Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

DriveAU is operated by DRIVEAU PTY LTD (ACN [ACN], ABN [ABN]), registered office [REGISTERED OFFICE]. In this policy, "DriveAU", "we", "us" and "our" mean DRIVEAU PTY LTD.

DriveAU is an online marketplace connecting learner drivers with independent driving instructors. We do not provide driving lessons. Independent instructors provide them. This matters for privacy because it shapes who holds what: we hold booking and account information, while your instructor holds whatever they learn about you in the course of teaching you.

This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, where it goes, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it.

2. What we collect

2.1 Everyone with an account

• Display name
• Email address
• Timezone
• Password — held by our authentication provider as a cryptographic hash. We never see or store your actual password.
• Email confirmation status

2.2 Learners

• Date of birth. We collect your date of birth so we can check you meet the minimum age (16) and, if you are under 18, know when parent or guardian consent is required and when it stops being required. You enter it yourself, and it cannot be changed once it is set — a mistake has to be corrected by us, and how that will work is register item O-11. It is never shown publicly, and it is deleted when you delete your account.
• Bookings you make — the instructor, date, time, duration, price, and the suburb you are picked up from.
• Reasons you type when you cancel a lesson.
• Lesson progress records written about you by your instructor — an assessment against each of eight driving skills, plus a free-text note.

2.3 Learners under 18

We hold the same information as for any learner, plus the record that a parent or guardian has given consent: who gave it, for which learner, the version of the consent wording they were shown, and when. A later withdrawal is recorded the same way, as a separate event — withdrawing consent does not erase the record that it was once given.

We take particular care with information about people under 18. It is not shown publicly, it is restricted to the people described in section 4, and it is deleted when the account is deleted.

2.4 Parents and guardians

• Display name, email, timezone, as for any account.
• An optional relationship label you choose.
• The permissions each learner has granted you — see section 5.
• Consent records, where you have given guardian consent for a learner under 18, and any later withdrawal of it

Parent invitations are single-use and expire after 15 minutes. We store only a one-way cryptographic hash of the invitation code, never the code itself.

2.5 Instructors

Instructors are independent businesses, and most of what we hold about them is business information they choose to publish.

• Business name, description, languages, vehicle description, transmission, hourly rate, lesson lengths, availability and service areas (suburb and postcode)
• Verification information — the issuing State, the driving instructor authority or accreditation number, its expiry, the decision, who reviewed it and any reason recorded
• Availability notes and blocked periods, including any reason typed
• Payout account information held by Stripe — see section 6

What our verification actually consists of. We record the State or Territory you tell us issued your accreditation, the accreditation or authority number you type in, an expiry date where you give one, and an administrator's decision with any reason they record. We do not collect or hold copies of any document, we do not check the number you give us against any government register, and we do not carry out identity, police, insurance, driver licence or Working With Children checks. What DriveAU may say about this is register item L-11.

Before launch, instructor onboarding will also collect ABN, and may collect identity, insurance, driver licence, vehicle registration and Working With Children information.

2.6 Payment information

• Amounts, currency, the platform commission, and payment and refund status
• Stripe identifiers — payment intent, charge, connected account, transfer and refund IDs

What we do not hold. DriveAU never sees or stores your card number, CVC, expiry date or bank account details. You enter them directly with Stripe. Nothing in our systems contains card data at any point.

2.7 Communications

• The transactional emails we send you, the email address they went to, whether delivery succeeded, and the provider's message identifier
• Your notification preferences, where set
• Device tokens, where you use the DriveAU app and allow notifications — see section 8

Messages in the DriveAU apps

The DriveAU iOS and Android apps include a message channel between a learner and an instructor. There is no messaging on the DriveAU website. Where it is used we hold:

• the text of each message — plain text only, up to 2,000 characters, with no attachments and no images;
• who sent it, and when;
• when each person last read the conversation.

Messages cannot be edited or deleted by the people who sent them.

Who can see a conversation. The learner and the instructor in it. A parent or guardian cannot — parent messaging does not exist, and a parent has no view of a learner's messages whatever permissions the learner has granted them. A DriveAU administrator can, because the text is stored in our database and we hold the means to read it. We do not offer, and do not claim, end-to-end encryption.

Who may use it. Today a learner must be 18 or over, and the learner and instructor must have a qualifying booking relationship — an upcoming lesson that has been paid for, a lesson completed within the last 30 days, or one cancelled within the last 7 days. Where we do not hold a date of birth, messaging is refused.

What does not exist yet. There is no way to report a message from inside the app, no way to block another person, and no moderation system. A concern about a message has to be raised by email, as section 15 describes.

How long messages are kept. No retention or deletion period has been set for messages, and none is stated here. What happens to them when an account is closed is described in section 13, and the position that has to be settled is register item L-40.

