Privacy and content policy
Last updated: 10 July 2026
1. About Us
This Privacy and Content Policy applies to the website zhouand.com, including any version of the website accessed through www.zhouand.com or another web address that redirects to it. The Website is a family-maintained memorial, historical and literary archive concerning Samiuddin Zhouand, his writings, associated literature and relevant family history. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean member[s] of the Zhouand family operating or maintaining the Website. We are based in, Australia. Our postal address is:
Zhouand – Privacy and Content Policy
PO Box 41
Berowra Heights NSW 2082
Australia
Our privacy email address is zhouand@zhouand.com.
2. Purpose and Application of This Policy
This Privacy Policy explains the kinds of personal information we may collect and hold, how we collect, use, store and disclose that information, how you may request access to or correction of your personal information, how you may request that material be reviewed, corrected or removed, how you may make a privacy complaint, and the circumstances in which information may be processed outside Australia.
We are committed to handling personal information in accordance with applicable Australian privacy laws, including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles, where those laws apply to us.
Where those laws do not formally apply, we will endeavour to follow the privacy practices set out in this policy as a matter of responsible website administration.
3. What Is Personal Information?
Personal information generally means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether or not the information or opinion is true and whether or not it is recorded in material form. In most cases, information solely about a deceased person is not personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). However, information concerning a deceased person may also reveal personal information about living family members or other identifiable living individuals. We will therefore endeavour to handle historical and family information respectfully and responsibly.
4. Personal Information We May Collect or Hold
Depending on how you interact with the Website, we may collect or hold contact and correspondence information, website and technical information, archival and biographical information, and, in limited circumstances, sensitive information. Contact and correspondence information may include your name, email address, postal address, information contained in an email, letter or other enquiry, attachments or documents that you send to us, details of a correction, attribution, privacy or removal request, and evidence reasonably required to establish your identity, authority or rights in relation to a request.
Our website host, security provider or server may automatically record technical information such as your internet protocol address, browser and device type, operating system, requested pages and files, referring webpage, date and time of access, cookie or session identifiers, error records, and information used to detect malicious activity, spam or attempted unauthorised access.
Some technical information may constitute personal information where it identifies, or can reasonably be linked to, an individual. The Website may hold or publish historical and archival material including names and biographical details, photographs and captions, family relationships, literary works, essays, journals, correspondence and extracts, professional, educational or historical information, source, citation and attribution details, information contained in public records or published sources, and material contributed by family members, authors, researchers or other authorised contributors.
Some historical or family material may contain sensitive information about a living individual, including information relating to health, disability, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or other personal circumstances. We will seek to collect, use or publish sensitive information about a living individual only where it is reasonably necessary and lawful, and where appropriate consent, authority or another lawful basis exists. Please do not send us sensitive information about another living person unless you are authorised to do so and the information is genuinely relevant to the Website’s archival purpose.
5. How We Collect Information
We may collect information directly from you when you contact us or provide material, automatically through server logs, security systems and essential website technologies, from members of the Zhouand family and other contributors, from books, journals, newspapers, archives, libraries and public records, from official or publicly accessible sources, from authors, publishers, researchers and rights holders, and from other sources where collection is lawful and reasonably connected with the historical or archival purposes of the Website.
Where the Australian Privacy Principles apply and we collect personal information about a living individual from someone else, we will take reasonable steps to notify that individual, or ensure that the individual is aware of the relevant collection circumstances, where required and reasonably practicable. A general Privacy Policy may not always replace a specific collection or publication notice where one is required.
6. Why We Collect, Hold and Use Information
We may collect, hold and use information to operate, administer, maintain and secure the Website, preserve, organise and present historical, literary and family materials, identify authors, sources, contributors and copyright owners, verify facts, citations, titles, dates and attributions, communicate with family members, authors, researchers, contributors and rights holders, respond to enquiries, complaints and requests, assess requests to correct, restrict or remove material, investigate suspected misuse, spam, security incidents or unauthorised access, maintain records of permissions, licences, disputes and resolution steps, comply with legal obligations, court orders or lawful government requests, obtain legal, technical or professional advice, and establish, exercise or defend legal rights.
