection of your personal information on the Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner's web site.