Privacy Policy
MetService complies with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 ("the Act") and other applicable privacy and data protection laws. We understand the need to safeguard your personal information and respect your rights under the Act and other applicable law. Personal information is information about an identifiable individual (a natural person).
The websites www.metservice.com, blog.metservice.com, and about.metservice.com (each a Site), and the MetService Android and iOS apps (each an App), provide weather-related information and services for New Zealand, for the benefit of New Zealanders to access high-quality and reliable weather information. We provide this information as the Crown’s authorised provider of weather watches and warnings and other services under licence for your use.
To provide these services we collect, retain personal information and use this information for the purposes of providing you with relevant information and services, and for the purposes of operating our business.
Where you subscribe to an email distribution or make a general enquiry or Official Information request, you give us your consent to use your personal information for this use and we will not use this personal information for any other purpose.
Our Privacy Policy contains further information so you can opt out of other services such as Google advertising, Google cross-device targeting, Google Analytics and Nielsen proprietary measurement software.
WHO ARE "WE"?
In this Privacy Policy and the Addendum, all references to "we", "us", and "our" refer to Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited (“MetService”).
You can contact us by email at privacy@metservice.com.
Our registered address is:
Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited
30 Salamanca Road, Kelburn
New Zealand
Our postal address is:
Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited
PO Box 722, Wellington 6140
New Zealand
PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED
When you visit a Site, use an App, and/or use our services, we collect certain types of personal information from you. If possible, we collect personal information from you directly when you provide that personal information to us, including via a Site, App or any related service, or through any contact with us. We may collect personal information about you from third parties where you have authorised this or the information is publicly available.
USAGE DATA
When you visit a Site, our server logs information which is provided by your browser. This information may include:
The type of browser you used.The date and time of your visit.
Your top-level domain name (e.g. ".nz", ".com").
The address of any web site that referred you to the Site.
Your server's "IP address" (an IP address is a number which is unique to the computer through which you are connected to the Internet. The IP address will normally be assigned by your internet service provider).
The address(es) of the page(s) on the Site you browsed.
The address(es) of the document(s) you downloaded.
The search engine you used (if any), and which keywords or phrases you searched with.
Search terms that you may enter when using the search engine on the Site may be collected, but are not associated with any other information that we collect, including any personal information.
E-MAIL ADDRESSES
We collect your e-mail address if you send us an e-mail or subscribe to an e-mail list.
SUBSCRIPTION AND FEEDBACK FORM INFORMATION
Certain pages on the Site enable you to complete an online form to subscribe to a particular service or to provide us with feedback. We ask you to provide sufficient personal information for that purpose only.
HOW WE USE AND DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use your personal information to provide our services to you. We do not sell, publish or give away your personal information. We do use automatic decision-making and profiling as part of our Data Management Platform.
We will only use usage data for statistical analysis and systems administration purposes.
We may provide your usage data to third-party auditors for the limited purpose of verifying usage statistics. Aggregated usage data (not personally identifiable information) may be shared with third parties such as advertisers or our business partners.
Your e-mail address will only be used for the purpose for which you provide it, and will not be added to a mailing list except at your request. We will not disclose your e-mail address without your consent. You will always have the option to opt in or opt out of our services that use email notifications at any time.
We record subscription and feedback form information for follow up purposes and only our authorised employees have access to this information. We also use the subscription and feedback form information for statistical analysis and to analyse the way the Site is searched to improve the Site for users.
In certain circumstances, we may be obliged to disclose your personal information to law enforcement or other government officials, for example, in connection with an investigation of fraud or any other activity that is illegal, or that may expose us to legal liability.
We may disclose your personal information to another company within our group or to another business that supports our services, including any person that hosts or maintains any underlying IT system or data centre that we use to provide a Site, App or related service.
If personal information we collect is hosted by a third-party service provider, our agreement with that third-party service providers protect the personal information that we collect from any unauthorised use. A business that supports our services and products may be located outside New Zealand. This may mean that your personal information is held and processed outside New Zealand.
We may also disclose your personal information to any other person authorised by you or use it for any other purpose authorised by the Act.
COOKIES
"Cookies" are pieces of user-specific information generated by a web server and stored in the user's computer, ready for future access. A cookie does not provide us with personally identifiable information. Cookies are collected on the Site by a third-party, Nielsen NetRatings, and the Data Management Platform for the purpose of analysing web traffic and trends on our site. Nielsen NetRatings' privacy statement regarding the information they collect can be found here.
