Privacy Notice
Notice Last Updated: February 2025 (v2)
Welcome to the Privacy Notice of Smart State Vehicle Rentals Pty Limited (ABN 40 663 319 303) trading as Smart State Rentals (we refer to ourselves as “SSVR,” “we,” “us,” or “our” in this Privacy Notice).
Please take the time to read this Privacy Notice as it is important for you to know how we collect and use your personal information. By “personal information” we mean all information that relates to a living individual and either identifies, or may be used to identify, that individual.
We may change portions of this Privacy Notice from time to time, so be sure to check back. If we make a change that significantly affects your rights or, to the extent we are permitted to do so, significantly changes how we use your personal information, we will notify you by way of a prominent posting on our websites, e-mail and/or postal mail prior to the change becoming effective.
GETTING STARTED
SSVR wants you to feel comfortable about giving us access to your personal information. Use this Privacy Notice to find out what happens to your personal information when you interact with SSVR and what choices you have.
This Privacy Notice covers the personal information we collect, use and disclose through your use of our products and services either online or offline.
SSVR needs to collect personal information from you to rent a vehicle or provide our other services. We collect personal information when you give it to us, such as by telephone, fax, postal mail, email, at the counter, upon completion of an application form or through your use of SSVR’s website or the use of our products and services.
Please be aware that, in certain circumstances, where you do not provide personal information which is required by us, we will not be able to provide the products and services under our contract with you or may not be able to comply with a legal obligation on us. For example, when renting a vehicle with us we will require information such as your name, address, payment information and driver’s licence. If you fail to provide this information to us we will be unable to rent a vehicle to you. You will be made aware if this situation arises and what the consequences of not providing the personal information will be.
Sometimes, we will combine the personal information we receive from you with other information we received from other sources so we can provide you a more customised and hassle-free experience or provide you with offers that are relevant to you. This information may include your name, contact information, travel itinerary, booking request and other information that is relevant to your booking or queries about bookings. These third parties include:
- Your employer or association if you are using a corporate / association account;
- Police and other law enforcement agencies if you are involved in an accident during your rental, or suffer any loss, damage or theft of the vehicle, or if you incur any speeding, parking, toll or other traffic-related fines or commit any traffic offences during your rental.
The purposes for which we use this information is set out in further detail in the rest of this Privacy Notice. There are a number of bases in data protection law that permit us to use your personal information for these purposes. These are: (1) that you have provided your consent to us using your personal information for that purpose (e.g. where you have given us your consent to send you electronic marketing); (2) that we need to use that personal information in order to fulfil our contract to provide products or services to you (e.g. using your information for vehicle rentals; (3) that the processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate interests, provided we have balanced these against your rights and interests; and (4) where we need to comply with a legal obligation (e.g. responding to government or law enforcement information requests).
These legitimate interests are: (a) to ensure effective administration and management of your relationship with us, including any rentals with us; (b) to understand how our customers use our services and to manage our vehicle fleet; (c) to carry out research and analysis on what services or products customers want or how they would like us to improve our services and products; (d) to understand how our customers use our website and identify any issues in how the website is used and how we can improve the customers usage experience; (e) to tell our customers about the various products and services we can offer; (f) understand and respond to customer feedback; (g) to better tailor and personalise the promotions and benefits that we offer to our customers; (h) to prevent, detect, or investigate unauthorised use of our vehicles and systems and ensure we comply with law and our policies; and (i) manage any disputes and accidents and take legal or other professional advice.
We will collect technical information about your devices when you use our website where permitted. To learn about our online data collection, go to the Online Data section.