We do not sell personal information. We do not currently use personal information for targeted advertising or commercial direct marketing. If this changes, we will update this policy and comply with applicable consent, sender identification and unsubscribe requirements. We do not use personal information to make automated decisions that could reasonably be expected to significantly affect an individual’s rights or interests.
7. Archival Material and Publication
Material accepted for inclusion on the Website may become publicly accessible in Australia and overseas. Search engines, archival services and other visitors may index, download, quote or retain publicly available material in ways that are outside our direct control. Before providing material concerning another living person, you should ensure that you have authority to provide it, that the material is accurate to the best of your knowledge, that its submission and proposed publication do not improperly interfere with another person’s privacy, and that any necessary copyright or other permissions have been obtained.
We may contact contributors, subjects, authors or rights holders to verify information, identity, ownership, consent or authority. Where appropriate, we may edit, redact, anonymise, delay, decline, restrict or remove material. When considering whether material should be published, corrected, restricted or removed, we may take into account the reliability and origin of the material, whether the person concerned is living or deceased, the sensitivity of the information, any consent or authority provided, the wishes and interests of affected living individuals, the historical and archival value of the material, whether the information is already publicly available, applicable legal requirements, third-party rights, and the feasibility of removing copies that have already been indexed, downloaded or retained elsewhere. The fact that information is publicly available does not necessarily mean that it is appropriate to republish it without considering privacy, accuracy, copyright and the interests of affected living people.
8. Anonymity and Pseudonyms
You may generally browse the Website without identifying yourself. Where practicable, you may make a general enquiry using a pseudonym. However, we may need your real identity or evidence of your authority where you ask us to disclose personal information, correct or remove material, determine ownership or copyright, act on behalf of another person, or resolve a formal complaint or legal issue.
9. Cookies, Server Logs and Similar Technologies
The Website and its service providers may use essential cookies or similar technologies for website operation, administrator authentication, security, fraud or misuse prevention, session management, and remembering necessary website preferences.Our hosting or security providers may also maintain standard access, error and security logs. We do not knowingly use advertising cookies or cross-site behavioural advertising technologies. You may configure your browser to reject or delete cookies. Blocking essential cookies may affect some administrative or functional parts of the Website.
The Website may also contain embedded videos, images, documents, maps or other material supplied by third-party websites. When you interact with embedded content, the third-party provider may receive your internet protocol address, use cookies, collect information about your interaction or monitor your activity as though you had visited that provider’s website directly. The third party’s own privacy policy will apply to its collection and use of information.
10. Comments, Visitor Accounts and Material Submitted by Email
The Website may allow visitors to submit public comments on certain pages or articles. When a visitor leaves a public comment, we may collect the information entered in the comment form, together with the visitor’s internet protocol address and browser user-agent information, for comment administration, website security, fraud prevention and spam detection. If Gravatar is enabled, an anonymised value generated from the commenter’s email address may be supplied to the Gravatar service to determine whether the commenter has an associated profile image. After a comment is approved, the comment, display name and any associated public profile image may be visible to the public.
A commenter may be offered an optional cookie that remembers their name, email address or website for future comments. This cookie is provided for the commenter’s convenience and may be removed through the commenter’s browser settings.Comments and associated moderation information and technical metadata may be retained for as long as the comment remains published and for any additional period reasonably required for moderation, website administration, security, spam prevention, dispute resolution, recordkeeping or compliance with legal obligations.
Comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. Where such a service is operated outside Australia, personal information may be transmitted to and processed in an overseas jurisdiction in accordance with the overseas storage and processing section of this policy. The Website does not currently offer general public visitor accounts. If public registration or account functionality is introduced, this Privacy Policy will be updated to describe the information collected and how it is handled. You may send documents, photographs or other material to us by email.
Before sending an image, you should consider removing unnecessary metadata, including embedded GPS location information. If an image containing location or other metadata is published, visitors may be able to download the image and examine that metadata.
