Privacy Policy

Who we are

This website is run by the West Australian Society of Magicians (Incorporated), ABN 60 178 698 973, a volunteer-run club for magicians in Perth, Western Australia. In this policy "we" means the Society and its committee. You can reach us at info@wasm.com.au.

What we collect, and why

• Messages and enquiries. When you use the contact form, ask about joining, or enquire about booking a magician, we keep your name, email address, phone number (if you give it) and your message, so the committee can reply and pass a booking enquiry to the magician.
• Members' accounts. When you register for the members' area we keep your name, email address and phone number. Your password is stored only in a scrambled (hashed) form that nobody, including the committee, can read back.
• Members' profiles. Members can add a photo, stage name, website, Facebook page, video link, a short biography, their specialities and the areas they work in. A current member who has given a website is listed on the public Find a Magician pages (under their stage name if they use one) unless they choose not to be; a member with no website is not listed unless they ask to be; a member with no biography and no photo appears only as a name. A member is shown only with what they have added, never with their email address, phone number, street address or birthday, and past members are not listed. A member can opt out at any time (see Your choices), and then their name, photo and page come off the public site straight away (a copy that a browser or a search engine already holds can last a little longer). The committee can also add a website to a member's record, for example from the Society's own records, and that lists a current member who has not opted out. A member's photo is kept as a file with a web address, and that address opens for anyone who has it, without signing in, for as long as the member is listed publicly. It stops working when the member opts out or is no longer listed, and when they replace or remove the photo or their details are erased, the old file is deleted from our server. People who hold an office on the committee are named, with their role, on the public Team page, because an office is a public thing. If such a member has opted out of Find a Magician or been hidden by the committee, their photo and biography are left off that page and only their name and role show.
• What other current members can see (the Member Directory). Every current member who is signed in can see the contact details of every other current member in the members-only Member Directory: name, photo, stage name, email address, phone number, home address (street, suburb and postcode), the day and month of the birthday (never the year) and Facebook page, for whatever the member has given us. This is the starting point for every member: nothing is hidden until the member chooses. Each member can then hide any one of their email address, phone number, home address, birthday or Facebook page from other members, one at a time, under My Account > What other members can see of you, and can change their mind at any time. A detail a member hides is hidden from other members only: the committee's administrators who look after the register can still see it. A member can also choose not to give a detail at all. A partner's name is shown only to the people the member chooses (below). The committee can switch a detail off for every member at once. Members are asked to use these details only to keep in touch with each other and for Society business, and not to pass them on. None of it is on the public website, and nobody who is not signed in, no past (lapsed) member and no guest can see it. A member known to be under 18 never shows a home address or birthday. When a member's details are erased, or the member has died, nothing is shown.
• Birthdays, birth year and home addresses (optional). A member can give us the day and month of their birthday, their birth year and their home address. We use the birthday to send one short birthday email a year (it uses your first name only, and never your age or birth year) and the address so the committee can write to members. We store the birth year only so the Society can check ages where a rule needs it (for example, Youth membership is for people under 18). It is never shown to other members or to the public, and it is never printed on a page or in an email; only that member, and the committee's full administrators and secretary who look after the register, can see it. Every current member who is signed in can see every other current member's birthday (day and month) and home address in the Member Directory (see the previous item) unless that member has hidden it; a member known to be under 18 never shows a birthday or address to other members, and is not sent the birthday email. A past (lapsed) member can still sign in, renew and pay, but sees none of it. Nobody who is not signed in can see any of it. Any committee role the committee has given the Personal details permission also sees birthdays and home addresses (the secretary has it by default); the birth year stays with the full administrators and the secretary. The birthday email is separate from the newsletter: unsubscribing from the newsletter does not stop it. When a member first gives a birthday, the “Send me a birthday email” box on My Account starts ticked (a committee decision, because it is one short email a year), with a note beside it saying so, and they can untick it at any time. Every birthday email has a Stop link: it opens a page with one button, and pressing that button ends the birthday email (a mail program that offers an unsubscribe button can do it in one step). A member can also untick it on My Account, or write to info@wasm.com.au.
