Privacy policy

Your Personal Information is very important and we recognise that you have a right to control who has access to this. We know that providing Personal Information is an act of trust and we take that seriously. This Privacy Policy tells you what information we (the “HABITs Research Group”) collect and how we secure your Personal Information and protect your privacy.

The HABITs Research Group and all staff, volunteers and students who operate any of the sites or services listed below are committed to making sure your information is kept private and that we look after this information in a way that complies with the Privacy Act 1993 and any other applicable privacy legislation.

Quest – Te Whitianga (iOS and Android application);
Quest – Te Huanui (iOS and Android application);
Headstrong (iOS and Android application);
Tune In (iOS and Android application);
Play Kindly (iOS and Android application);
Super Kids (web application);
Kākano (web application);
My Mood App (iOS and Android application);

For more information about your rights on our website and Tirohia, please read our general Terms of Use.Your use of Tirohia indicates is your confirmation that you accept this Privacy Policy and consent to the collection and use by us of your Personal Information according to the terms of this policy.
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In these Terms of Use:‘website’ means https://tirohia.co.nz , and any successor website;
‘web portal’ means https://portal.tirohia.co.nz, and any successor web portal page;
‘associated tools’ mean any of the e-screening assessments, apps, chatbots, and any other digital tools developed by us and available to use on our web portal;‍
‘research study’ means a research study that makes use of the web portal and/or associated tools;
‘we’, ‘our’, and ‘us’ means the HABITs Research Group, based at the University of Auckland;
‘personal information’ has the meaning given in the Privacy Act 1993 (or replacement legislation) but generally means information about an identifiable individual; and 'including’ means including without limitation.

Tirohia offers a personalised experience through the use of the Tirohia web portal. To use this portal, you register your details with us and log in each time you visit (registration is not necessary to access our website and some of the information). Using Tirohia allows you to track how you are doing and to choose tools to help you deal with a range of emotional, lifestyle and parenting issues.

If you are just browsing our web site (“tirohia.co.nz”):
‍Our servers will automatically record the same basic information that most web sites collect. That includes the time of your visit and its duration, the pages you have visited on our website, the search terms you have used on the Tirohia site, and various log information including browser type, cookies to identify your browser or IP address and bug reports. This information helps us understand which parts of our site are visited most and helps us to make sure that the information on our web site is relevant and useful. This information does not identify the individual user.

‍If you register an account on Tirohia:
‍When you first register on Tirohia, you will need to provide some Personal Information including your name, email address, age, gender, ethnicity and contact details. Additionally, you may choose to receive SMS notifications. To do so, you will need to provide your mobile number. When we collect Personal Information from you, we expect you will only provide information that is accurate, complete and up to date. We will only collect Personal Information that you agree to provide to us. Where it is practical and safe to do so, you may have the option of interacting with Tirohia anonymously or by using a Username only.

‍If you consent to take part in a research study on Tirohia:
‍We may invite you to take part in one of our research studies. Once you have registered, you will be given clear information about the study and asked to provide informed consent (i.e. agree to take part). Each study will have procedures that will be carefully explained during the consent process. After consent, we may collect the following types of information:You will be asked to complete some online forms (“CHECK IT” and “CHECK IN”). The information collected in these forms may include your personal subjective assessment of your mental health, wellbeing, or parenting issues. Occasionally, we collect Personal Information that might be considered sensitive. This includes health information (i.e. information or an opinion about your perceived level of anxiety and/or depression). We only collect sensitive information in a very limited number of situations. Only the researchers from the study will see your information. From time to time, the researchers may share this information with clinical services if they are worried about your safety. This will be clearly explained in the study consent process.You may be asked to download and use one of our apps or tools for evaluation. These are often interactive and offer a number of different pieces of information or skills in order to try and help you deal with your mental health and lifestyle, or to support you as a parent. These apps collect general information on how you use them, such as the time of use, how long you used them for and how much of the app you completed. This information is collected by the app and sent to our secure Tirohia platform when your phone is connected to Wi-Fi.

‍If you independently use Tirohia to help you deal with your health and wellbeing, or to support parenting:

If you complete any of our health checks on Tirohia.
‍Once you have registered, you can independently choose to answer some questions (“CHECK IT”) in order to customise the online tools, such as apps, that are recommended to you. The information collected in these forms may include your personal subjective assessment of your mental health. Occasionally, we collect Personal Information that might be considered sensitive. This includes health information (i.e. information or an opinion about your mental health or physical health, wishes about health services or health services provided to them). We only collect sensitive information in a very limited number of situations.

‍If you choose to download and use any of our Tirohia apps or tools:
‍You may have an option to choose from a range of apps and tools that we have developed and tested. These are often interactive and collect a number of different pieces of information in order to try and help you deal with your mental health and lifestyle, or to support you as a parent. These apps collect general information on how you use them, such as the time of use, how long you used them for and how much of the app you completed. This information is collected and stored on the Tirohia platform.You may also choose to track aspects of your mental health and lifestyle, including how often you use any of our apps or tools. We record your subjective ratings of these aspects in order to present this information back to you allowing you to determine whether there are trends or patterns in this data.

‍If you complete any of the following:
‍Newsletter service: Whether you have a Tirohia account or not, you can sign-up to receive newsletters. To do so, you will need to provide your email address. You can unsubscribe from the mailing list at any time.

Surveys: You may choose to take part in a survey. To do so, you may need to provide your age, gender, and email address.

We use the information: to administer your account, for checking your user identity, processing your results and delivering the results to you ; to enforce or apply our terms of use; to protect our rights, property or safety and the integrity of the website.

