Ostervaine collects very little, and this page describes all of it rather than the categories a site of this kind might theoretically use. It is written under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.
Who holds the information
Ostervaine (ostervaine.com) is published by James Harris in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Any request under this policy goes to [email protected], and it reaches a person rather than a ticket queue.
What is actually held
- Technical request records. Kept by the hosting provider and the delivery network: IP address, requested page, timestamp, referring page, user agent. Every web server keeps these; they are needed to serve pages and to identify abuse.
- Your answer to the cookie notice. One word, stored in your browser, never transmitted to the server.
- Messages you send. The name, email address, optional phone number and text you supply, kept for as long as the conversation needs.
- Your notification subscription. If you allow browser notifications, OneSignal stores a subscription identifier for your browser, together with the email address, name and any phone number you entered on the form. It exists so a reply and later updates can reach you, and it disappears when you unsubscribe or clear the site data.
There is no account, no login, no advertising identifier and no per-reader record of what was read. That is not a policy commitment so much as a description of how the site is built: those things do not exist here to be misused. The single exception is the notification list, which you join deliberately by ticking the box on a form and allowing notifications.
Why each of them is held
Request records exist so the site can be delivered and defended. Correspondence exists so I can answer you. The cookie answer exists so the notice does not follow you around the site. If a legal obligation ever attaches to a specific record, meeting it becomes a purpose too.
Nothing in the measurement or advertising categories runs unless you accept it in the notice, and declining does not reduce what you can read by a single word.
The forms and what they do
There are two: one on the contact page and one on the handbook page. Both ask for a name, an email address, an optional phone number and a message, and the handbook form additionally records which item you chose. Both carry a tick box that has to be ticked before the form will send, confirming that you want a reply and browser notifications. No payment is processed anywhere on this site and no card number, bank detail or postal address is ever entered here.
On submission the details are passed to OneSignal, the notification service this site uses, and held there against your subscription: the email address, the name, the phone number if you gave one, and the first part of the message. OneSignal handles them on my instructions and under its own terms. This is spelled out because it is the kind of thing that is easy to leave unmentioned and it matters if you are deciding what to put in a message.
Your details are then used to reply to you and for nothing else: no list, no marketing, no sharing. For a general message the basis for holding them is your own request that I get in touch; for an order it is the steps you asked me to take before a contract, followed by performance of that contract.
Order correspondence is retained longer than an ordinary enquiry, since a question about a purchase can surface months later and consumer guarantees do not expire when a file is delivered. It is used for nothing beyond answering you and sending the file.
One field on the form is hidden from human visitors and is only ever filled by automated submissions. If it arrives with content, the message is dropped without being read.
Everyone else in the chain
- The hosting provider that stores and serves these files.
- Cloudflare, as the content delivery network in front of the site.
- OneSignal, which delivers browser notifications and holds the form details described above.
There is no analytics vendor, no tag manager, no social embed and no third-party font on any page. The one exception is the OneSignal notification SDK; everything else the browser loads comes from this domain, and that is easy to confirm from your own developer tools.
Following a link off the site
The guides link to official Google Play and App Store pages. From the moment you follow one, Google's or Apple's privacy terms apply and this policy stops describing what happens. Nothing returns to Ostervaine from that visit, and this site has no way of learning whether you installed a game.
How long things stay
Technical records are held briefly by the provider and then discarded or reduced to aggregates. Messages stay while the matter is live and for a reasonable period afterwards. Your cookie answer remains in your browser until you clear it, which you can do at any time.
Access, correction and complaints
Under the Australian Privacy Principles you may ask what is held about you and require correction of anything inaccurate. Write to [email protected]; a response normally follows within 30 days and, for most readers, will honestly amount to a short-lived server log and nothing else.
Unresolved complaints can go to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au. Readers in the European Union may also approach their own supervisory authority.
Amendments
The date at the top of this page changes whenever the policy does, and anything material is summarised in the opening paragraph for a period afterwards.