This policy is correct as of 30 September 2020.
At Skinny, we’ll do anything to keep prices low and customers happy. As part of that, we want to be transparent about how, we as a business, use our customers’ data. We’re also very aware of the responsibility that comes with being a telco in today’s world, by keeping you connected and ensuring the personal information you share with us is treated with care.
We’ve worked with our lawyers to put together this Privacy Policy to tell you how we as Skinny collect, use, protect and share your personal information. We hope you find it transparent and easy to understand.
Where this Policy says “we” or “us” or Skinny, it means Skinny, a division of Spark New Zealand Trading Limited.
In this Policy, we’ll tell you how we collect, use and protect your personal information. We’ll also tell you who we share your personal information with and when.
Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you. For example, your name, your address, phone number and email address are all personal information. Personal information can also include your credit card details or the way you use your phone. For example, what phone numbers you call.
Skinny collects, uses and discloses your personal information in ways that follow applicable legal requirements. This includes the Privacy Act 1993 and the Telecommunications Information Privacy Code 2003.
Go to Telecommunications Information Privacy Code 2003
The Privacy Policy applies whenever you interact with us or use our products and services. This includes our mobile and broadband services, and our digital platforms (such as our websites and apps). This Privacy Policy forms part of the terms and conditions applicable to all Skinny products and services that you agree to when you sign up.
Even if you aren’t a Skinny customer, this Policy applies to any personal information you provide to us or that we collect when you interact with us or use our products and services. For example, if you:
We have broken down the information we collect into the following four key categories.
This is personal information we receive from you (for example when you sign up for a Skinny product or service), that third parties give to us or that we create about you.
To provide you with Skinny products and services, interact with you and conduct our business, we need to collect some information directly from you and sometimes from publicly available data sources and third parties. If we ask you for information and you decide not to supply it, we may not be able to provide some products and services to you.
We collect information directly from you when you:
The personal information we collect may include:
We may collect information about you from other divisions of Spark New Zealand Trading Limited and companies within the Spark group.
We may sometimes collect or purchase personal information about you from publicly available sources like real estate listings or from other people, like loyalty programme partners, credit reference agencies or information aggregators. We only do this if we reasonably believe you’ve authorised us to do so, or if you’ve authorised the third party to share your information with us.
If you’re moving services to Skinny we may collect personal information from your current provider. For example, we may confirm your account number with them. This helps us transition you smoothly.
We may also collect your personal information if we’re investigating alleged fraud. This can include information from the person who says they’ve been defrauded, verification of your passport from the Department of Internal Affairs and confirmation of the order delivery status and address from courier companies for deliveries of Skinny products.
We may also collect or purchase data and combine it with other information that we hold about you to help us better understand your needs, the needs of your household and those of potential customers. For example, we may:
We will only collect this kind of data from trusted providers if we’re satisfied they have permission to share this information with us and the collection, use and disclosure meets the requirements of the Privacy Act.
We also create and hold information to manage your Skinny account, including:
To help improve our products, services and your customer experience, we may ask you to take part in market research. When we ask this, we take the information you share with us and combine it with responses from other people. While we may use some of the information about you and your account (e.g. what plans you have with Skinny) alongside your survey response to help us with our analysis, we don’t hold a copy of your responses with your account information.
This is personal information relating to the use of mobile and broadband connections or products which we collect automatically when you use Skinny products or services. It does not include data that we collect when you use our digital platforms, which is Online Experience Data, as described below.
When you use Skinny products and services, we receive information about how our network, systems and platforms are working. This includes personal information about the way you use our products and services, including:
This is the technical information about your device, and how it interacts with our networks, products and services. This could include information like performance-related settings and networks to which your device connects.
This is information such as how much data you’ve used or how many calling minutes or texts you’ve used. It can include what you’ve used the service for, like whether you’ve streamed music or browsed the web.
This is information such as the phone numbers you’ve called and sent texts to, or phone numbers you’ve received calls and texts from. Please see the ‘Your content’ section for how we deal with the content of your texts and phone calls.
This is created when:
The IP address, unique identification numbers, online identifiers (including device IDs), browser information and other similar or alternative identifying information of the device you use to access Skinny’s network services and the dates and times you were using our network services.
This is personal information we collect automatically about your Skinny digital experience when you visit, download or use Skinny websites, apps and other digital platforms to interact or engage with us. We set out examples of Skinny online experience data below. Please note that if you use our apps, you can choose use the app without logging in. When you use the app without logging in, we may still collect some Skinny online experience data and information about your device but it will not identify you.
This may include details of the device you use and its attributes, like your provider, device ID and your device’s technical and performance-related settings (including your language preferences).
