Privacy policy

Menangle Park Guide is published by QR Bowl Pty Ltd (ABN 14 695 971 398) under the registered business name Menangle Park Guide. This policy explains how we handle personal information. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

Privacy at a glance

You can read the guide without an account. An account lets you save businesses, events and deals or request access to a business listing.
We do not store readable passwords. We use email verification, password-recovery links and a cookie to keep you signed in.
We record website usage and search terms to understand what readers need. Search text may contain personal information if you type it in.
We use the service providers listed below. We do not sell or rent personal information or give our newsletter list to sponsors.
You can delete your account from Account settings, unsubscribe from the newsletter, or email info@menangleparkguide.com.au about your information.

What we collect

We collect your email address, optional first name and subscription date. We do not ask for your surname, street address or suburb. You join the list only after confirming your email address. Unconfirmed requests expire after seven days. We do not keep an IP address with a newsletter subscription.

Resident accounts

We collect your email address, optional name, whether you selected resident, visitor or business owner, and account creation and sign-in dates. Your account holds the businesses, events and deals you save and any update preferences you choose. If you play a puzzle while signed in, we also store its date and version, your game state, including answers, notes, words found, matched pairs, move counts, playing time and save revisions and completed-day records so you can continue on another device. Unfinished daily-puzzle progress is available for seven calendar days. Older progress for a daily game is removed when you next save that game. For 2048, your account keeps the current board, last move for Undo, personal best, highest tile and completed-game records until you delete the account; starting a new game replaces the board and retains your statistics. A game counts once when you reach 2048 or run out of moves. Completed-day records remain until you delete the account. Cockatoo Hop keeps only your personal best in your account until you delete it; active flights stay in the current tab and are not saved to your account. Word search also stores which starting-letter hints your account used and the puzzle date, so the three-hint allowance is shared across devices and is retained when you restart. Hint records outside the seven-day puzzle window are removed on your next hint request or during scheduled cleanup. These are private personal records, not public scores.

We store a protected password hash rather than your readable password. Verification and password-reset links work once and expire after 30 minutes. Resetting your password ends existing sign-in sessions.

Update preferences currently record your choices; they do not send alerts. Newsletter subscription is separate from account registration.

Business accounts and submissions

If you claim a business listing, we keep the claim, your role, the information you provide to verify it, and our decision. Choosing Business owner during registration does not approve a claim. We review claims before granting management access.

An approved business account also holds proposed changes, deals, any opening hours, phone number or booking link you update, and records of our decisions. Changes supplied by a business are labelled on its listing. Some businesses we have approved for direct deal publishing can submit deals that appear labelled From the business.

Business accounts show totals for listing views and contact-button clicks over the previous 30 days, without identifying individual readers. Those totals may include our own visits, as the account page explains.

Business-listing and correction forms collect the details you provide: business or facility name, category, suburb, contact details, your name and email, message, and any source or page link. Signed-in business submissions are attached to your account. A submission made while signed out can later be attached when you sign in with the same verified email address. Account-linked submission records exclude IP addresses; the separate signed-out form record includes an IP address.

We email acknowledgements and publication notices for signed-in business submissions. Other claim and deal decisions may also be emailed to the account address.

Details you submit for publication, such as a business address, phone number or website, may appear publicly. Do not provide private contact details you do not want published.

Photos, enquiries and email

Deal photos. We collect the uploaded photo, what it shows, where it was taken, your permission to publish it and submission dates. Before upload, your browser crops and re-saves the photo, leaving out the original file’s camera and location metadata. We keep any location you write in the caption.

An approved photo, its description and permission record are retained in the site’s files. The permission record names the business and the role given in its claim, without your account name or email. The uploaded copy is removed from the account’s photo records when we decide; the description and decision remain there until you delete the account. We email the publisher a notice containing the description and your email address.