RENTING A VEHICLE
When you make a reservation or rent a vehicle, we collect information to provide you with our great services (for example, renting a vehicle, including performing the vehicle rental contract as set out in our Rental Agreement Terms and Conditions, providing any requested optional extras, taking payment, pre-authorisations and security deposits and providing discounts and offers or other benefits) and for our legitimate business interests (for example, undertaking fraud and security checks and enforcing our legal rights). The information we collect includes:
- name;
- email address (if you are booking online or wish to receive e-receipts);
- home address (for licence validation and billing);
- employer details and business address (if your employer is a corporate client);
- telephone numbers at which we can reach you;
- date of birth (for licence validation and legal requirements);
- gender (for licence validation);
- payment information such as your credit or debit card details (security code is obtained for transaction only – we do not keep it);
- tax number (if specifically requested);
- information from driver’s licence and/or other government issued identification, including if you are an additional driver for the specific rental (for licence validation and legal requirements);
- information from another form of identification documentation such as passport or national identity card if your driver’s licence does not include a photo, is not in English or is not recognisable as you and/or proof of address such as a utility bill
- (for security and anti-fraud purposes). The information we collect and retain will only include your photo ID where you are informed of this;
- special requests and preferences, including your preferences regarding optional extras such as damage waivers and other protections;
- other information that may be required to rent you a vehicle and/or provide you with services.
Some vehicles come equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) or similar type tracking device that may also collect information about the vehicle. To learn about vehicle data we collect, scroll down to read about Vehicle Data.
If you have an accident, or suffer any loss, theft or damage to the vehicle during your rental or suffer any mechanical failure, we will collect information regarding such incident including your report of the incident and any police or other third party report including details of those involved, together with the nature of any personal injuries and/or damage to the vehicle and optional extras. We will use this information to perform our contract with you (for example, the vehicle rental agreement and/or the terms of any optional extra like coverages); for our legitimate business interests (for example, in recovering the costs of any loss or damage caused to the vehicle); for complying with any legal obligation on us (for example, making any required notification of the incident to appropriate authorities); and establishing, exercising or defending legal claims arising as a result of such incident.
During your rental we will collect where and when you rented the vehicle, where and when you returned the vehicle, coverage preferences, fuel consumption, mileage, accident history and other information related to the vehicle and your use of it. This information is required in order to provide you with the services you requested under the rental contract or for our legitimate business interests (for example to monitor the usage of our vehicle fleet).
In addition to the purposes listed above, we use this information to better understand our customers and provide you with relevant offers.
We will also collect information about any speeding, parking, toll or other traffic-related fines that you incur or any traffic offences that you commit during your rental where these are provided to us by any law enforcement agency. We will use this information to deal with such fine or offence in accordance with the terms of your vehicle rental agreement with us.
We will only use this information for the specific reason for which it is provided. If you believe that one of your contacts has provided us with your personal information and you would like to request that it be removed from our database, please contact our customer service at the details set out in the Data Controllers & Contact Details section below.
COVERAGE PRODUCTS
If you have requested any of the products that we offer during your rental, we will pass your personal information to the insurer that is underwriting that product in connection with you entering into a contract with that insurer for that product. The name of the insurer will be made available to you upon request when you are requesting the relevant product.
In the event that you make any claim under one of these products, your personal information relating to the claim will be provided to the insurer and any appointed claims handler. We do this to fulfil the terms of our agreement with you and to establish, exercise or defend any associated legal claims.
The use of your personal information by that insurer will be subject to the terms of that insurer’s privacy notice.
VEHICLE DATA
Some vehicles you rent from SSVR have been manufactured or equipped with on-board devices so as to be connected to the internet (connected car) which allow us to send commands to and receive certain information from the vehicle, including geolocation data from a global positioning system (GPS). If you rent a connected car from us your personal information will be processed in accordance with this Notice (or such other notice regarding connected cars as we may provide to you in the future).
PHOTOS & VIDEO
SSVR’s rental location may be equipped with video security surveillance systems as well as cameras that may record as our vehicles depart/enter our lot and these cameras may take images or photos of you, authorised drivers and passengers.
We may take an image or photo of you and scan your drivers licence, passport or other identity document to confirm information you provided SSVR.
ONLINE DATA
When you download, visit and use our website, SSVR automatically collects technical information. This section tells you more about what technical information we collect and why we collect it.
