Privacy Policy
Your privacy is very important to the Online Safety Commission (OSC). The OSC has developed this policy in order for you to understand how the OSC collects, uses, communicates and makes use of personal information. The following outlines our privacy policy.
Collection of your Personal Information
At all times we try to only collect the information we need for the particular function or activity we are carrying out.
The main way we collect personal information about you is when you give it to us. For example, we collect personal information such as contact details and complaint, review, request, or report details when you:
- Contact us to ask for information but only if we need it
- Make a complaint
- Ask for access to information the OSC holds about you or other information about the OSC’s operation
- Report a matter for investigation
The OSC may also collect information from you when the OSC investigates or reviews a complaint.
We may also collect contact details and some other personal information if you are participating in a meeting or consultation with us.
Collecting Sensitive Information
Sometimes the OSC may need to collect sensitive information about you, for example, to handle a complaint. This might include information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, association memberships, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, criminal history, genetic or bio metric information.
Indirect Collection
In the course of handling and resolving a complaint, review or an investigation, we may collect personal information (including sensitive information) about you indirectly from publicly available sources or from third parties such as:
- Your authorized representative, if you have one
- Applicants, complainants, respondents to a complaint, investigation, application ora third party and witnesses
We also collect personal information from publicly available sources to enable us to contact stakeholders who may be interested in the OSC's work or in participating in our consultations.
Anonymity
Where possible, we will allow you to interact with OSC anonymously or using a pseudonym. For example, if you contact our inquiries line with a general question we will not ask for your name unless we need it to adequately handle your question.
However, for most of our functions and activities we usually need your name and contact information and enough information about the particular matter to enable us to fairly and efficiently handle your inquiry, request, complaint or application, or to act on your report.
Use of Cookies
When accessing the OSC website, we will learn certain information about you during your visit.
Similar to other websites, our website utilises a standard technology called "cookies" and server logs to collect information about how this website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our site, and the websites visited just before and just after this website, as well as your IP address.
A cookie is a very small text document, which often includes an anonymous unique identifier. When you visit a website, that website’s computer asks your computer for permission to store this file in a part of your hard drive specifically designated for cookies. Each website can send its own cookie to your browser if your browser’s preferences allow it, but (to protect your privacy) your browser only permits a website to access the cookies it has already sent to you, not the cookies sent to you by other websites.If you do not wish to have cookies placed on your computer, please set your browser preferences to reject all cookies before accessing our website.
Email Information
If you choose to correspond with the OSC through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. The OSC provides the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received online, mail and telephone. This also applies when you register for the OSC website or sign up through any of our forms using your email address.
The OSC is committed to keeping your e-mail address confidential. We will not provide your personal information to any third-party individual, government agency, or company at any time unless strictly compelled to do so by law.
We will use your e-mail address solely to provide timely information to you and maintain the information you send via e-mail in accordance with applicable laws.
The OSC email provides users the opportunity to opt-out of receiving communications from us and our partners by reading the unsubscribe instructions located at the bottom of any email received from us at anytime.
Social Networking Services
The OSC uses social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to communicate with the public about our work. When you communicate with us using these services, we may collect your personal information, but we only use it to help us to communicate with you and the public. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These services have their own privacy policies. You can access the privacy policies for Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (a Google company) on their websites.
Disclosure
Common situations in which we disclose information are detailed below.
Complaints and reviews
If you make a complaint, we will usually give a copy of the complaint or application to the respondent and, where relevant, affected third parties.
If a complainant or applicant requests that only limited information is disclosed to the respondent, we may not have enough information to be able to fairly proceed with the matter. The respondent must have sufficient information to respond to the matter in a meaningful way.
Disclosure to the media
We generally only provide the media with personal information relating to a complaint if you have agreed.
Disclosure to service providers
The OSC uses a number of service providers to whom we disclose personal information. These include providers that host our website servers, manage our IT and manage our human resources information.
To protect the personal information, we disclose we:
- Enter into a contract or MOU which requires the service provider to only use or disclose the information for the purposes of the contract or MOU
- Include special privacy requirements in the contract or MOU, where necessary
Disclosure of sensitive information
We only discloses your sensitive information for the purposes for which you gave it to us or for directly related purposes you would reasonably expect or if you agree, for example, to handle a complaint.
Disclosure to other regulators or external dispute resolution schemes
We may disclose information that relates to complaints or investigations to other Fijian or international regulators. We will generally only disclose your personal information to other regulators if you agree and where the information will assist the OSC or the other regulator or to investigate a matter.
Disclosure of personal information overseas
Generally, we only disclose personal information overseas so that we can properly handle the complaint or application. For example, if the complainant or respondent to a complaint is based overseas.
Web traffic information is disclosed to Google Analytics when you visit our websites. Google stores information across multiple countries.
When you communicate with us through a social network service such as Facebook or Twitter, the social network provider and its partners may collect and hold your personal information overseas.
Quality of Personal Information
To ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate, up-to-date and complete we:
- Record information in a consistent format
- Where necessary, confirm the accuracy of information we collect from a third party or a public source
- Promptly add updated or new personal information to existing records
- Regularly audit our contact lists to check their accuracy
We also review the quality of personal information before we use or disclose it
Storage and Security of Personal Information
We take steps to protect the security of the personal information we hold from both internal and external threats by:
- Regularly assessing the risk of misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure of that information
- Taking measures to address those risks, for example, we keep a record (audit trail) of when someone has added, changed or deleted personal information held in our electronic databases and regularly check that staff only access those records when they need to
- Conducting regular internal and external audits to assess whether we have adequately complied with or implemented these measures
We destroy personal information in a secure manner when we no longer need it.
Accessing and Correcting your Personal Information
You can ask for access or correction by contacting us. If you ask, we will give you access to your personal information, and take reasonable steps to correct it if we consider it is incorrect, unless laws that allow or require us not to.
We will ask you to verify your identity before we give you access to your information or correct it, and we will try to make the process as simple as possible. If we refuse to give you access to, or correct, your personal information, we will notify you in writing setting out the reasons.
If we make a correction and we have disclosed the incorrect information to others, you can ask us to tell them about the correction. We will do so unless there is a valid reason not to.
Use of Testimonials
Testimonials that appear on this website are actually received via text, audio or video submission. They are individual experiences, reflecting real life experiences of those who have used our services in some way. They are individual results and results do vary. We do not claim that they are typical results. The testimonials are not necessarily representative of all of those who will use our services.
The testimonials displayed in any form on this website (text, audio, video or other) are reproduced verbatim, except for correction of grammatical or typing errors. Some may have been shortened. In other words, not the whole message received by the testimonial writer is displayed when it seems too lengthy or not the whole statement seems relevant for the general public.
The OSC is not responsible for any of the opinions or comments posted on this website and is not a forum for testimonials, however. provides testimonials as a means for users to share their experiences with one another. To protect against abuse, all testimonials are displayed after they have been reviewed by the OSC. The OSC does not share the opinions, views or commentary of any testimonials on this website. The opinions are strictly the views of the testimonial source.
Policy Changes
We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time with or without notice. However, please be assured that if the privacy policy changes in the future, we will not use the personal information you have submitted to us under this privacy policy in a manner that is materially inconsistent with this privacy policy, without your prior consent.
Contact
If you have any questions regarding this policy, or your dealings with our website, please contact us.