Like many companies, when you visit or use our websites, apps or our other digital platforms or receive communications from us, we collect and store information about your experience. We use several kinds of technologies or software for this, for example:
A cookie is a small packet of information that our digital platform sends to your web browser, app or device. It lets our digital platform recognise you when you visit or interact with us and keep track of your preferences. A web beacon or clear gif is a small image file embedded onto a webpage or email that tracks what you do on that webpage or how you interact with the email.
We collect and store information about your visit to, or use of, Skinny digital platforms, including:
If you enable cookies in your web browser or otherwise elect to be remembered by one of our digital platforms, you don’t have to re-enter your username every time you visit or use our websites or apps. We use cookies and other similar technologies that store your login details locally on your device so that information isn’t passed to us. Please note, cookies and other technologies will only work like this if they’re enabled. This is usually the default setting. You can turn cookies off and manage other advertising preferences and opt outs from your device. Plus other digital platforms will usually include an option not to be remembered.
Read more about how to turn cookies off using Google Chrome
Read more about how to turn cookies off using Microsoft
Read more about how to turn cookies off using Mozilla Firefox
Read more about how to turn mobile advertising identifiers off on your Apple device
Read more about how to turn mobile advertising identifiers off on your Android device
You can sign into your Skinny dashboard online and our apps using third party login providers such as Facebook or Google. When you do this, we collect authentication information from the third party login providers such as your email address, profile photo (if you have one) and a login token. Skinny does not store any passwords from third party login providers.
We may also receive additional information from Facebook or Google, including your age, gender, assumed interests and browser language. We’ll only receive that information if you’ve given consent in your Google and Facebook privacy settings.
Go to Facebook privacy settings
When you talk to a Skinny bot from a third party platform such as Facebook Messenger, Google (our third party service provider) will temporarily store and analyse your conversation so that the bot can talk back to you. You can access information about Google’s privacy here.
The third party platform provider may also store your bot conversation. You can access information about Facebook’s privacy here. We suggest that you do not share highly sensitive personal information, such as credit card or bank account details, with any bot.
This is personal information created by you when you use Skinny products and services. For example, photos you take and text messages you write.
When you use Skinny products and services, you may create, share or send personal content. This could be things like phone calls, text messages, emails, photos and videos.
We treat this data with great sensitivity as we know how important that information is to you. We only use this data to deliver your content to the people or places you tell us to send it to. For example, we carry your calls over our network and deliver your emails. The only exceptions are:
When you use some Skinny services, information about websites you’ve visited and apps you’ve used is automatically generated. We may use this information in an anonymised, aggregated format, for example, to help us manage the Skinny network.
We may use your personal information and share it with others, including:
We’ll use and share your information with these various groups for the purposes listed below. As we don’t use and share every type of information we collect for every purpose, we’ve identified the kind of information we use for each purpose.
To understand how we can better serve you and your household
We may use your supplied data, usage data and Skinny online experience data to consider you as both an individual and as a member of a household. This helps us provide you with services and offers that we think are most relevant to your needs. For example, offers that save you money based on the size of your household. To do this, we might form a view of your household based on data such as address information provided by you or others, your interactions with Skinny and others, and location data from your devices, apps or from others.
If you are not comfortable having your information used in this way, you can opt-out. You can do this by clicking the link below then entering your Skinny ID to login to the Skinny Dashboard. Under your settings, you can select to opt-out of your data being used to generate a House Hold View.
Login to your Skinny Dashboard
If you don’t have a Skinny Dashboard login, you can sign up for one on the link below. Once you have signed up you can update your preferences as above.
We use and may share your supplied data, usage data and Skinny online experience data to provide you with products and services, including to:
We may use your supplied data, usage data and Skinny online experience data to improve our customer service, products and services, including to:
We may use your supplied data, usage data and Skinny online experience data to:
We may also need to share your personal information with other telecommunications service providers to monitor or investigate fraud or other offences.
We may use your supplied data, Skinny online experience data and usage data to let you know about:
You can opt out of all promotional messages by getting in touch with us. Or you can opt out of promotional emails and SMS by updating your settings via our online dashboard. You can also click ‘unsubscribe’ on marketing emails.
Login to your Skinny Dashboard
We may use your supplied data, Skinny online experience data and usage data to:
We may use your supplied data, Skinny online experience data and usage data to:
We sometimes run advertising campaigns where we share your email address and mobile number with Google, Facebook and TradeMe to help us show you relevant content, offers and ads when you visit other websites. This also helps us avoid showing you information about Skinny products and services you’ve already signed up for.