• A partner's name (optional). A member can give their partner's name so the committee can greet them both and book places for two. It is third-party information, so it is shown only to the people the member chooses (the committee only, other current members who are signed in, or nobody but the member), never on the public website, and it is in the member's data download and is removed if their record is deleted or their personal details are erased. A committee role can keep or narrow what the member chose but never widen it; only a full administrator can, and the reason is logged. The partner's first name is used in the greeting of newsletters and emails (for example "Dear Jo and Sam"), in the body of the email only and never in its subject, unless the member chose “Nobody but me”.
• A picture style. If you have no photo we show your initials on a simple silhouette. Everyone sees the plain neutral one until you choose a male or female silhouette on My Account, and that choice is public because it is what everyone then sees. The site can also suggest one from your first name: that suggestion is shown only to you on My Account and to the committee's administrators looking at your record, it is never stored, never exported and never shown on any other page, and you can ignore it.
• Events. When you register for an event or reply to an invitation we keep your name, email address, phone number (if given), how many places you booked and any guest names, so we know who is coming and can contact you about the event.
• Meeting attendance. When you check in to a meeting (on your phone, at the door screen, or ticked in by a committee member) we record the meeting, your name, the time and how you were checked in. A member's entry is linked to their membership record; a visitor's is a name, who invited them and, only if they say we may contact them, an email address that is used only after they confirm it from a link we send. Members can see their own attendance history; the committee uses the lists and reports to run the Society, and a visitor's details are not shown to other members. Anyone who holds the meeting's check-in code (or knows a member's email address) can record a current member as present by typing their name: those entries are marked as typed for the committee, and the Society counts them unless the committee switches that off, so if one is wrong, tell the committee. Attendance records are kept until the committee erases the person's personal details at their request, which deletes their entries (see Your choices), or until the committee sets a time limit; they are not cleared out automatically otherwise.
• Additional email addresses. A member can add more than one email address to their account. An address is used to sign in or reset a password only after its owner has confirmed it from a link we email to it. Mail from the Society still goes to the member's main address. The committee can see all of a member's addresses and, to correct a duplicate record, can merge two records (the merge is logged and can be undone for a limited time).
• Website requests. A member can ask the committee to change something on the website (My Account, Website requests). We keep the request, who sent it, its status and the replies, so the Web Master and committee can deal with it and the member can see the answer. A member sees only their own requests; the committee and the Web Master can see all of them.
• Payments. Card payments are made on Stripe's own page and PayPal payments on PayPal's. Your card details go to them and never reach this website. We receive and keep your name, email address, what you paid for, the amount, and the payment's reference number, as the Society's financial records.
• Newsletters. Members receive The Western Wand and Society notices by email. Anyone else gets it only if they ask for it (a tick on a form, or the Newsletter page) and then click the link we email to confirm: we keep the address, the date, where you asked from and the first part of the internet address you confirmed from, never the whole address. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link.
• Visit statistics. To see which pages are useful, the site records each page viewed, the address of the page or website you came from, your browser's identification text and the type of device. It does not store your IP address: visits on the same day are grouped under a code that changes every day and cannot be traced back to you. If you arrived from a search engine that passes on the words you searched for (most no longer do), those words are kept with the visit. If a link you followed carried a campaign tag (for example from a newsletter or a social post), that tag is kept with the visit too. We delete these visit records after 400 days.
• What you type into this site's search boxes. The words you search for on this website (the Search page and Find a Magician) are stored with that visit, up to 200 characters, so the committee can see what people are looking for. They are kept without your name, email address or IP address, and are deleted after 400 days. Please do not type personal details into a search box.
• Links followed and pages not found. We count how many times a link to another website is followed, by that website's name only (for example youtube.com), and keep the address of any page that was asked for but does not exist, with a count and nothing about who asked. Links followed are not counted for a browser that sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control. These are deleted after 400 days too.
• Goals we count. The committee also counts how many visits end in something useful: a joining form started or sent, a contact form or magician enquiry sent, an event place booked, a newsletter sign-up confirmed, or a payment completed. Each goal is stored as a name, the day, the visit's daily code and where the visit came from. It does not include your name, email address, phone number or message, and goals are deleted after 400 days too. Visits by signed-in committee members are not counted. Summaries of how people found the site in Google and Bing (the search words and pages, with totals, and nothing about any person) are kept for 16 months.
• Keeping the site safe. To slow down password guessing and spam, the site briefly counts attempts from each internet address when someone signs in or sends a form. These counters are not part of the visit statistics, are not linked to your name, and are cleared out after a few days.