Business enquiries. A listing’s enquiry form collects your name, phone number or email, and message. The enquiry record also includes your IP address. The record is stored and emailed to the business named on the form and to us, including that IP address. The form states that the business pays the guide for enquiries. We may also receive a Telegram notification containing your name and supplied contact details.

Email and contact forms. We keep the contact details, message and any supporting material you send us. Forms send information to this website, where it is stored by our hosting provider. Contact-form records also include your IP address. Copies of submissions may be emailed to us through our email provider.

Advertising payments

For advertising purchased through Stripe, we keep the placement, price, status, paid period and Stripe customer or subscription identifiers. Stripe collects card and billing details on its payment pages, including an ABN if supplied for an invoice. We do not receive your card number.

How we use information

We use information to:

verify accounts, check sign-ins, send password-recovery links and limit repeated or abusive requests;
provide saved items, account preferences, puzzle progress across devices and approved business-management features;
check business submissions, claims, corrections, photos and deals, and notify you of their status;
deliver enquiries to the business you chose and reply to messages;
send the newsletter you subscribed to and manage advertising purchases;
maintain website security and reliability, understand usage and searches, and report listing performance as totals.

We do not use your information for personalised advertising, scoring or targeting. A newsletter may include a sponsor message, but the sponsor receives neither the mailing list nor information about which subscribers opened or clicked it.

Cookies and website usage

Signing in places a cookie on your device containing a random identifier, without your name or email. Website scripts cannot read it, and it is not used for advertising or analytics. Its lifetime is 30 days; signing out removes it and ends that session. Server-side session expiry may be extended when you use your account.

Checklist selections and your choice of 889 bus stop on Today are stored in your browser. Guest game progress, playing time, completed-day records and 2048 personal statistics, and Cockatoo Hop personal bests stay in that browser and are not sent to us. Signed-in puzzle progress is stored with your account and may also be cached in that browser while awaiting sync. Guest progress stays separate unless you choose to copy a puzzle to your account. Copying the current 2048 game does not copy earlier guest completions. Checklist and bus-stop preferences are not sent to us. Clearing the site’s browser data removes local copies; it does not delete signed-in puzzle records from your account. Game sound and control-button preferences are also stored only in your browser and are not sent to us. Our own browsers also use a local flag to distinguish internal visits.

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 to measure page visits, referral sources, device types and general geographic areas. It uses cookies to distinguish repeat visits. We have not linked the analytics account to Google Ads, and sponsors are not given access to it.

Google’s GA4 privacy documentation states that GA4 does not log or store IP addresses; it uses them to derive a coarse location before discarding them. You can use the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on or your browser’s tracking-protection controls. Analytics loads only on the public site’s domains; our internal visits are labelled separately.

Visit records and alerts

When visit alerts are enabled, we record pages opened, approximate time on screen, contact-button clicks, referral site, phone or desktop use, and approximate city, country and postcode. Our hosting provider supplies location and network information; we also look up the network’s domain through that provider. A postcode is an estimate for the connection, not your street address.

A temporary identifier derived from the IP address and browser information joins the pages of a visit. The visit record does not store the original IP address or an account ID. Visit records expire six hours after their latest storage update.

The publisher receives arrival and visit-summary messages through Telegram, and daily totals are kept for 60 days for performance reports. These records are not linked to your member account. Individual visit messages can contain browsing and search activity; they are not the totals provided to businesses.

Each page sends a usage request to this website. When alerts are disabled, that request does not create a visit record or Telegram message. Browsers marked as our own do not send it.

Search terms

We record up to 100 characters of text entered in site and directory searches, the page and search box used, and the number of results shown. Separate search records are kept for 90 days; terms can also appear in visit summaries and usage reports.

Search records do not include an IP address or account ID. The words you enter may still contain personal information. Avoid entering names, phone numbers, email addresses or other private details. We use searches to understand what readers need and where our coverage is incomplete.

Hosting logs, advertising and embedded content

Our hosting provider’s technical logs can include IP addresses for security and reliability. We use page-request totals to assess readership and advertising performance. We do not give advertisers access to those logs.

