Melbourne IT DBS collects the information you give us, either online or by email, post or facsimile. In most cases, the personal information Melbourne IT DBS will collect from you is the personal information we are required to obtain and pass on to the relevant registry when you apply to register a domain name with or transfer a domain name to Melbourne IT DBS. This information includes your full name, mailing address, phone number, email address and where applicable, your facsimile number. Melbourne IT DBS also collects your payment details from you when you apply to register a domain name, such as your credit card number or bank account details.

If you purchase a digital certificate through us, we are required by the provider of those certificates to collect personal information from you to pass back to that provider. We will also collect your payment details from you such as your credit card number or bank account details.

Melbourne IT DBS makes limited use of cookies on this website. A cookie is a small message given to your web browser by our web server. The browser stores the message, and sends the message back to the server each time you request a page from the server.

Melbourne IT DBS only uses cookies to tell us when you have set up an account with us previously (i.e. when you are a "registered user" of our website), and sometimes to let us know how you found our website. Where the cookies tell us that you are a registered user, cookies also allow us to automatically link you to your personalised accounts so that you can easily access any products or services only made available to our registered users, without your having to provide us with your username and password on every web page. The cookies allow us only to identify you in our database if you are a registered user, and to connect you to the relevant products and services on our website, but not to track the pages you visited on our website.

You always have the option to disable cookies by turning them off in your browser. However, you should be aware that many of the services available on the Melbourne IT DBS website will not work if you have chosen to do this.

In addition to cookies, Melbourne IT DBS servers register the type of web browser you are using and your IP address when you access our website.

ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the organisation which governs the functions performed by both its accredited registrars (some members of the Melbourne IT DBS group are ICANN accredited), and the registries in regulating the domain name registration process. ICANN requires that each of its registrars must make available the personal information we collect from you when you apply to register any generic top level domain names (ie., com, net, org, biz, info and name) to the public on a publicly accessible database known as the WHOIS database. In addition, it applies to some of the country code top level domains. For example, in Australia the personal information you supply to us in applying for a domain name registration for a com.au domain name, must be made public on the publicly accessible database run by the com.au registry.

The public policy behind this requirement is that the personal details of domain name licence holders should be freely available to all other users of the Internet. This public policy is adopted by the domain name industry as a whole. The requirement means, however, that Melbourne IT DBS will not be able to control how members of the public may use the information made available on these publicly accessible databases.

In addition, ICANN has another mandatory requirement that all its accredited registrars make the WHOIS database of personal information for com, net and org available for bulk downloads by third parties who have entered into a bulk access agreement with Melbourne IT DBS.

If you request us to provide services to you (for example, registering a domain name) we will request from you certain personal information and use that information in the course of providing our services. We may also contact you after providing your service for particular reasons, including to notify you of any account administration information including renewal information and billing information, changes to important terms and conditions (for example on your registration agreement) as well as notices of any important system changes which will impact on your online interactions with us. Each of these functions is necessary if Melbourne IT DBS is to effectively fulfil its role as the registrar of your domain names.

The Melbourne IT DBS business group is comprised of a number of different companies operating in different jurisdictions throughout the world, including:

The Melbourne IT DBS business group operates as a division of or is ultimately owned by Melbourne IT Limited, an Internet domain name registrar based in Melbourne, Australia and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Any information which you supply to a member of the Melbourne IT DBS group will be shared with other members of the Melbourne IT DBS group to facilitate our provision of products and services to you. Each of our international subsidiary companies is committed to protecting your personal information.

On occasion, we may supply your personal information to third parties to perform services on our behalf, such as the following:

Our relationships with such third party service providers are governed by our contracts with them.