Cookies

The site sets one cookie, which keeps you signed in and protects forms from being misused by other websites. It is set when you sign in or open a page with a form, not just for looking around. If you tick Keep me signed in on this device when you sign in, the cookie keeps you signed in for up to a year after your last visit (a month for committee members); sign out to remove it, and untick the box on a shared or public computer, where the cookie then goes when you close the browser. There are no advertising cookies, no third-party analytics and no tracking scripts. Nothing is fetched from YouTube or any other outside service when a page opens, not even a thumbnail. Videos load from YouTube's privacy-enhanced service (youtube-nocookie.com) only when you press play; from then on, YouTube's own privacy policy applies to that video.

Who can see your information

• Committee members who need it to run the Society: answering enquiries, managing membership, events and payments, and sending newsletters.
• Current members who are signed in can see other current members' contact details in the members' directory: names, email addresses and phone numbers, and the other details listed under “What other current members can see” above. Each member can hide any of them from other members under My Account (see above); nothing is hidden until the member chooses. A past member, or anyone who is signed in but is not a current member, sees only what the public sees.
• Stripe and PayPal, for payments you make through them, under their own privacy policies.
• Our website host, which stores the site and its database and sends its email.

We do not sell, rent or swap personal information, and we do not use it for anyone else's marketing.

Where it is kept, and for how long

Everything above is kept in the Society's own database on its website hosting account. We keep personal information until it is deleted: when a member or anyone else asks us to delete it, or the committee removes it, it goes from the live database (and from the daily backups as those are replaced). A few kinds of record are cleared out automatically after a fixed time, because they are only needed for a while:

• Visit records and goals (including the words typed into the search boxes): 400 days.
• The record of the emails the website sends (who each went to, when, its subject and whether the mail server accepted it; for a notice to the committee also its first few words, with addresses and telephone numbers hidden; a partner's name is never put in a subject): 90 to 730 days as the committee chooses, a year unless they change it, and twice that for an email that failed.
• Website requests that have been dealt with: 730 days unless the committee chooses another time.
• Confirmation links for additional email addresses: about a month after they are used or expire. The saved "undo" copy of a merged record: 90 days. Records of a guest organiser's access: 180 days after it ends. Error records: 30 days. The log of what committee members did on the site: two years (lines about a member whose details were erased, or whose record was deleted, keep only the member's number and what kind of change it was). A member's photo file: deleted when it is replaced or removed, or when its member is deleted or erased.

The site makes a backup of its database every day and keeps the last two weeks of them. Payment records are kept for as long as the Society's financial record-keeping requires.

Your choices

• Members can view and change their own details at any time from My Account, including opting out of Find a Magician (My Account, “Your public listing”). The committee can also do this for a member who asks. The page is taken out of the directory and out of our sitemap straight away and its old address says it has gone. We do not contact any search engine ourselves, and search engines keep their own copy of a page until they next visit, so it drops out of their results over the following days or weeks; we cannot control that.
• A member can remove their own photo at any time (My Account, Edit profile, Remove my photo): the file is deleted from our server.
• Anyone can ask us what information we hold about them, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it where we do not need to keep it. Email info@wasm.com.au. A member whose record has no payments, bookings or meeting attendance can have it deleted. For someone who does, and for any former member who asks, a full administrator can erase their personal details: the record stays as “Former member” with a number, and their name, email address, phone number, home address, birthday, partner, notes, photo, other email addresses, requests and sign-in are removed, and their name comes off their bookings, memberships and payments. The amounts, dates and receipts stay, because the Society must keep its financial records. What is not removed: an address on the do-not-send list (a bounce or an unsubscribe) stays there so it is never mailed again; a note someone else wrote that happens to mention the person is not searched for and goes when its own time runs out; what Stripe, PayPal or a bank holds is theirs; and a daily backup taken before the erasure holds the old details until it is replaced (about two weeks). It cannot be undone.
• You can unsubscribe from newsletters with the link in any newsletter.

Questions or concerns

If you are worried about how we have handled your information, please email info@wasm.com.au and a member of the committee will reply. We may update this policy from time to time; the date at the top shows when it last changed.