Privacy policy

Testing and clinical. Name, date of birth, identification, declared medication, the hair sample itself and the results of its analysis. Where you attach documents to an enquiry or order — court orders, prior test results, reports — we collect those too.

Test results and the health details you give us are sensitive information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). We collect them only with your consent, and use them strictly as set out on the consent form you sign at collection.

Enquiries and bookings. Name, email, phone, the service you are asking about and anything you choose to write in the message field or the chat window.

Website. Pages visited, approximate location, device and browser, and how you arrived. Collected through the analytics and advertising tools described below, which run unless you have opted out.

You can ask a general question by phone on (03) 9380 5434 without giving your name.

Testing itself is different. A hair test is only worth anything if the sample can be tied to a named person through a documented chain of custody — that is the whole basis on which a court accepts it — so we cannot perform a collection anonymously or under a pseudonym.

• To provide testing, reporting and forensic interpretation.
• To process payments and communicate with you about your test or enquiry.
• To meet our record-keeping and legal obligations.
• To measure how the website performs, and — unless you have opted out — how effective our advertising is.

We use your information for the purpose you gave it to us for, and for directly related purposes you would reasonably expect. We do not sell it.

Your test results are released to you, and to nobody else without your explicit written consent — unless a court order, subpoena or law compels disclosure. Where you have instructed us to send a report to a solicitor, a court or an employer, that instruction is the consent.

Running the clinic and the website also involves service providers who handle information on our behalf. They may use it only to perform their role for us:

• The laboratory — an independent NATA-accredited laboratory in Australia, which performs the analysis.
• Cloudflare — hosts this website. Documents you attach pass through it and are not stored here.
• Resend — delivers our email, including any documents attached to your enquiry or order.
• Stripe — processes online payments. Card details are entered directly with Stripe and we never receive them.
• Visitbase — our practice management system, which holds appointment and client records.
• GHL — the chat window on this site, and the system we use to respond to online reviews.
• Google — website analytics and advertising measurement, unless you have opted out.
• Meta — advertising measurement, unless you have opted out.

We do not send your email address, phone number or any clinical detail to Google or Meta.

Some of those providers, and their own subcontractors, store or process information outside Australia — principally in the United States, and in the case of website hosting, in whichever country the nearest server sits.

Before disclosing personal information to an overseas recipient we take reasonable steps to ensure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, as APP 8 requires.

If you would prefer your documents did not leave Australia, do not upload them through this website — call us on (03) 9380 5434 and we will arrange another way to receive them.

Cookies that are needed to make the site work — keeping your cart, remembering where you are in a booking — are always on. They do not track you across other websites.

We also use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used, and Google Ads to measure which ads lead to enquiries and bookings. These run by default. They tell us that a visit or a booking happened and roughly where it came from; they are not given your name, your contact details, the substances you ask about, or anything you type into a form.

You can turn them off. Any of these works, and none of them affects your test, your booking or the price you pay:

• Switch on "Do Not Track" or Global Privacy Control in your browser settings — this site checks for both and stops tracking when it sees them.
• Install Google's official opt-out add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
• Block or clear cookies for this site in your browser settings.
• Ask us — email or call, and we will confirm in writing that we have excluded you.

If you would rather browse without any of this, the most private option is simply to call us on (03) 9380 5434 instead of using the website.

• Test records and results — retained for the period required of health records in Victoria, which is at least 7 years from your last attendance, and until age 25 for a person tested as a child. We may hold them longer where a matter is on foot or a law requires it.
• Documents you attach — not held by the website at all. Your browser sends them with the message and they arrive in the clinic's inbox, where they are kept with the rest of your file for the periods above.
• Enquiries that do not become bookings — kept while we may still be of use to you, then deleted.

When information is no longer needed and we are not required to keep it, we destroy it or de-identify it.

Information is held on access-controlled systems, encrypted in transit and at rest, and available only to staff who need it to do their job. Paper records are held securely at the clinic.

No system is perfectly secure. If a data breach occurs that is likely to cause you serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is wrong. Email admin@hairtestinganalysis.com.au or call (03) 9380 5434.

We will respond within 30 days. We may need to verify your identity first. Access can be refused in the limited circumstances the Privacy Act allows — for example where giving it would affect another person's privacy — and if we refuse, we will tell you why in writing and how to challenge it.

Correcting a record does not mean altering a test result. Where a result is disputed, the mechanism is re-testing or forensic interpretation, not amendment of the laboratory's record.

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, tell us first: email admin@hairtestinganalysis.com.au or call (03) 9380 5434. We will acknowledge your complaint within 5 business days and give you a written answer within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner — oaic.gov.au, or 1300 363 992. In Victoria, complaints about health records can also go to the Health Complaints Commissioner at hcc.vic.gov.au.

We may update this policy. The date it was last changed is shown at the top of this page, and the current version always applies to information we hold from that date.

If we make a change that materially affects how we handle information we already hold about you, we will take reasonable steps to tell you rather than relying on this page alone.