NZBN privacy policy
This privacy policy explains how the New Zealand Business Number team (‘we’ or ‘us’), a business unit within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, collects, stores, uses, and discloses personal information that users provide to us when using the NZBN website.
This privacy policy is subject to, and must be read in conjunction with, our Terms of Use.
Why should you read this privacy statement?
In using this website you may be required to, or may choose to, provide us with personal and contact details.
This privacy statement sets out what information we’ll ask you for, when we’ll collect it, and what we’ll do with it.
It’s our commitment to keeping your personal information safe and secure. This page explains your rights, and our responsibilities.
What information is collected when you use this website?
Personal information
To create a user account, you’ll need to provide your name, email address, phone number, physical address and postal address.
When applying for a New Zealand Business Number as a sole trader, partnership or a trust, you’ll also be asked for your IRD number (or the IRD number of your partnership or trust), and you may be required to provide additional proof of identity, such as your driver licence, passport or other form of identification.
As a website user, you may also choose to provide personal details voluntarily, for example, when contacting us by email, or sending us feedback. While you are not obliged to provide this information, not doing so may affect the services we can offer you.
Where you subscribe to one of our alerts or newsletters, your personal details will be shared with a third-party service provider (Campaign Monitor). Should you choose to unsubscribe, your details will be deleted from the Campaign Monitor database.
Campaign Monitor Privacy Policy(external link)
What statistical information is collected when you use this website?
We may collect statistical information about your visit, to help us improve this site. This information won’t identify you personally, and includes:
- the search terms you used
- the pages you accessed on the website and the links you clicked on
- the date and time you visited the website
- the referring site (if any) from which you navigated to the website
- the device you used to access the website
- your operating system (for example, Windows 10, Mac OSX)
- the type of web browser you used (for example, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox)
- other things like screen resolution, the release of your installed Flash version and the language setting of your browser.
The statistical information referred to above can be viewed by certain MBIE staff. It may also be shared with other government agencies.
Note — While full access to the NZBN services requires a user account, you can use the website without disclosing any personal information: for example, when searching for a business or reading about the NZBN.
Who holds your information?
The NZBN website is administered by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). The personal information you provide, as described in this policy, is held by MBIE. Where appropriate, however, information may be stored or accessed by authorised third parties who provide services to us (such as IT contractors).
We’ll keep your personal details secure in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020(external link) and any authorised third parties will be subject to our information security and privacy requirements.
How will we use your personal information?
The information we collect about you enables us to:
- manage your user account with us
- provide you with important news and updates
- alert you to any serious outages
- communicate with you on matters relating to your use of the website
- determine how the website is used, so we can deliver, evaluate and improve our services to you.
We’ll generally only use personal information obtained through the website for the purpose for which it was collected. However, we may use or share your personal information for some other directly related purpose, as otherwise permitted by the Privacy Act 2020(external link), or as required by some other legislation.
We may also be required to share personal information under the Official Information Act 1982, or to a Parliamentary Select Committee or Parliament, in response to a parliamentary question.
Who has access to your personal information?
The personal details you provide will be viewable by MBIE staff (where appropriate) and sometimes third-party contractors and suppliers authorised to administer or work on the website and IT systems.
How long will your personal information be held?
Where your personal information constitutes a public record, it will be retained as required by the Public Records Act 2005(external link).
How is your information kept safe?
MBIE holds your personal details securely, ensuring we have procedures for staff to follow to keep your information safe, appropriate technology in place to prevent unauthorised access, and external experts available to check that the website and IT systems remains secure.
We’re obliged by the Privacy Act 2020(external link) to keep your personal information secure, and any authorised third-party we engage will also be subject to our security and privacy requirements.
Our websites have security measures in place to prevent the loss, misuse and alteration of the information we hold. To maintain the effectiveness of our systems, they undergo regular monitoring, including activity logging, analysis and auditing.
Information about your use of the websites and other IT systems may be used to prevent unauthorised access or attacks on these systems, or to resolve such events – even if you’re not involved in such activity yourself.
We may also use third-party services to monitor or maintain the cyber security of our systems and information. These third-party suppliers have access to monitoring and logging information as well as information processed on MBIE websites and other IT systems.
When you phone us, why are the calls recorded?