We may also combine your information with information from other users (in a form that hides your identity) to: monitor if Tirohia, or any of the individual tools we develop, is effective
generate an overall view of who uses the website, platform and tools; conduct research and analyse and report on trends and demographics to help us improve our tools - including publication of the results of any research studies using Tirohia; carry out our internal business operations, including fulfilling our legal requirements, quality assurance and management; collect statistics and data on website usage to enable us to develop, market, or improve our website and related offerings.

The only person who can access your information is the platform administrator(s). The database is only accessible via a password protected account on our secure network.

If we need to share information about you between our web portal and apps, for example to confirm your identity when you want to log in to one of our apps, the information is encrypted in transport using industry- standard practices. This might include your username and email address. Encrypted means a 'secret code' is used to send and receive this information so that your identity is protected.

If we report on the website and Tirohia or any of our tools, we will report in a way that does not reveal your user identity unless we obtain your written approval. This includes reports to our funders.

We will hold all Personal Information collected through the website according to the requirements set out in the Privacy Act 1993 or other applicable legislation.

We will use Personal Information only for the purposes for which it is collected or other purposes permitted by law. We will keep Personal Information only for as long as needed to fulfil the purposes for which it is collected, or we legally have to or we have to under the terms of our contract.

We will not release Personal Information about you to any third party except:

where the law requires or permits us to do so
in any other circumstances where you have authorised us to do so (for example, as described in 4 C. i, the researchers may share personal information with clinical services if they are worried about your safety. This would only happen in a research study after you have provided consent for this to happen)
to report on the use of Tirohia (for example, as described in section 5, we may combine Personal Information about you with information from others in a way that hides your identity in order to publish the results of a research study)
where you have consented to participate in a research study hosted by a third party (this information will be clearly explained in the study consent process)
where we need to share limited personal details with third parties in order to provide a koha (for example, we may share your email address within a secure portal hosted by JB Hi-Fi Group (NZ) Limited so that we can send you an e-voucher to thank you for your time during a research study)
where we are required to share data with our IT service providers to maintain good functioning of the Tirohia platform (for example, we may share server logs, as described in section 7, with the University IT staff to resolve a suspected attempt to hack the system)

We will not sell or rent out your Personal Information to third parties under any circumstances.

The Tirohia website and portal uses cookies to improve the quality of its service. Cookies are pieces of information that are transferred to your computer’s hard disk when you open the Tirohia web pages. Cookies by themselves do not collect any Personal Information but they do identify your browser.

The Tirohia Site uses ‘session’ cookies. These are destroyed when you logout or close your browser or exit the Site in any other way. You must allow this cookie in your browser in order to retain your login throughout your visit.

When you use the Tirohia Sites, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser. We use this information to evaluate our website performance and continually improve our services for you.

Most web browsers are set up to accept cookies, and while you can set your browser to not accept cookies, the Tirohia Sites may not function properly if you do this.

The HABITs Research Group will do what we can to ensure that information about you is kept safe, cannot be changed, used, shared, lost or got hold of by anyone without appropriate authorisation.

The Tirohia platform maintains user data on a secure sub-net of the University of Auckland’s network, with password authentication matching an authorised University user ID required for access to the sub-net and a further password required for access to the database itself. Data is routinely backed-up to the University's secure offsite facility by IT Services. A small subset of the user data is kept with the Firebase Authentication service (https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/), a widely used Google technology built on industry standards, in a limited-access project-specific account. This data includes an email address, but does not include any other identifiers (e.g. name), information you share with us (e.g. PHQ-A results or information about your wellbeing) or details related to system usage (e.g. information on how often you use an app). This system is also able to check if the password you enter matches the password you have created on the web portal, but does not have access to, or store, your actual password. All data exchanged between the Tirohia platform and the user is done in a secure session (i.e. https).

From time to time, study data will be extracted from the platform and stored as an encrypted database extract (password protected). This extract will contain potentially identifiable data (name, age, ethnicity), but will be separated into two databases. Study data is labelled using study ID only and a separate master list connects study ID with participant names. Data will be destroyed after 10 years or according to standard research and ethical practice for research involving study participants under 16 years of age.

By keeping your Personal Information secure and being aware of security, you can play an important part in protecting your Personal Information. You are responsible for maintaining the security and confidentiality of your username and password. If you are using a shared device or computer, always logoff from Tirohia after completing your session, and do not let other people use your Tirohia account.Please notify us immediately if there is any unauthorised use of your account by any other Internet user or any other breach of security.

The Tirohia website and web portal contain non-advertising links to a variety of third-party sites, apps and other digital tools. We provide these links to make your experience of the sites better. We have no control of either the content or privacy policies of such sites. You should not consider that we approve of the content on such sites or of the organisations that provide them.

You can ask to find out what we know about you, just ask us and we will usually be able to give you a copy. If you think that what we may know about you is not up to date or is wrong, you can ask us to fix it. We will update the information where appropriate to do so, or make a note that you have asked for the information to be updated.You can ask us to correct, change or delete any Personal Information that we hold about you by contacting us. We will ask you to provide us with information so that we can be confident of your identity.

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time, with or without notice to you. All such changes come into effect when we update the Privacy Policy page on the website.  You agree to check the Privacy Policy when you access the website, and to be bound by the Privacy Policy that is in effect at the time that you access the website. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 3 rd May, 2019.

If you have any ideas, worries or questions about Tirohia Privacy Policy, or would like to tell us how we are doing, please contact us