11. Who We May Disclose Information To
Where reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, we may disclose information to website hosting, domain, email, backup and security providers, website administrators and technical support providers, anti-spam or abuse-prevention services, professional advisers including legal or information technology advisers, authors, contributors, publishers or rights holders where disclosure is needed to investigate an attribution, permission or removal issue, an authorised representative of the person concerned, government authorities, regulators, courts or law-enforcement agencies where required or authorised by law, and other persons with your consent or at your direction.
Information accepted for public publication will be disclosed publicly and may be accessible worldwide. We do not rent, trade or sell mailing lists or personal information.
12. Overseas Storage and Processing
Some website, hosting, domain, email, security, backup, anti-spam or other service providers may store or process information outside Australia. Depending on the services used to operate the Website, personal information may be stored or processed in Australia, the United States or other jurisdictions in which the relevant service providers operate data centres or provide technical services.
Where the Australian Privacy Principles apply, we will take reasonable steps appropriate to the circumstances to ensure that an overseas recipient handles personal information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, unless a lawful exception applies. We do not treat a visitor’s mere use of the Website as consent to remove the protections or accountability that may otherwise apply to an overseas disclosure of personal information.
13. Security
We take reasonable steps appropriate to the nature and scale of the Website to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, unauthorised alteration and unauthorised disclosure. These measures may include limiting administrative access, using secure access credentials, maintaining website software, using encrypted connections where supported, selecting reputable service providers, applying security updates, monitoring for unauthorised access and maintaining appropriate backups. No electronic transmission, website or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. You should avoid sending unnecessary identity documents, passwords, financial information or highly sensitive information by ordinary email.
14. How Long We Retain Information
We retain information only for as long as it is reasonably required for the purpose for which it was collected, for a compatible purpose, or to meet a legal, archival, security or evidentiary need. Enquiries and correspondence may be retained while a matter is being addressed and for a reasonable period afterwards. Records of permissions, corrections, disputes, privacy complaints and removal requests may be retained to document the Website’s actions and protect the rights and interests of the Website, contributors, authors, family members and other affected persons. Server, access, error and security logs may be retained according to the schedules of our technical service providers.
Backup copies may remain until the relevant backup is securely overwritten, deleted or replaced. Archival source material, attribution records and published historical material may be retained for an extended period because preservation, historical accuracy and correct attribution are central purposes of the Website. Where personal information is no longer required for any lawful purpose, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify it, subject to any legal, archival, security or evidentiary reason for retaining it.
15. Access, Correction and Removal Requests
You may contact us to ask whether we hold personal information about you, request access to personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct information that is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, provide a statement explaining a disputed correction, request a review of material that identifies or concerns you, or ask that personal information or published material be removed, restricted, corrected or anonymised.
Please send your request to zhouand@zhouand.com and include enough information to identify the relevant record, publication, image, document or webpage. We may need to verify your identity or authority before acting on a request. Where a request concerns another person, an estate, copyright, jointly held family material or material provided by a third party, we may request evidence that you are authorised to act. We aim to respond within a reasonable period and ordinarily within 30 calendar days. A request for removal will be considered in good faith, but removal is not automatic.
We may lawfully retain information where retention is required or authorised by law, where the information is reasonably needed to resolve or document a dispute, where retention is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal rights, where removal would adversely affect another person’s legal rights, where the record is needed to preserve attribution or the integrity of an archive, where the information remains reasonably necessary for a lawful purpose, or where another applicable legal exception permits continued retention or publication. Where the Privacy Act applies and we refuse an access or correction request, we will provide written reasons and information about available complaint mechanisms where required by law. We will not charge a fee for making a correction request. A reasonable administrative charge may apply to providing access where permitted by law, but no charge will be imposed merely for submitting an access request.
16. Privacy Complaints
You may make a privacy complaint by emailing zhouand@zhouand.com with the subject line “Privacy or Content Complaint”.