As part of our commitment to providing the best possible service to our customers, we record all telephone calls answered by our contact centre.
Recording your calls helps us to:
- simplify and improve our customer service to you, by using call information to train our contact centre staff
- have an accurate record of your call, which may be needed to support any transactions that take place over the phone and/or if there’s a dispute.
We store the recordings securely for a maximum of two years, after which time they are deleted.
Unless we have lawful reason for withholding the information, you can obtain a transcript of a telephone call by writing to the Privacy Officer at the following address:
Privacy Officer
New Zealand Business Number
Private Bag 92061
Victoria Street West
Auckland 1142
What are your rights when it comes to your own information?
You have the right to know whether we hold personal information about you, to access that information, and to request changes to information if you believe it to be incorrect.
If you want to check personal information that we hold, please write to:
Privacy Officer
New Zealand Business Number
Private Bag 92061
Victoria Street West
Auckland 1142
If we have a good reason for refusing a request to correct information, you’re entitled to ask that a statement be attached to the information to show that a correction was sought, but not made.
For more information on the privacy laws in New Zealand, and contact details for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, visit the website for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner(external link).
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small portion of data sent from a website and stored on a user's computer by the web browser while that user is visiting a website. Cookies are generally used to improve user experience of a website; for example, by remembering preferences you have set. When the user browses the same website in the future, the cookie data can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user's previous activity.
How are cookies used on this website?
MBIE uses cookies to gather data about site usage, and your browsing history on the website. This is done using a tool called Google Analytics.
We do not use cookies to gather any information that will identify you personally.
The data we collect may be used to enhance your browsing experience, improve our website, identify whether you have seen our marketing material before you visited our site, and target advertising to you.
Using Google Analytics means that we can advertise to visitors who have visited certain pages on our site. This is known as remarketing. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page, a site in the Google Display Network, or somewhere on Facebook. Third-party vendors, including Google and Facebook, use cookies to serve advertisements based on someone’s past visits to the nzbn.govt.nz website.
Any data collected will be used in accordance with our privacy policy as well as the privacy policies of Google(external link) and Facebook(external link).
You can opt-out of remarketing by visiting the following pages on Google and Facebook:
Google – block certain ads(external link)
Facebook – your ad preferences(external link)
How do I control cookies?
Your web browser can be set to notify you when cookies are used, or to refuse cookies. You can access these settings in your web browser. If you choose to adjust your browser to not accept cookies, you may experience some loss in functionality on nzbn.govt.nz.
In accepting cookies, you do not give us access to your computer or personal information stored on your hard drive under any circumstances.
For more information on how to adjust your web browser settings for cookies see www.aboutcookies.org(external link)
What are Facebook pixels?
A Facebook pixel is a type of cookie used on this website. Similar to a website or HTML cookie, a pixel tracks site visitors and their activity while visiting nzbn.govt.nz. This data allows us to target website users with Facebook advertising relevant to them. The pixel provides us with insights about our website audience, and interact with users that are already engaging with the NZBN website, and enables us to track the effectiveness of our social media marketing.
Do we work with advertising services providers?
We advertise the NZBN and its benefits through our social media presence, and on other unaffiliated websites and mobile applications. To help us understand how campaigns are performing, and to understand the users that come to our website we work with partners who provide advertising services. Through our advertising service providers, we collect data that helps build an understanding of how users interact with the NZBN and our services, to promote advertising on our behalf on the internet, and measure campaign performance.
Do we have third-party advertising and links to websites?
This website contains hyperlinks to third party websites. Some of these links may request or record information from users or use cookies or other methods to collect information from you. We have no control over and are not responsible for the content of such websites, or for the manner in which those websites collect, hold, use, and distribute any personal information you provide. When visiting a third party website from hyperlinks displayed on this website, we encourage you to review the privacy statements of those websites so that you can understand how the personal information you provide will be collected, held, used and distributed.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
We reserve the right, at our discretion, to update or revise this privacy policy at any time. Changes to this privacy policy will take effect immediately once published on this website. Please check this privacy policy regularly for modifications and updates.
Contact details
If you have any questions about the NZBN privacy policy, or any other related matter, please feel free to contact us at info@nzbn.govt.nz.
Last updated 1 December 2020