IP Addresses & other information collected automatically: We may collect your IP address when you visit our website to help us diagnose problems with our main computers, for system administration, to report aggregated information to our business partners, and to audit the use of our website. We do not normally link IP addresses to anything personally identifiable. In select circumstances, we may use IP addresses to help us identify you when we feel it is necessary or to protect our service, site, users or others. We may also collect your browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/ or clickstream data to analyse trends in the aggregate and administer the site or to provide you with relevant offers.
Session Replay: When you visit our website, we will sometimes also record information about your browsing session on the site, including which pages you visited and any forms on the website that you completed. We review this information to identify any technical issues in the operation of our sites and to improve the user interface of our sites. We use a third party to help us with this service and this information will be passed to that third party for this purpose but this information is not disclosed to any other third party.
Cookies & other similar technologies: We may send cookies (pieces of programming) to your computer when you visit our website. Cookies can be stored on your shared drive or other storage device (persistent cookies) or in memory (session cookies). Cookies enable us to enhance the web offerings to you and to optimise your online experience. We may, in some circumstances, collect your personal information with our cookies or match them to your identity. Persistent cookies identify pages accessed and provide personalised features, for example, choosing which page you would like to make your start page. They are used to help us develop the design and layout of the website, improve applications, measure their effectiveness and to understand your personal preferences. Session cookies are used for security purposes as part of our customer identification process. These cookies allow you to be recognised once you have logged in and provide you with the confidential access to your rental records. We may also allow third parties (such as Google Analytics) to collect statistical data from our sites using their persistent cookies.
MARKETING
SSVR may share personal information with third parties to help us with marketing and promotional projects, such as managing our social media pages, running contests, sweepstakes and other promotions, or sending marketing communications.
We will only use your personal information to send you marketing where you have given us your consent to receive marketing or we are otherwise permitted by applicable law to do so. This marketing will be sent to you either electronically or to your postal address.
ANALYTICS
We use analytic software, such as Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics and others, to help us to better understand the functionality of our software on our website. These software tools record technical information including about your device together with usage information such as how often you use our website, which features you use or don’t use in the website or which pages you visit on the website, aggregated usage, performance data, and information about your visit to the site, including details of some of the URL clickstream to, through and from our website. Further information about these tools is set out in our Cookie Policy.
CHILDREN
SSVR’s website and services are not for children under the age of 16. This includes any links to other websites that we provide for your convenience. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children for any reason. If you think SSVR has received personal information of your child or another minor, please contact our Data Protection Officer at the address set out in the Data Controllers & Contact Details section.
INFORMATION SHARING
SSVR may use and share your personal information and vehicle data to affiliated and non-affiliated organisations as follows:
| Third party recipient | Purpose of disclosure | Legal Basis for Processing |
| Your employer or organisation in order to provide your employer with a corporate account and/or discounts and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business |
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| Credit card issuers in order to obtain payment from you |
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| Corporate account manager in order to provide you with benefits of a corporate account and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business |
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| IT service providers including IT platform providers and website analytics service providers in order to perform our contract with you and to understand how you use our services and to improve our business |
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| Government, regulatory and law enforcement agencies in order to meet our legal obligations |
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| Insurance companies and claims handlers in respect of any product or coverages you purchase in connection with your rental |
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We may also transfer or assign your personal information to third parties as a result of, or in connection with a sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of assets, bankruptcy, reorganisation, or liquidation. Or if we are involved in defending a legal claim, information about you that is relevant to such claim may be disclosed to third parties as a result of, or in connection with, associated legal proceedings.
We may, in accordance with the Marketing section, share your information with business and promotional partners (where you have provided your consent to such information sharing) in order to send you information about products and services you may like. If you decide you no longer want to receive such promotional and marketing messages, please read the Your Choices section to find out how you can opt-out.
YOUR CHOICES
If you want to opt out of receiving promotional and marketing emails, text messages, post and other forms of communications from SSVR in relation to which you might receive in accordance with the Marketing section, you can best opt out by using one of the following ways:
- Click “unsubscribe” at the bottom of an email we sent you.