Your complaint should identify the conduct or information concerned, the relevant webpage, correspondence or event, why you believe there is a privacy problem, and the outcome you are seeking. We will acknowledge and investigate the complaint, seek any further information reasonably required and aim to provide a substantive response within 30 calendar days. Where the Privacy Act applies, you may be able to complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner if we do not respond within 30 calendar days or if you are dissatisfied with our response. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner generally expects a person to complain directly to the relevant organisation before lodging a complaint with the Commissioner.
Where a complaint concerns health information and the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW) applies, the Information and Privacy Commission NSW may also be relevant.
17. Data Breaches
We will take reasonable steps to contain, investigate and respond to suspected unauthorised access, loss, misuse or disclosure of personal information. Where the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme applies and an eligible data breach is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required by law.
18. Children and Young People
The Website is not designed to collect personal information directly from children. A person submitting information or material about a child should be the child’s parent, guardian or another person properly authorised to provide it.
Historical or family content involving a child or young person will be considered with particular care, including the person’s age, privacy, safety, consent or authority, and the sensitivity and purpose of the material.
19. External Websites
The Website may contain links to external websites, archives, publishers, public records, libraries, videos or other resources.We do not control the privacy, security or content practices of external websites. You should review the privacy information of an external website before providing personal information to it.
20. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy where the Website’s functionality changes, a new service provider is introduced, our information-handling practices change, or applicable laws or regulatory guidance change. The current version will be published on the Website with its effective date or last updated date.
The Website does not currently arrange for computer programs to use personal information to make decisions that could reasonably be expected to significantly affect an individual’s rights or interests. If that functionality is introduced, this Privacy Policy will be updated accordingly.
21. Content and Copyright Notice
This Website is curated from a combination of public records, previously published sources, family archives and privately sourced information. We endeavour to act respectfully and in good faith and have no intention of infringing copyright, privacy or other legal rights. The Website creator and family maintainers have exercised reasonable care and due diligence to identify, cite and credit literature, journals, essays, correspondence, photographs and other material authored by or relating to Samiuddin Zhouand. Where literature authored by Samiuddin Zhouand or another author is reproduced, quoted, described or discussed, reasonable efforts are made to identify the correct author, title, publication, source and rights holder.
Reasonable efforts are also made to distinguish original works from quotations, excerpts, summaries, commentary and historical references. Where material concerns publicly known or publicly documented members of the Zhouand family, reasonable care is taken to present the material accurately, respectfully and consistently with the historical and memorial purposes of the Website.
Copyright in third-party material remains with the relevant author, publisher, estate, photographer, contributor or other copyright owner unless expressly stated otherwise. Publication on this Website does not transfer copyright and does not grant permission to another person to copy, reproduce, distribute, adapt or commercially use the material.
Good faith, attribution and an absence of intention to infringe do not replace permission, a licence, public-domain status or an applicable legal exception where permission is required by law.
An author, copyright owner, estate representative, contributor or person referred to in material may contact us if they believe authorship or attribution is incorrect or incomplete, material has been reproduced without appropriate authority, a title, quotation, date, caption or source is inaccurate, private or sensitive information has been published inappropriately, or material should be corrected, restricted or removed.
A request should identify the relevant webpage or material, explain the nature of the concern, describe the correction or outcome requested, and include reasonable evidence of authorship, ownership, authority or identity where appropriate. We will consider each request in good faith. Depending on the circumstances, we may correct an attribution, add explanatory information, redact personal details, restrict access, temporarily remove material while investigating, seek permission or permanently remove material.
Views, recollections and opinions contained in historical, literary or family material are those of their respective author[s] or contributor[s] and do not necessarily represent the views of every member of the Zhouand family.
22. Contact Us
For privacy enquiries, access or correction requests, complaints, attribution concerns, copyright enquiries, or requests to review, correct, restrict or remove material, please contact us at:
Email: zhouand@zhouand.com
Zhouand – Privacy and Content Policy
PO Box 41
Berowra Heights NSW 2082
Australia