Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Melbourne SEO Beers is an informal, non-commercial meetup for people who work in search, run by Jason Mun and Leigh Hanney. This policy covers the website at seobeers.com.au and the mailing list run from it.

2. What we collect, and why

Newsletter signup

If you subscribe, we collect your email address and, if you choose to give it, your first name. We use these solely to email you about upcoming Melbourne SEO Beers events. We do not use them for anything else, and we don't email you about anything else.

Signup uses double opt-in: after you submit the form you'll get an email asking you to confirm. If you don't click it, you are not added to the list. This means we hold a record of your consent, and it means nobody can sign you up using your address without your say-so.

Contact form

If you contact us, we collect your name, email address, and whatever you write in the message. We use these to read and reply to your message. Please don't send us sensitive personal information through this form — it isn't the right channel for it.

Server logs

Like any website, our hosting produces automatic technical logs covering things like IP address, browser type, and which pages were requested. We also briefly hold IP addresses in memory to rate-limit the forms and stop them being abused by bots. We don't use any of this to build a profile of you, and we don't try to identify individuals from it.

3. What we don't do

Worth being explicit, since most sites do all of these:

• No cookies. This site sets none. That's why there's no annoying consent banner.
• No analytics. No Google Analytics, no Vercel Analytics, no heatmaps, no session recording.
• No advertising or tracking pixels. No Meta pixel, no LinkedIn Insight Tag, no remarketing of any kind.
• No third-party fonts or scripts. Fonts are served from our own domain, so your browser doesn't call out to Google or anyone else when you visit.
• No selling or renting your data. Ever. There is no version of this meetup where that happens.

4. Who else touches your information

We use a small number of third-party services to actually run the site. Each only receives what it needs to do its job:

• MailerLite — stores the mailing list and sends the newsletter. Receives your email address and first name. Their privacy policy.
• Resend — delivers contact form submissions to our inboxes. Receives your name, email and message. Their privacy policy.
• Vercel — hosts the website and produces the server logs described above. Their privacy policy.

Overseas disclosure

These providers operate outside Australia, and your information may be stored or processed overseas — including in the United States and the European Union. By using the forms on this site you accept that your information may be handled outside Australia, where privacy laws differ from Australian law. We chose established providers with published privacy commitments, but we can't control their operations.

5. How long we keep it

Newsletter: until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove you. If the meetup winds up permanently, we'll delete the list.

Contact form messages: these live in our email as long as an ordinary email does. Ask us to delete a message and we will.

Server logs: retained by our host on their own schedule. Rate-limiting data is held in memory only and disappears within minutes.

6. Keeping it secure

The site is served over HTTPS. Access to the mailing list and our email is protected by strong, unique passwords and multi-factor authentication. API credentials are stored as encrypted environment variables, never in the website's source code.

That said, no system is perfectly secure, and we're a meetup rather than a bank. Please bear that in mind when deciding what to send us.

7. Getting at, fixing, or deleting your information

You can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you;
• correct anything that's wrong; or
• delete it entirely.

Use the contact form and we'll sort it out. There's no charge, and we'll aim to respond within 30 days. For the newsletter you can also just hit the unsubscribe link in any email — it works, and it's instant.

8. Complaints

If you think we've mishandled your personal information, please tell us first via the contact form so we can try to put it right.

If you're not satisfied with how we've handled it, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

9. Email and the Spam Act

Our newsletter follows the Spam Act 2003 (Cth): we only email people who have confirmed their subscription, every email identifies who it's from, and every email carries a working unsubscribe link that we action promptly.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information, we'll update this page and change the "last updated" date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll say so in the newsletter rather than quietly editing this page.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy, or about your information, go through the contact form. It reaches both organisers.