- Go to our Data Controllers & Contact Details section to email the customer service representative suited for you.
To stop receiving promotional text messages:
If you do opt out of receiving promotional and marketing messages, we can still contact you regarding our business relationship with you, such as account status and activity updates, survey requests in respect of products and services we have provided to you after you rent from us, reservation confirmations or respond to your inquiries or complaints, and similar communications.
Want to close your account, stop doing business with SSVR, or otherwise opt out of SSVR collecting, using or disclosing your personal information? We will be sorry to see you go. Please contact our customer service representatives in accordance with the Data Controllers & Contact Details section.
Please also see your rights set out in Your Privacy Rights section.
SAFEGUARDS
The security of your personal information is important to us. We take reasonable steps to make sure your information is protected from unauthorised use, access, disclosure, alteration, destruction or loss. We take security extremely seriously but as no system is 100% secure, we can’t completely guarantee the protection of your personal information, any more than any other organisation can.
We do not ask for financial or payment information, such as your credit card number, passcode, account number or pin number, in an e-mail, text or any other communication that we send to you. Please always check that any website on which you are asked for financial or payment information in relation to our rentals or services is operated by SSVR. If you do receive a suspicious request, do not provide your information and report it by contacting one of our customer service representatives as set out in the Data Controllers & Contact Details section.
If there is an unauthorised use or any other breach of security involving your information, you must notify us at the customer service contact information below as soon as possible.
INFORMATION RETENTION
SSVR keeps your personal information for no longer than is reasonably necessary or required by law. How long we keep it depends very much on the type of information and purpose.
The criteria we use to determine the retention period for certain categories of data is as follows:
- how frequently you rent with us or when you most recent rental occurred;
- whether there are contractual or legal obligations that exist that require us to retain the data for period of time;
- whether there is any ongoing legal claim that relates to any rental you have made with us, or that is otherwise related to your relationship with us;
- whether any applicable law, statute, or regulation allows for a specific retention period;
- whether the personal information is considered to be a special category of personal information, in which case a shorter retention period generally would be applied; and
- what the expectation for retention was at the time the data was provided to us.
YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS
You may have – in accordance with applicable data protection laws – the following rights when it comes to our handling of your personal information:
- Right of access – you may have the right to request a copy of the personal information we have about you and to request supporting information explaining how the personal information is used.
- Right of rectification – you may have the right to request that we rectify inaccurate personal information about you.
- Right to withdraw consent – where we process your personal information based on consent (including direct marketing consents), you have the right to withdraw consent at any time. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Furthermore, even in case of a withdrawal we may continue to use your personal information as permitted or required by law.
Right to complain:
If you feel that we have not respected your privacy or that we have conducted ourselves inconsistently with this Privacy Notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer in any of the ways set out in the Data Controllers and Contact Details section and advise us as soon as possible. We will investigate your queries and privacy complaints within a reasonable period of time depending on the complexity of the complaint.
It would assist us to respond to your complaint promptly if it is made in writing. Please detail information relevant to your complaint.
WE WILL NOTIFY YOU OF THE OUTCOME OF OUR INVESTIGATION.
DATA CONTROLLER CONTACT DETAILS
You can contact our Data Protection Officer in respect of any issues or questions you have regarding our processing of your personal information. They act as the Data Protection Officer in respect of all of the data controllers listed below and can be contacted at:
By mail: Data Privacy Officer, PO Box 5971, Mackay Mail Centre, Qld 4740
By telephone: 07 4957 5588
By email: admin@smartstaterentals.com.au: FAO: Data Protection Officer
Normally, we do not disclose any information about you to anybody. Occasionally we may work with a third party to understand whether what he offers in terms of products and services fits with the client profile of our customers.
Thank you for allowing us to serve your car rental requirements. We value your loyalty, your business and are committed to retaining your privacy for you.