2.8 Technical, security and audit information

• Administrator action records — an append-only log of significant administrative actions, including who acted, on what, and why
• Rate-limiting counters — used to prevent abuse of sign-in and similar actions. We store a one-way cryptographic hash, never a raw email address or IP address.
• Payment provider event records — event identifiers and outcomes, used to make sure a payment is processed exactly once

We do not use analytics, advertising trackers, tag managers or error-tracking services. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel and no session-recording tool on DriveAU. Fonts are served from our own site, so viewing a page does not send a request to a font provider.

2.9 What we do not collect

We do not collect your learner permit number, your driver licence number, your home address, your phone number, your emergency contact details, or a profile photo. Some of these once existed as unused fields in our database and are being removed. [Migration pending — see the implementation note in section 15.]

3. Why we use it

We do not use your personal information for marketing. See section 9.

4. Who can see what

Access is enforced by our database, not by convention.

Anyone, including people without an account — can see an instructor's public listing: business name, display name, profile image, description, languages, vehicle, transmission, rate, lesson lengths, timezone and service suburbs. No email address, phone number or street address ever appears in a public listing.

You — can see your own information.

Your instructor — for a lesson you have booked with them, can see your display name and the booking details. They do not receive your email address or your date of birth from us. They can see and write the progress records for lessons they taught you.

A parent or guardian you have linked — can see only what you have permitted. See section 5.

DriveAU administrators — can access information where needed to operate the marketplace, investigate a complaint, resolve a payment, or meet a legal obligation. Significant administrative actions are recorded in an append-only audit log.

Our service providers — see section 6.

5. The Parent Dashboard, and its limits

If you are a learner, you can invite a parent or guardian to link to your account. You control it, and you can change or revoke it at any time.

There are four separate permissions: see your progress, see your bookings, book lessons for you, and pay for your lessons. By default a linked parent can only view progress and bookings. A parent cannot give themselves more access, and a linked parent cannot cancel or reschedule your lessons.

A parent link is not the same as guardian consent. Guardian consent lets a learner under 18 book and pay. A parent link is a sharing setting. One does not create the other, and DriveAU does not verify family relationships or that someone is a legal guardian.

6. Who we share it with

We use four service providers. We do not sell personal information, and we do not disclose it for anyone else's marketing.

Supabase — database and authentication Holds our database and manages sign-in, including your email address and password hash. Our database project is hosted in Sydney, Australia.

Stripe — payments and instructor payouts Processes your card payment, holds instructor payout and identity information, and handles refunds. We send Stripe only the booking identifier — not your name, not your email address. Stripe collects your payment details directly from you under its own privacy terms, and collects identity information from instructors for its own regulatory obligations.

Resend — transactional email Sends the booking, payment and account emails described in section 8. Receives the recipient's email address and the content of the message.

Apple and Google — push notification delivery

Where you use the DriveAU app, push notifications are delivered through Apple Push Notification service (iOS) and Firebase Cloud Messaging (Android). They receive the device token and the notification content we send — which for a message-received notification does not include the message text.

Vercel — website hosting Serves the DriveAU website. Handles the network requests you make to us.

We may also disclose information where required or authorised by law, to protect someone's safety, to investigate suspected fraud or serious misconduct, to our professional advisers, or in connection with a transfer of our business.

7. Information sent or stored overseas

Some of our service providers are based outside Australia or may process information outside Australia.

We have not yet confirmed, for each provider, the country involved and what processing happens where. We will not state it until we have.

8. Messages we send you

Email

We send transactional email only — messages about your bookings, payments and account. For example: a lesson is confirmed, payment is needed, a lesson was cancelled or moved, a refund decision was made. We do not send marketing email.

You can turn some of it off, and not all of it. Your account settings let you turn off the notifications that are informational. Today those are a lesson marked completed and a progress update from your instructor.

Everything that concerns your bookings or your money is sent whatever your preferences say: a lesson confirmed, cancelled or moved; a time proposed or declined; payment needed before a held slot lapses; a refund allowed or refused; and a parent link being accepted. These are service messages rather than marketing — losing one silently is how a person misses a lesson or cannot settle a dispute about their money — so there is nothing in them to unsubscribe from.

Push notifications

If you use the DriveAU iOS or Android app and allow notifications, we also send push notifications for the same events. To do that we store a device token for each installation you sign in on, along with the platform and the notification permission state, and we record whether each push was delivered or rejected. A token is revoked when you sign out of that installation, when the provider tells us it is no longer valid, or when you delete your account.

A message-received notification is push only — we never send one by email — and it tells you only that a message arrived and which conversation it belongs to. It never contains the message text.

9. Marketing

DriveAU does not send marketing or promotional email, and does not have a marketing list. Creating an account does not sign you up to anything.

We do not use your personal information for marketing, and we do not disclose it to anyone else for their marketing.

If this ever changes, we will seek your consent in the way Australian law requires, and provide a way to opt out. We will not start using information we already hold for a new purpose simply by updating this policy.

10. Cookies and similar technology

DriveAU uses essential cookies only, to keep you signed in and to keep your session secure. Without them you could not stay logged in.

We do not use analytics cookies, advertising cookies, tracking pixels or third-party trackers of any kind. Because we use no non-essential cookies, we do not show a cookie consent banner.

