Spark
Privacy Policy

Where this Policy says “we” or “us”, it means Spark New Zealand Trading Limited, Spark New Zealand Limited and our related group of companies.

In this Policy, we’ll tell you how we collect, use and protect your personal information. We’ll also tell you who we share your personal information with and when. 

Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you. For example, your name, your address, phone number and email address are all personal information. Personal information can also include your credit card details or the way you use your phone, for example, what numbers you call.

Spark collects, uses and discloses your personal information in ways that follow applicable legal requirements. This includes the Privacy Act 1993 and the Telecommunications Information Privacy Code 2003.

Go to Privacy Act 1993

Go to Telecommunications Information Privacy Code 2003

The Privacy Policy applies whenever you interact with us or use our products and services. This includes our mobile, broadband and landline services. The Privacy Policy doesn’t apply when you interact with or use services provided by:

• Spark Sport. View Spark Sport's privacy policy
• Neon. View Neon's privacy policy
• Bigpipe. View Bigpipes's privacy policy
• Skinny. View Skinny's privacy policy 
• Xtra Mail. View Xtra Mail's privacy policy
• Qrious. View Qrious' privacy policy 
  

When you use services provided by our business partners, like Netflix or Spotify, their privacy policies will apply to your use of their services.

Our Web Privacy Policy applies to anyone visiting our Spark website. Go to Web Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy forms part of the terms and conditions applicable to all Spark products and services that you agree to when you sign up.

Even if you aren’t a Spark customer, this Policy applies to any personal information you provide to us or that we collect when you interact with us or use our products and services. For example, if you:

• Use Spark services that another person in your household or your employer pays for.  
• Are an authority on someone else’s account as nominated by the Spark account holder.
• Contact us – for example, to enquire about our services. 
• Register online to receive information about our products and services.
• Take part in a Spark survey or trial or enter a competition or promotion.
• Use the promotional area at Spark Arena. 

We collect information directly from you when you:

• Sign up for a Spark product or service. This may happen online, through our website, MySpark online, or through the Spark app. It may also happen in Spark stores, through Spark dealers, our contact centres (such as 123), our door-to-door sales team or a mobile app.
• Communicate with one of our team, including our virtual assistants.
• Pay for our services.
• Enter a competition or promotion run by Spark or one of our trusted business partners.
• Complete a Spark online form or respond to a questionnaire. For example, if you tell us what kinds of customer rewards you would prefer to receive.

The personal information we collect may include your:

• Name, address and date of birth.
• Contact (and alternative contact) information such as email address and phone number.
• Contact and language preferences.
  
• Residency and housing status.
• Employment information, including status and employer.
• Identification documents like your driver’s licence or passport.
• Payment information like your credit card or bank account details.
• Security credentials such as your security questions and responses.
• Relevant medical conditions, including if you want a landline to use for emergency services only or are seeking Vulnerable End User status for you or a member of your household.
• Information you share with us in calls and online chats (Live Chat) with our contact centre staff or Virtual Assistants or when you email or write to us. We record contact centre calls, Live Chat and online help message requests to help improve our customer service.

We may collect information about you from other divisions of Spark New Zealand Trading Limited and companies within the Spark group.

We may sometimes collect personal information about you from other people, like loyalty programme partners or credit reference agencies. We only do this if we can reasonably believe you’ve authorised us to do so, or if you’ve authorised the third party to share your information with us.

If you’re moving services to Spark we may collect supplied data from your current service provider (such as confirmation of your account number) so we can transition you smoothly.

We may also collect your personal information if we’re investigating alleged fraud. This can include information from the person alleging they’ve been defrauded, verification of your passport from the Department of Internal Affairs and confirmation of the courier delivery status and address
from courier companies for deliveries of Spark products.

We may also collect or purchase publicly available data and combine it with other information that we hold about you to help us better understand your needs and those of potential customers. For example, we may:

• Obtain aggregated, anonymised information such as census data.
• Collect information from public websites (such as data about individual house sales).
• Purchase information that is collated by third parties and may relate to identifiable individuals.

We will only collect this kind of data from trusted providers if we’re satisfied they have permission to share this information with us and the collection, use and disclosure meets the requirements of the Privacy Act.

We also create and hold information to manage your Spark account, including:

• An account number and phone numbers (if any apply).
• Your service connection and disconnection dates.
• Your billing information and purchase and payment records.
• Spark products and services you use now or have used or bought before.

If you give someone else the authority to manage your account, we’ll collect their name and contact information from you. Please make sure you have this person’s agreement before you share their information with us.

We use CCTV in Spark stores to detect and prevent theft, criminal activity and fraud.

To help us understand how we can improve our products, services and your experience, we may sometimes ask you to participate in market research. When we ask this, we take the information you share with us and combine it with responses from other people. We don’t associate it with your account information in any way.