Sponsor blocks and featured listings are served by this site and do not add advertiser tracking. Businesses receive totals for views and contact-button clicks, not reader identities. A paid link, where present, is labelled Paid links. Following it takes you to another provider’s website under its own privacy policy.

The Google map on Getting around loads when you scroll to it, so Google receives a request even if you do not interact with the map. On our videos page, poster images come from this site; YouTube receives a request only when you press play.

Who receives information

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. We use service providers to operate the site:

Service	Information and purpose
Website hosting and storage	Website requests, account details and form records, for delivery, storage and security.
Email delivery	Email addresses, message contents and subscription status, for newsletters, confirmations, password recovery and submission notices.
Website statistics and maps	Usage information and map requests, as described above.
Publisher notifications	Usage reports and enquiry notices, which may include search terms or enquiry contact details.
Payment processing	Card and billing details, invoices, payment identifiers and payment status. We do not receive your card number.
Publishing and file storage	Public website files, including approved photos, captions and permission records.

A business receives an enquiry only when you send it through that business’s form. Sponsors do not receive our newsletter list or access to our analytics account.

Information may be processed or stored outside Australia. Some service providers are based in the United States; others operate overseas or use global networks. A provider’s headquarters does not establish where every copy is stored. We may also disclose information where Australian law requires it.

How long we keep information

Information	Retention
Unconfirmed newsletter requests	Seven days.
Newsletter records	Delivery stops when you unsubscribe. The provider may retain subscription status; we keep confirmation records separately unless you request deletion.
Accounts and associated saved items, claims and preferences	Until you delete the account.
Email-verification and password-reset codes	Valid for 30 minutes and one use; expired records are removed during scheduled cleanup.
Legacy email sign-in links and sessions	Legacy links expire after 15 minutes. Expired session records are removed during scheduled cleanup.
Login-abuse counters	Temporary counts kept separately from accounts, then removed by weekly cleanup after expiry.
Temporary visit records	Six hours after their latest storage update.
Daily usage totals	60 days.
Separate search records	90 days.
Form submissions and correspondence	While we handle the matter and for a reasonable period afterwards as a record of the submission or correction. Contact us to request deletion.

Unsubscribing stops newsletter delivery. The email provider may retain subscription status so that an unsubscribed address is not mailed again. We separately retain the date and address confirming your subscription unless you ask us to delete them.

Account deletion and retained copies

Deleting your account removes its records from our active account database, including saved items, preferences, claims, proposals, account-linked submissions, business-supplied updates, pending deal photos, placement records, sign-in sessions and recovery records.

Deletion does not remove a listing, deal or photo already published in the guide. These are part of the site’s public publishing record. You can ask us to remove a published photo; it comes off the public site with an update, while earlier versions may remain in the publishing history.

Deleted data may remain in database recovery history or separate backups. Our database has a 30-day recovery window; separate backup copies are not automatically removed by the account-deletion button. Contact us about a deletion request that also concerns backups, correspondence or delivered notifications. The six-hour visit-record expiry does not delete messages already delivered to Telegram, which may remain in the publisher’s message history.

Account deletion does not cancel a Stripe subscription or delete Stripe’s records. Manage a subscription before deleting your account, or contact us for help. Stripe retains its own payment records under its policies and applicable requirements.

Your choices and requests

Account: view your saved items or use Account settings to delete the account.
Newsletter: use the unsubscribe link in an issue, or email us. No account login is needed.
Personal information: email info@menangleparkguide.com.au to request access, correction or deletion, including information outside your account.

We may need to verify your identity or control of the relevant email address. We respond within a reasonable time and do not charge for straightforward requests. Your account pages show account activity, not every technical or backup record we may hold.

Complaints and policy changes

For a privacy complaint, email info@menangleparkguide.com.au with the details. We will look into it and respond. If you remain dissatisfied, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner explains privacy complaint options and the matters it can consider.

We update this policy when our information-handling practices change. The date below identifies the current version.