Effective as of 4^th October 2008

Please read the following Terms and Conditions carefully before you agree to them, as they govern your access and use of CSAonline (www.csaonline.gov.au).

Definitions

CSA, us, we - means the Child Support Agency.

You, the customer - means the user of the (CSAonline) service, a customer of the Child Support Agency.

Your Agreement

Accessing, browsing and/or using CSAonline signifies your acceptance of these Terms and Conditions. Additionally, by accepting these Terms and Conditions you agree to receive CSA email updates.

We may modify these Terms and Conditions from time to time. We advise you to check the Terms and Conditions’ effective date each time you access CSAonline.

CSA email updates

Sometimes, CSA may use the email address you have provided for CSAonline to send you important updates regarding CSAonline, the CSA or the Child Support Scheme. We may also send you invitations to participate in email surveys, which will help us to improve our services to you.

How do I unsubscribe from CSA email updates?

Please Note: You will still receive CSAonline email notifications if you unsubscribe from CSA email updates. This is because CSAonline email notifications are sent to advise you that you have new information in your CSA account.

How do I confirm that emails are from the Child Support Agency?

To help protect your security, CSA will never request your CSAonline or other passwords, personal information or bank account details via an email message. If you receive an email requesting you to re-register to CSAonline or enter sensitive personal or banking details, forward it to CSAFraudTipOffs@csa.gov.au or notify the Australian Government Services Fraud tip-off line on 13 15 24 or report it online using our report fraud form.

CSAonline Interactive Products

CSA maintains this website to provide electronic and interactive self service for:

Occasionally, we may add or remove services from CSAonline. We may notify and/or offer you other CSA or CSAonline products and services by post or a CSA email update.

After you have enrolled you will receive most future CSA correspondence via CSAonline. We will email you when you have new mail to read (this is a CSAonline email notification). Contact the CSA on 131 272 if you do not want to receive your mail this way.

What is phishing?

Phishing refers to email-based fraud where internet thieves ‘fish’ for your personal details by using hoax emails claiming to be from a company or government agency.

Hoax emails are often generated overseas, and are sent in bulk. The email asks the recipient to provide sensitive information such as a username, password, Customer Support ID or bank account details by reply email or through a fake website, enabling thieves to gather the details for later fraudulent use.

How do I reduce the risk of being a victim of a phishing fraud?

You can minimise your chances of being a victim of phishing by:

• Retyping hyperlinks into your web browser instead of clicking on them in email messages.
• Treating all emails requesting personal log-on information such as username, password or customer ID with extreme caution.
     Authentic CSA and CSAonline emails will never request personal details or log-on information.
• Immediately deleting emails of unknown origins, no matter how innocent or provocative the subject headings sound.
• Changing your CSAonline password on a regular basis.
• Keeping your anti-virus programs and firewalls up-to-date and performing regular scans of your computer.

Availability of CSAonline

CSA makes all reasonable efforts to ensure CSAonline is available for use when required. CSA however, does not guarantee to provide continuous or uninterrupted access to CSAonline. If CSAonline is malfunctioning or if for any other reason you are unable to use the CSAonline service to undertake transactions, please call CSA on 131 272 (International customers call +61 131 272) for assistance or to arrange an alternate method to complete your transactions.

Using CSAonline does not change any of your obligations to provide information to the CSA. You are not excused from providing information when required if you cannot access CSAonline for any reason.

Information available through CSAonline concerning your child support may not always be completely up to date. In most cases the information should reflect transactions up to the close of business on the previous working day.

Your security

CSA complies with the Commonwealth of Australia Protective Security Manual and its security standards and makes all reasonable efforts to protect CSAonline from unauthorised access.

You should be aware that the World Wide Web is a public network and there is a potential risk that your transactions are being viewed, intercepted or modified by third parties or that files which the person downloads may contain computer viruses, disabling codes, worms or other devices or defects.

Your access

CSA will provide you with a Child Support Reference Number and password to access CSAonline. By using CSAonline you agree to:

• keep passwords and/or any supplied security device confidential
• change your password regularly and/or when prompted
• keep your unique Child Support Reference Number confidential and secure.

CSA will assume that any online transaction using your Child Support Reference Number and password was undertaken by you.

If you know or suspect that your Child Support Reference Number or your password has become known to someone else or is lost or stolen please call us immediately on 131272 (International customers call +61 131 272). We will provide you with a new Child Support Reference Number and/or password.

Where the CSA believes or detects that an unauthorised access to CSAonline has or may occur, we will (with or without prior notice to you):

• limit, restrict or deny access to CSAonline until the risk has been removed
• change your Child Support Reference Number and password and notify you of this change.

We recommend that you do not access CSAonline from computer terminals that are shared with other people (e.g. internet cafes, public computers) as it is difficult to ensure these computers are free from malicious and 'hacker' type programs that may trace or record your personal information.

CSA reserves the right to correct any Child Support Agency business record or information that has been affected by any instruction made by you or any transaction caused by use of CSAonline.

Links to other external websites

Any link to an external website is provided for your information and convenience only. CSA does not endorse, monitor or control such sites (or any associated organisation, product or service) and is not responsible for their content, or your access or use of them.

Your Privacy

CSA is required by law to collect certain information about you and your family for child support purposes. We understand that some of this information is sensitive and we place great emphasis on protecting your privacy.

