Privacy

Cirrus Digital is a web design business based in Melbourne, run by Tim Hewitt as a sole trader. We handle personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles.

Questions about this policy go to tim@cirrusdigital.com.au.

We collect personal information in these ways:

• When you visit this site: the pages you view, your browser and device, an approximate location, and your IP address. Our host keeps short-term server logs, and Google Analytics records visits using cookies (see section 7).
• When you book a call: your name, email address and anything you write in the booking form.
• When you ask for a free audit: your website, name, email address, what prompted the request if you pick one, and anything you write in the message. We email you a link to confirm the request. After you confirm, our server checks whether the email address belongs to the website (the same domain, or published on the site's home or contact page). The request then comes to us by email and goes into Airtable.
• When you email us: your message and contact details.
• When something on this site breaks: an error report, so we can fix it. It says which page failed, what went wrong in the site's code, and the type of browser and device. It doesn't include anything you typed, passwords, your cookies, your IP address or location, or anything added to the end of the page's web address.
• When we research clinics: information clinics publish themselves, such as their website, business listing and published contact details. We use it to audit the clinic's website, write a report on it, and contact the clinic about our work.
• When someone opens a clinic's audit report with its password: the date and time, and how many times the password has been entered for that report. It isn't linked to a person, and we don't record an IP address with it.
• When you become a client: your contact details, the content and files you send us, and billing details.

Our payment provider, Stripe, holds the practice’s billing details: its legal name, ABN, the email address invoices go to, and its card and bank details, which we never see. The invoices stay in Stripe too. On our side we keep the practice’s Stripe customer ID and the status, price and renewal date of its plan, and our client list in Airtable shows the same plan status and renewal date with when it last paid and how much it has paid in total.

To run a client’s site and make its monthly report, we also keep the IDs that connect us to the practice’s own accounts: its Vercel project, Google Search Console property, Google Business Profile location and Sanity Studio address, with when each was last checked. If we connect to the practice’s booking system, we keep its API key encrypted in our database, and use it only to count bookings, never to read patient details.

• To reply to you, run calls, and prepare proposals and reports.
• To build, host and maintain client websites.
• To send invoices and collect payment.
• To understand how people use this site, so we can improve it.
• To keep the site and clinics' report pages secure.

We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t use it for advertising.

When we build or look after a clinic’s website, enquiries and bookings made by that clinic’s patients belong to the clinic. The clinic’s own privacy policy covers them. We access that information only when the work needs it, and we don’t use it for anything else.

If a clinic’s site has our AI Chatbot, its AI model runs on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI in Sydney. Conversations are kept for up to 90 days so the practice’s monthly report can show what patients ask about, then deleted. Before we store them, phone numbers, email addresses and Medicare numbers are replaced by placeholders. The same model writes that part of the report once a month. It has no names or contact details.

The practice has no access to stored conversations. If you ask for yours within the 90 days, we’ll export it for you. The practice switches keeping conversations on or off in its own site settings. With it off, we keep only counts, such as how many questions were about each topic.

When you ask the AI Chatbot to have someone contact you, the conversation and your details are emailed to the practice, at the address it gives us.

The sites we build for clinics also send us counts for each clinic’s monthly website report: how many of each form were sent, how many form submissions and AI Chatbot messages the site’s security checks blocked, and how quickly pages loaded on visitors’ devices (the page, phone or computer, and the timings). None of it includes anything a patient typed, and none of it identifies anyone. We keep these as daily totals for 400 days and use them only for that clinic’s report.

For the same report we read the site’s visitor counts from Vercel Web Analytics (visitors, pages viewed, where visits came from, and taps on the phone number, email address and Book button), its search figures from Google Search Console, and from Sentry how many new errors the site had and how many were fixed. We keep each month’s figures with the report, so later reports can compare against them. The same model writes a first draft of the report’s covering letter from these figures.

These service providers handle information for us:

• Vercel: website hosting and visitor counts for clients' sites (Vercel Web Analytics).
• Neon: our database, hosted in Sydney.
• Airtable: our list of clinics and our sales records: what clinics publish about themselves (name, address, phone, website and published email addresses), our audit results, notes and tasks, call bookings (name, email address and answers), free audit requests, and clients' plan status and payments.
• Google: email (Google Workspace); public business listing data; Search Console figures for clients' sites; the AI model behind our AI Chatbot and the monthly report's draft letter (Vertex AI, in Sydney); and visitor statistics for this site (Google Analytics).
• Cal.com: call bookings.
• Stripe: invoicing, payments and direct debit.
• Resend: the AI Chatbot's emails to clinics when a patient asks for a person, and the link that confirms a free audit request.
• Cloudflare (Turnstile): a check on our free audit form that the sender is a person. It sees your IP address and details of your browser.
• Arcjet: security checks on our free audit form, which block spam, automated requests and email addresses that can't receive mail. It sees your IP address, your browser's request headers and the email address you give, and nothing else you type.
• DeepSeek: an AI model. We send it our measurements of a clinic's website to help write the audit report.
• Clerk: sign-in for our own staff pages. It holds no client information.
• Sentry: error reports from this site and from clients' sites, kept for up to 90 days.
• Anthropic: Claude, an AI model, reads Sentry's error reports and explains each error alert to us. The explanation never holds anything about a patient.
• Telegram: alerts to our phone when a client's site goes down, fails to update or reports a new error, and Claude's explanation of each error alert. An alert names the site and the page or project, with a link to the details, and never holds anything about a patient.
• Our accountant and accounting software, for tax records.

We also disclose information when the law requires it.

Our database and the servers that run this site are in Sydney. Pages are served from Vercel’s global network. Some of the providers above store data overseas, mainly in the United States. That includes Airtable. DeepSeek processes what we send it in China. Google Analytics data is held by Google, mostly in the United States, and Sentry keeps error reports there too. Anthropic reads those error reports in the United States. Clerk keeps staff sign-ins in the United States. Stripe, Cal.com, Resend and Telegram may also store data outside Australia. Cloudflare and Arcjet may make their checks on our audit form outside Australia.

We use Google Analytics on this site’s public pages, never on clinics’ report pages or our staff pages. It sets cookies to count visits and see which pages are used. It doesn’t store IP addresses, and we’ve set it to keep data for 14 months and to remove email addresses from anything it records. You can block it with your browser settings or with Google’s opt-out add-on.

A clinic’s report page sets one cookie of ours, which keeps you signed in to it for up to 90 days.

The booking calendar on our home page and on clinics’ report pages comes from Cal.com. It loads when you scroll near it, and Cal.com may set its own cookies when it does.

Our staff pages use Clerk for sign-in, which sets cookies to keep staff signed in.

Access to client information is limited to us and protected by passwords, encryption in transit and at rest, and our providers’ security controls.

We keep financial records for five years, as tax law requires, and AI Chatbot conversations for up to 90 days. Form counts, counts of blocked submissions and messages, and page speed measurements from clinic sites are kept as daily totals for 400 days. Information about clinics from our research and outreach, and free audit requests, stay while they’re useful for our work, and we delete them if you ask. Client information stays while we need it for the work. After that we delete it or remove anything that identifies you.

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to stop contacting you. Email tim@cirrusdigital.com.au and we’ll respond within 30 days.

If you’re unhappy with how we handled a privacy concern, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

We update this policy when the way we handle information changes.