This could include details of the device you use, like your device’s technical and performance-related settings.

This is information such as how much data you’ve used or how many calling minutes or texts you’ve used. It can include what you’ve used the service for, such as whether you’ve streamed music or browsed the web.

This is information such as the phone numbers you’ve called and sent texts to, or phone numbers you’ve received calls and texts from.

This is created when:

• You use our mobile network. Information is generated about network activity (such as calls, text, data usage) at a particular cell site when this activity occurs.
• You use Spark public WiFi network hotspots.
• You call 111. This turns on GPS location capability which is used solely to notify emergency services of your location and help them respond to your call.

This is the IP address of the device you use to access Spark’s network services and the dates and times you were using our network services.

Like many companies, when you visit our websites, apps or our other online platforms (Spark sites) we collect and store information about your experience. We do this using several kinds of software:

• Advertising cookies
• Analytics cookies
• Web beacons

A cookie is a small packet of information that our website sends to your web browser, so it can recognise you when you visit and keep track of your preferences on our site. A web beacon is a small image file embedded onto a webpage that tracks what you do on that webpage.

We use cookies and web beacons to collect and store information about your visit to Spark sites, including:

• Your computer’s IP address or the mobile device type you’re using to connect to the internet and the dates and times you log on and off Spark sites.
• Your internet service provider (ISP).
• Location data based on where your user session originated.
• Your operating system and browser type.
• Your browsing behaviour on any Spark site or app, including the date and time and page URLs visited.
• If applicable, the search engine used to locate our website.
• The last page you visited before coming to a Spark site, but only if you came to our site by clicking on a link or URL on another webpage.

Where applicable and depending on the product or service, your account settings, viewing history, app usage, profiles and service experience and quality.

Learn how to turn cookies off using Google Chrome

Learn how to turn cookies off using Microsoft Internet Explorer

Learn how to turn cookies off using Mozilla Firefox

If you enable cookies in your web browser, you don’t have to re-enter your username every time you visit our websites or apps. We use cookies that store your login details locally on your device so that information isn’t passed to us. Please note, cookies will only work like this if they’re enabled. This is usually the default setting. You can turn cookies off.

You can sign into MySpark online and the Spark app using Facebook login or Google sign in. When you do this, we collect authentication information, including your Facebook or Google email address, your unique Facebook ID or Google ID and your Google profile photo if you have one.

We may also receive additional information from Facebook or Google, including your age, gender, assumed interests and browser language, if you’ve agreed to that information being shared with us in your Google and Facebook privacy settings.

See Google privacy settings

See Facebook privacy settings

We use and may share your supplied data, usage data and Spark online experience data to provide you with products and services, including to:

• Verify your identity and manage your account.
• Deliver products and services to you.
• Enable you to use Spark services to communicate with people on other telecommunications networks.
• Processing applications and online transactions.
• Charge you for our services, send you bills and process your payments.
• Offer and provide you with rewards, discounts and other benefits.
• Enable you to earn rewards and participate in any third-party loyalty programme or to receive any third-party products and services that you’ve signed up for in accordance with applicable terms.
• Communicate with you about our services, including if you contact us.
• Monitor your usage of our network and alert you if we observe unusual or potentially fraudulent usage.
• Where necessary, install products and services like broadband at relevant properties
• Understand your use of our services to make sure you’re adhering to our terms and conditions. This includes our Fair Use Policies, which can be found in the terms and conditions for the relevant service.

We use and may share your supplied data to improve our customer service, including:

• To investigate and address customer concerns.
• To help us find ways to simplify and improve our services and to better understand your needs.
• To analyse and understand the types and number of enquiries we receive.

We may use your supplied data, usage data and Spark online experience data to:

• Understand what you think of our products and services.
• Innovate, develop and improve current and new products and services.
• Help you when you report a problem and offer you better deals and more cost-efficient ways of receiving Spark services.

We may use your supplied data, usage data and Spark online experience data to:

• Operate, maintain, develop, test and optimise our services, processes, systems, platforms and networks. For example, we may use buffering and streaming experience information to make network management decisions.
• Manage traffic over our network, manage network capacity and plan for how our network may be used in the future.
• Secure and protect our systems, platforms, networks and Spark sites. This includes managing, improving and monitoring their operation, security and integrity. It also includes preventing attacks against, and threats to, their security or integrity.
• Monitor, detect and prevent fraudulent or illegal use of our services, network and Spark sites.
• Detect and prevent attacks against our networks, systems and platforms, and threats to their security or integrity. This may include monitoring traffic over our network and communications between customers and third parties. It may also include sharing information (such as the IP address responsible for a cyber attack) so other organisations can take protective measures.
• Ensure compliance with our terms and conditions for the relevant Spark product or service.