Google, Facebook and TradeMe may provide us with aggregated, anonymised information about people who responded to the advertising campaign. This can include age brackets, gender, assumed interests and affinities for each campaign response type. This information won’t identify you. For example, Google, Facebook or TradeMe may tell us that most people who clicked on the ad were aged 20 - 40 and like cooking. Google, Facebook and TradeMe collect this information based on your browser language and online behaviour. Google, Facebook and TradeMe only provide this information about people whose privacy settings allow it. You can change your permissions in your Google, Facebook and TradeMe settings.
We use this aggregated, anonymised information to:
The information we share with Google, Facebook and TradeMe is provided to them so they can deliver these services to Skinny. Skinny is not selling this data to Google, Facebook or TradeMe, nor allowing them to use it for any other purpose. Please note, Skinny doesn’t use Facebook “Event Data” services.
Read more about how Google provides these services
Read more about how Facebook provides these services
Read more about TradeMe’s privacy policy
You can opt out of us sharing information about you with Google, Facebook and TradeMe for these purposes. You can do this by clicking the link below to log in to your Skinny Dashboard to update your settings.
Opt out of having your information shared with Google, Facebook and TradeMe:
Login to your Skinny Dashboard to update your settings
If you don’t have a Skinny Dashboard login, you can sign up for one on the link below. Once you have signed up you can update your preferences as above.
We may use your supplied data and Skinny online experience data to:
Credit reference agencies may keep records of the information we give them. They may also use and share it with other organisations for credit checking and fraud prevention purposes.
If you use 0900 services or have unpaid bills, we may use your supplied data to:
We may use your supplied data and Skinny online experience data to:
We may also share supplied data and online experience data with credit reference agencies. This helps us and the agencies build relevant models, and can help the agencies build models to help Skinny and other organisations make credit and fraud protection and detection decisions.
We may share your supplied data, Skinny online experience data, usage data and your content to enable law enforcement, government and emergency services agencies to do their work as follows:
We may use and disclose your supplied data, usage data and your content to comply with our legal obligations, including:
We may use your supplied data to manage your status as a Vulnerable End User of Skinny services (if applicable) to ensure you’re not placed at undue risk when we connect, disconnect, maintain and repair any faults with your Skinny service. To do this, we may need to share your personal information with other service providers to identify your service connection. If necessary in your situation, we may also share any medical details relevant to your connection, such as the presence of a medical device.
Read about Vulnerable End Users
Anonymised, aggregated data is a set of data about many people. It excludes personal identifiers, such as name, address and phone number. This protects your privacy. We may use anonymised, aggregated data for purposes such as internal and external reporting, and to make decisions about how to manage Skinny and deliver product and services, for example:
We may also use anonymised, aggregated data to provide insights to other organisations – such as our advertisers, customers and partners.
Example – mobile and wireless location data
As you use our mobile and wireless services, we collect information about how you’re using our networks. This includes your mobile and wireless location data generated from use of our mobile and wireless networks. In addition to the uses set out in this Policy, we may also use anonymised, aggregated mobile and wireless location data sets to improve our network (for example, to plan where to increase our mobile network capacity) and enhance our customer experiences. We may also share insights gained from analysis of this data to help other organisations better understand, plan for and meet the needs of their customers and the public.
Qrious
We provide anonymised, aggregated mobile location data to Qrious, a Spark-owned data and analytics organisation. Qrious analyses this and other non-Skinny data (e.g. aggregated demographic data) for insights that can help organisations improve infrastructure and services. For example, making decisions about health, transport and infrastructure investment. You can opt-out from having your information included in the data set provided to Qrious.
Opt out of having your anonymised mobile location data provide to Qrious by emailing: skinnyprivacy@spark.co.nz
Sharing with your consent or for a related purpose
In additions to the reasons set out above, we may share your personal information with third parties:
We store most of your personal information on our own servers here in New Zealand. But from time to time we may need to store personal information in the cloud (online). This may involve storage in data centres outside New Zealand. We take care to carefully select data centre and storage service providers whom we trust with your information.
We apply strict security measures and follow industry standards to keep your personal information secure. To help with this, we ask that you:
We may assume that any verbal or online request or instruction we receive is authorised by you if it’s accompanied by suitable verification (like your Skinny account number, personal identification number or password).
We work hard and follow industry best practice to ensure the information we hold is secure.
If we become aware of a data breach that we think could compromise your security, we’ll tell you as soon as we can. We may also report the breach publicly, if we consider it appropriate to do so or if we’re required to by law.
Generally, we only keep your personal information for as long as it’s needed. That means once we’ve carried out the purpose for which we first collected it, we get rid of it – either by deleting it or anonymising it.