If you would rather we did not use cookies with you, you can turn them off in your browser and/or delete them from your hard drive. You will still be able to visit the Site, however, turning off cookies may result in a loss of functionality of some services on the Site.
In some cases, site functionality may be restricted as we have turned off the ability of our third-parties to provide cookies to users in the EU.
GOOGLE ADVERTISING
MetService has implemented Google Analytics Remarketing tags on the Site to present advertising relevant to your interests. To determine your interests, Google will track your behaviour on the Site using these tags. If you would like to customise or opt out of these settings, please visit this link: https://www.google.com/settings/ads.
For more information on how Google uses personal information, see: https://privacy.google.com/your-data.html.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS
MetService has implemented Google Analytics Remarketing tags on this site to present advertising relevant to your interests.
If you would like to customise or opt out of these settings, a Google Analytics opt-out is via an add on from the web store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-analytics-opt-out/fllaojicojecljbmefodhfapmkghcbnh?hl=en
GOOGLE CROSS-PLATFORM TARGETING.
We use cross-device targeting to serve relevant advertising across multiple platforms or devices where you are logged into the same accounts (e.g. Google/Gmail). You can opt out by following the instructions listed here: youradchoices.com/control
Link to this page for how Google uses information from sites/services that use their services: https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/partner-sites/
NIELSEN
Our properties may feature Nielsen proprietary measurement software, which will allow you to contribute to market research, like Digital Content Ratings. To learn more about the information that Nielsen software may collect and your choices with regard to it, please see the Nielsen Digital Measurement Privacy Policy at http://priv-policy.imrworldwide.com/priv/browser/nz/en/optout.html.
INSITE SEARCH FUNCTION
Our site search is provided by Algolia and is subject to Algolia’s privacy policy here https://www.algolia.com/policies/privacy. Search terms that you may enter when using the search engine on the Site may be collected but are not associated with any other information that we collect, including any personal information.
USE OF DEVICE LOCATION IN METSERVICE APPS
Our Android and iOS NZ Weather apps offer an optional feature called Location Based Forecast. If you enable Location Based Forecast, your device location will be used to match you with the nearest available forecast. If you add a Home Screen Widget that uses your current location, your device location will be used in the background to keep the location and forecasts on the widget up to date. On Android, you can choose to add a widget for a specific location instead of one for your current location if you do not want your location used in the background. If you do not want your device location used to find forecasts, you can disable Location Based Forecast at any time and access forecasts via search within the app.
PROTECTING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will take reasonable steps to keep your personal information safe from loss, unauthorised activity, alteration, disclosure or other misuse. We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure a level of security appropriate to risks inherent in processing personal information.
YOUR RIGHT TO ACCESS AND CORRECT YOUR INFORMATION
We make every effort to ensure that your personal details are up to date and accurate. Subject to certain grounds for refusal set out in the Act, you have the right to access your readily retrievable personal information that we hold and to request correction to your personal information. Before you exercise this right, we will need evidence to confirm that you are the individual to whom the personal information relates.
In respect of a request for correction, if we think the correction is reasonable and we are reasonably able to change the personal information, we will make the correction. If we do not make the correct, we will take reasonable steps to note on the personal information that you requested the correction.
If you want to exercise either of the above rights, email us at privacy@metservice.com. Your email should provide evidence of who you are and set out the details of your request (e.g. the personal information, or the correction, that you are requesting).
We may charge you the reasonable costs of providing to you copies of your personal information or correcting that information.
ADDITIONAL TERMS
From time to time we may offer services for which we require you to provide additional personal information to us, through the Site or otherwise. There are additional privacy terms that apply to those specific services, as posted on the relevant page of the Site, that you must accept if you wish to make use of those particular services (“Additional Privacy Terms”).
MODIFICATION
We may add to, remove or change the provisions of this Privacy Policy or the Addendum from time to time. All additions and changes will be notified to you by being posted on this page. It is your responsibility as a user to refer to these additions and changes.
This privacy policy was last updated on 1 December 2020.
CONTACTING US
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, our privacy practices, or if you would like to request access to, or correction of, your personal information, you can contact us at privacy@metservice.com.