Privacy Policy

Home Automation for Dummies provides informational services to the public to help consumers make informed decisions about products and services relating to home automation / smart homes. 

This privacy statement outlines what personal information we collect, how we store, use and share it, and how you can access or correct your personal information. We are committed to protecting your privacy when you visit our websites or contact us in any way.

We may occasionally update this privacy statement, to reflect changes to our practices, and will notify you when we do so. This statement was last updated on 10 April 2023.

Collecting your information

We collect minimal personal information directly from you when you access our services or engage with us through our websites and surveys.

If you access any of our services (including commenting on a blog post, responding to surveys, contacting us with an enquiry or signing up for our newsletters), we will collect some or all of the following personal information:

• Your name and contact details

• Your region

• Any comments or community contributions

• Survey results and responses, when you participate in any of our surveys

• Website activity

• Any other information you choose to provide us

Collectively, this is known as your “personal information".

Using your personal information

In order to deliver our services to the best of our ability, we use your personal information in the ways set out below. 

We use your personal information to:

• Provide you with any products and services you request or sign up for

• Contact you to respond to any of your enquiries

• Target or customise our marketing and advertising

• Tell you about our new products, services, promotions and campaigns. For example, if you are opted-in to email marketing communications we may email you to let you know about new content you may be interested in

• Provide you with information about the operation and security of our websites

• Contact you to advise you of changes to our terms and conditions, services or new products or promotions
  

If you send us a contact message through our online form, you will be signed up to automatically receive email marketing communications. For all our marketing emails, you can choose to remove yourself from receiving these communications by following the "unsubscribe" prompt at the bottom of each email.

Sharing your personal information

We do not sell or rent your personal information to any third party.

However, we do share your personal information with trusted third parties that work on our behalf to deliver our services (such as for computing and storage purposes, for email correspondence and marketing purposes).

Third parties, some of which are based overseas, which we share your personal information with include:

• Rocketspark, our hosting provider

• Mailchimp, for marketing automation and email marketing.

• Survey Monkey, or Typeform to send you surveys

• Google Analytics and Google Ad Manager, for targeted advertising

• Social Media Platforms (Facebook and Instagram), for targeted advertising

We do not authorise third parties to use or disclose your personal information except for the purpose of providing the service we request from them. All third parties, which we disclose your personal information to, are subject to obligations under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 to protect your information from unauthorised use or disclosure.

Third Party Cookies

We only use third party cookies / other technologies for marketing purposes, and to gather website analytics. These allow us to improve our website and to provide you with more targeted information where appropriate.

These include:

• Remarketing and emails: we use third party cookies – such as Google Analytics and Facebook cookies – to keep track of the content you’re interested in and remarket it to you when you leave our site (as a result, you may see content from us when you visit other websites).

• Impression reporting: we use web beacons to estimate the number of users that have viewed and clicked on our advertisements (as a result, we’re able to gauge the success of a campaign).

• Demographics and interest reporting: we use cookies and web beacons to get an overview of our readership broken down by age, gender and interests such as home appliances or technology (as a result, we can provide you with relevant information, services and features and also gauge the popularity of our content).

You can opt out of Google Analytics without affecting how you visit our site. For more information on opting out, please visit this page.

You can also ask your browser to delete or block third party cookies: simply search online for “cookies” + the name of your internet browser (for example, “Google Chrome”) for step-by-step instructions.

Links to other websites

From time to time, our website may provide links to other websites when we consider you may be interested in the content of those sites.

Before you disclose any personal information to another site, we advise you to check its terms and conditions, including its privacy and security policies.

Your rights

You have the right to request access to, correct, or withdraw any personal information we hold about you at any time. Please email homeautomationfordummies@gmail.com if you would like to enquire.

Please note, if you ask us to stop using your information, we may not be able to provide you with all our services, such as emailing you newsletters and updates.