CSA is bound by the Information Privacy Principles of the Privacy Act 1988. There are 11 Information Privacy Principles which regulate the treatment of personal information. They set out the standards for information collection, storage, security, correction, use, disclosure and access.

CSA is also subject to the secrecy provisions in our legislation. These restrict the communication of our customers’ personal information and specify when and to whom CSA can lawfully release information.

Who does CSA pass your information to?

We are required by law to pass on some of your information to the other parent, such as information we use to work out your assessment. This is so that they understand how the assessment has been calculated.

Under no circumstances are contact details disclosed to the other party of a child support case.

CSA may provide your information to other government agencies or collect and verify your personal information from a third party source. such as (but not limited to):

• Centrelink
• Australian Taxation Office
• The Social Security Appeals Tribunal
• The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
• Services Australia
• The Department of Veterans’ Affairs
• The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
• The Attorney-General’s Department
• A law enforcement agency
• Commonwealth investigation or auditing agencies, such as the Ombudsman, the Privacy Commissioner or the Australian National Audit Office
• Road Traffic Authority
• Financial Institutions
• Employers

More information about why CSA shares information

For employer customers the organisational Tax File Number (TFN) will be checked in Australian Tax Office (ATO) systems, to confirm its identity.

CSA may provide your contact details to people contracted by us to deliver services to separated parents, or to carry out research to help improve our services. You are not obliged to participate in any programs or research.

Find out more For more information about the Privacy Act and privacy generally, see the Privacy Commissioner’s website at: www.privacy.gov.au.

For more information about our collection, use and disclosure of information, see chapter 6.3 of The Guide in the Legal section of CSA’s website at www.csa.gov.au.

IT Security

When you visit CSAonline the following information will be recorded by CSA (or its IT service providers) for statistical purposes:

• your IP address
• the top level domain name (for example, .com, .gov, .au)
• the date and time of your visit to the site
• the pages accessed and documents downloaded
• the previous site visited and
• the type of browser that you use.

We do not use cookies in any area of the site that is accessible to the public.

No attempt will be made by the CSA to identify people by their browsing activities except where we are investigating offences committed against the CSA, or required to do so due to other legal circumstances.

Disclaimer

While the Child Support Agency has used all reasonable endeavours to ensure the information on this website is as accurate as possible, it gives no warranty or guarantees that the material, information or publication made accessible is accurate, complete, current, or fit for any use whatsoever. No reliance should be made by a user of the material, information or publication accessed via this website.

If relying on the material in CSAonline, users should independently verify its relevance for their purposes, and should obtain any appropriate professional advice.

CSA reserves the right to vary the material, information or publications in the CSAonline website without notice.

Limitation of Liability

CSA, its employees and agents accept no liability or responsibility for any loss or damage whatsoever suffered as a result of direct or indirect access, use or application of any material, publication or information made accessible via its website or in connection with any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, delay in operation or transmission, computer virus, disabling codes, worms or other devices or defects, line system failure, loss of data or loss of use related to the website.

Copyright

© Commonwealth of Australia 2008

This service is protected by copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 all other rights are reserved. Requests for further authorisation should be directed to the Attorney-Generals Department, Commonwealth Copyright Administration at www.ag.gov.au/cca

Linked Information

How do I unsubscribe from CSA email updates?

To unsubscribe follow the instructions in the footer of email updates or send an email to Webmaster@csa.gov.au with ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject heading.

Information Exchange

For parent customers the purposes are:

•  data matching in the administration of Child Support
•  gathering of information, such as income and assets when determining a child support assessment or collecting Child Support debts
• disclosure of personal information to the Federal Police or a mental health crisis unit in response to a threat
• disclosure of information on a ‘needs to know basis’ to international agencies related to the administration and collection of Australian child support
• disclosure of Tax File Numbers (TFNs) would only occur in limited circumstances involving data exchange with other Government agencies such as Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office.
  TFNs are used to verify:
  • a customer’s identity and ensure that we have the correct individual as a party to a child support case, and
  • to verify incomes for assessments.

Cookies and CSAonline

The Cookies that CSAonline uses are for security purposes only - to protect you and CSA. They are not invasive and do not act in a malicious way. They contain securely encrypted details that allow CSA to ensure you are authorised to use the CSAonline services. The cookies enhance the security of CSAonline and the protection of your information.

What are cookies?

There are two types of cookies:

1. Persistent cookies - Those that are saved to a user’s hard disk and may remain there for long periods. These are used by numerous websites and provide customisation of the site each time the user visits e.g. when you go to a website several days after first viewing it; it remembers who you are or what you previously viewed.
2.  Session cookies - those that are only stored in memory for a single customer session. When the browser closes or the user logs off they are destroyed and NEVER saved to disk.

CSAonline only uses the second type of cookies, session cookies. They disappear from your computer system when you log-out of CSAonline and do not collect or store any information about you.

This is similar to many online banking systems and other government agencies. They are the most secure approach, with extra security added by strong encryption.

Are the cookies CSA uses malicious?

You may have installed monitoring software that can detect cookies. As the monitoring software attempts to examine the contents of the cookie, it can’t as the cookie is encrypted. The software may then lead you to believe the cookies are malicious for this reason.

You can be assured that CSAonline cookies are not invasive. Your monitoring software helpline should be able to confirm this.