More specifically:
If you’re a Skinny customer, we may continue to hold, use and share your supplied data after our agreement with you ends and you stop being a Skinny customer. We do this so that we can discuss matters relating to your former account and so it’s easier to reconnect your account if you wish to join us again in the future. We may also use this information to contact you with offers and to help improve our credit and fraud management controls and decision-making/credit scoring models.
You can request access to, and correction of, the personal information we hold about you. To do so, you may either:
Before processing your request, we‘ll contact you to verify your identity, confirm your request and advise of any charges that may apply. Occasionally, we may withhold information on one of the grounds set out in the Privacy Act 1993 or the Telecommunications Information Privacy Code 2003.
We have robust processes to manage the personal information that we hold about you. But if you have any concerns or feel your privacy has been compromised in some way, please let us know.
The Skinny Privacy Complaints Process will ensure your concerns are addressed as quickly as possible.
View the Skinny Privacy Complaints Process
To request further investigation, you can contact the Privacy Commissioner at any point during or after having lodged a complaint with us.
Go to the Privacy Commission’s website
If anything in this policy needs clarifying, or if you have questions about your privacy, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Email: skinnyprivacy@spark.co.nz
Throughout this Policy, there are areas where you can make choices about your privacy. Here’s a recap on what they are:
User behaviour information
If you enable cookies and similar technologies on your device, you don’t have to re-enter your username every time you visit our websites or apps. Remember, we use cookies and other technology that store your details locally on your device so that information isn’t passed on to us. It’s usually the default setting for cookies to be enabled, but you can choose to turn them off and other digital platforms will usually include an option not to be remembered.
Learn how to turn cookies off using Google Chrome
Learn how to turn cookies off using Microsoft
Learn how to turn cookies off using Mozilla Firefox
Mobile advertising identifiers can also be managed on your device.
Read more about how to turn mobile advertising identifiers off on your Apple device
Read more about how to turn mobile advertising identifiers off on your Android device
Access to photos and images
If you choose to upload a photo or image to any Skinny digital platform (for example uploading a profile picture), Skinny will receive access to your photo library. While Skinny will only store the photos or images you choose to provide us, to remove Skinny’s permissions to access your photo library, you may need to change the preferences on your device.
Promotional communications
You can choose whether you’d like to be kept up to date with the latest offers and promotions from Skinny.
You can opt out of all promotional messages by getting in touch with us. Or you can opt out of promotional emails only by updating your settings via your online dashboard. You can also click ‘unsubscribe’ on marketing emails.
To opt out of promotional emails and texts, login to your Skinny Dashboard
Sharing anonymised, aggregated mobile location data with Qrious
Skinny shares anonymised, aggregated mobile location data with Spark-owned company Qrious. These are large sets of data that Qrious use to provide insights to other organisations. For example, there are often 6000 people in region ‘A’ at 1pm on Saturdays. These insights help organisations improve infrastructure and services. You can choose to have your anonymised mobile location data excluded from these large data sets by emailing us.
Email: skinnyprivacy@spark.co.nz
Personalised Skinny experiences on third party websites and apps
We may sometimes share your email address and/or mobile number with Google, Facebook and TradeMe to help us personalise your experience of Skinny on those other websites and digital platforms with relevant content, offers and ads from Skinny.
You can opt out of us sharing information about you with Google, Facebook and TradeMe for these purposes. You can do this by clicking the link below to log in to your Skinny Dashboard to update your settings. We have also detailed the instructions on how to do this below. If you opt out, you may still see ads and other information from us, but it won’t always be as relevant to you.
Login to your Skinny Dashboard to update your settings
Instructions on how to opt-out:
If you don’t have a Skinny Dashboard login, you can sign up for one on the link below. Once you have signed up you can update your preferences as per the above instructions.
Household view
We may use your supplied data, usage data and Skinny online experience data to consider you as both an individual and as a member of a household. This helps us provide you with services and offers that we think are most relevant to your needs. For example, offers that save you money based on the size of your household. To do this, we might form a view of your household based on data such as address information provided by you or others, your interactions with Spark and others, and location data from your devices, apps or from others.
If you are not comfortable having your information used in this way you can opt-out You can do this by clicking the link below to log in to your Skinny Dashboard to update your settings.
Login to your Skinny Dashboard
If you don’t have a Skinny Dashboard login, you can sign up for one on the link below. Once you have signed up you can update your preferences as above.
We may need to update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in the law and our practices.
We will provide you with two weeks’ notice of any changes on our website. If the changes are significant we may also advise you directly. We encourage you to check this site regularly.