11. How we protect information

• Access is enforced in the database itself, so a person or system can only reach data they are entitled to, rather than relying on the application to check.
• Passwords are stored only as cryptographic hashes by our authentication provider.
• Card and bank details never enter our systems.
• Invitation codes are stored only as one-way hashes.
• Rate-limiting records contain only one-way hashes, never a raw email address or IP address.
• Significant administrative actions are written to an append-only audit log.
• Public instructor listings are tested to confirm they expose no contact details.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

12. How long we keep it

These periods are PROVISIONAL. They come from our internal retention policy and have not yet been confirmed by our advisers.

Deleted when you delete your account (PROVISIONAL) Role profile information including date of birth, parent links and invitations, notification preferences, device tokens, notification records, and instructor availability and service areas.

Kept, but with your identity removed (PROVISIONAL) Your basic profile record, your bookings, and instructor verification outcomes. Bookings must survive because they are attached to payments.

Messages: no period is set (NOT PROVISIONAL — UNDECIDED) No retention or deletion period has been decided for messages sent in the DriveAU apps, and none is stated in this policy. Today they are kept indefinitely, including after an account is closed — section 13 says plainly what that means. We are not going to name a period here before one has been decided.

Kept for seven years regardless of deletion (PROVISIONAL) Payments, refunds, the financial substance of bookings, the payment account mapping, and the administrator audit log — because they are company financial and accountability records.

Deleted on a rolling basis for everyone (PROVISIONAL) Notification records after 12 months; payment provider event records after 24 months; parent invitations 30 days after use or expiry; device tokens after 90 days unused. Rate-limiting records are already deleted automatically once they can no longer affect anything.

Not yet decided. How long lesson progress records and instructor notes are kept is deliberately unresolved, because they may relate to a lesson, a complaint, instructor conduct or a learner under 18.

13. Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself. Sign in and use Delete account in your account settings, on the website or in the DriveAU app.

We cannot close an account while something is still open. If you have a lesson booked, or you are an instructor still owed payment for a lesson you taught, deletion is refused and we tell you why — cancel or complete the lesson first, or email support@driveau.com and we will help.

When an account is deleted, we remove or anonymise the personal information we no longer need, revoke parent links, and stop notifications. We cannot delete everything. Records we are legally or operationally required to keep — particularly financial records, and safety, complaint and audit records — are retained under section 12, with your identifying information removed from them wherever that is possible.

Messages you have sent are not deleted, and you should know that before you close your account. Deleting your account does not delete the messages you sent in the DriveAU apps. Your profile record is anonymised, but the messages remain in the conversation, with their text and their times, and the instructor or learner at the other end can still read them. Your name is no longer attached to them.

We are telling you this because it is what the system does today, not because it is settled: whether messages should survive a closed account, and for how long, has not been decided. It is register item L-40 and it needs advice before this policy is published. — there is no purge, no expiry and no way for you to delete a message once it is sent.

Deleting your account is not the same as being removed from DriveAU. Our Terms of Service explain suspension and removal.

14. Accessing and correcting your information

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is wrong.

Some things you can change yourself, such as your display name and timezone, and instructors can edit their own listing.

For anything else — including access requests, corrections you cannot make yourself, and deletion — email support@driveau.com.

We do not currently offer a self-service data download. We may add one later.

One limitation you should know about. Lesson progress records are written by your instructor about you, and at present only the instructor who wrote a note can change it. If you think a note about you is wrong, tell us.

15. Privacy complaints

If you are concerned about how we have handled your personal information, email support@driveau.com and tell us what happened.

We will look into it and respond. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may be able to take the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

16. Data breaches

If a data breach occurs that is likely to cause serious harm, we will respond in accordance with our obligations, including notifying affected people and the OAIC where required.

We do not yet have a documented data breach response procedure.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If we make a material change, we will tell registered users by email and on the website, and we will publish the new version with its effective date. We keep previous versions.

Using your information for a new purpose is different from changing this document. Where the Privacy Act requires your consent for a new purpose, we will ask for it. We will not treat a policy update as consent.

18. Contact us

DRIVEAU PTY LTD ACN [ACN] · ABN [ABN] [REGISTERED OFFICE]

Privacy enquiries, access and correction requests, and privacy complaints: support@driveau.com

Implementation note (not part of the published policy)

This draft describes several things that do not exist today and must be built before publication, or removed from the policy:

1. Date of birth collection and the age check (section 2.2)
2. Guardian consent records (sections 2.3, 2.4)
3. Instructor ABN and expanded verification collection (section 2.5)
4. Self-service account deletion (section 13)
5. A documented data breach response procedure (section 16)
6. A notification preference interface (section 8)

Pending database change. Migration 20260906100000_data_minimisation.sql removes unused columns for learner permit state and number, goal test date, emergency contact name and phone, and given name, family name and phone. It is written but not yet applied, so those empty columns still exist. Section 2.9 should not be published until it has been applied.

End of draft. Version 0.1 — for Australian professional review only.