We may also need to share your personal information with other telecommunications service providers to monitor or investigate fraud or other offences.

With your agreement, we may make your name, address and Spark telephone number(s) available to providers of directory assistance and listing services, like the Yellow and White Pages. These providers may make this information publicly available in online directories, through a published phone book or through directory assistance services.

You can choose a directory listing status for your landline or mobile number that suits your preferred level of privacy (you may choose not to have a directory listing at all for example). Find out more about your options on our website. You can check and update your directory listing in MySpark or by getting in touch with us if you don’t have internet access or need help.

Manage your directory listing

Go to MySpark online

Go to Live Chat

We may use your supplied data, Spark online experience data and usage data to let you know about:

• Any changes that might affect your service.
• Other information about your service, for example telling you that we have processed your order or providing you with updates about your technology.
• Spark offers, products and services we think will interest you. This may include promotional messages about special offers, rewards, competitions, promotions and other information from the Spark group of companies.

You can opt out of all promotional messages by getting in touch with us. Or you can opt out of promotional emails by updating your
settings in MySpark online. You can also click ‘unsubscribe’ on marketing emails or reply STOP in response to a marketing text message.

Go to MySpark online

Go to Live Chat

We may use your supplied data, Spark online experience data and usage data to:

• Give you relevant information and optimise your online experience when you visit Spark sites.
• Help us understand and save your preferences for future visits.
• Understand your interests and personalise the content and offers presented to you.
• Improve our online customer experiences and Spark sites.
  
• Compile aggregated data about visits to and use of the Spark sites to improve those sites, including measuring the effectiveness of advertising on Spark and third party sites.

We may use your supplied data, Spark online experience data and usage data to:

• Present you offers and information about Spark products and services we believe will interest you when you visit other websites.
• Make information about our products or services relevant to you when we promote them on Google and Facebook.

We may sometimes run advertising campaigns where we share your email address and mobile number with Google and Facebook to help us show you relevant content, offers and ads when you visit other websites. This also helps us avoid showing you information about Spark products and services you’ve already signed up for.

We may also receive aggregated, anonymised information from Facebook and Google about people who responded to the advertising campaign, if their Google and Facebook privacy settings allow this to happen. This can include age brackets, gender, assumed interests and affinities for each campaign response type. For example, Google or Facebook may tell us that most people who clicked on the ad were aged 30-40 and like news sites. Google and Facebook collect this information based on your browser language and online behaviour.

We use this aggregated, anonymised information to:

• Understand the effectiveness of our content, offers and advertising.
• Provide relevant content offers and ads to other people who may have similar interests, based on those who responded to the ad.

The information we share with Google and Facebook is provided to them only for the purpose of delivering these services to Spark. Please note, Spark doesn’t use Facebook “Event Data” services.

Read more about how Google provides these services

Read more about how Facebook provides these services

You can opt out of us sharing information about you with Google and Facebook for these purposes. You can do this by selecting the Opt out link below. Then, enter your MySpark ID. If you don’t have a MySpark ID, you can sign up for one then come back to this page and select the Opt out link below.

Opt out of sharing your information with Google and Facebook

Register for Spark ID

Note: If you only have a landline with Spark, and no other services, then you’ll already be opted out from this initiative.

We may use your supplied data to:

• Assess your ability to pay for some of our services and, if you’ve agreed, we may share your information with credit reference agencies to run credit checks.
• Report bill payment timing (known as Positive Credit Reporting) and payment defaults to credit reference agencies.
• Credit reference agencies may keep records of the information they receive from us. They may use and share that information with other organisations for credit checking and fraud prevention purposes.

If you have unpaid bills, we may use your supplied data to:

• Refer your unpaid bills to a debt recovery agency for collection, including your name, contact details, address, account number and the amount owed.
• Sell overdue debts to other organisations.
• Enable 0900 providers to collect charges for calls you have made to them directly.
• If an 0900 call (where the party you’re calling charges you for the call) is charged to you or made from your phone using the Spark network and you don’t pay for it by the payment due date, we may share your name, address and information about the call with the 0900 provider so they can directly collect the money you owe.

We may use your supplied data and Spark online experience data to:

• Build credit and fraud controls and decision-making systems.
• Help us make risk assessments in future service applications from potential or existing customers.
• Enhance our fraud prevention and detection controls.

We may also share supplied data and online experience data with credit reference agencies. This helps us build relevant models, and can help credit reference agencies build models they use to help other organisations make credit and fraud protection and detection decisions.

We may share your supplied data, Spark online experience data, usage data and your content to enable law enforcement, government and emergency services agencies to do their work as follows:

• If we’re required to by any applicable law, court or authority or by any applicable stock exchange listing rules. For example, the Police may require us to disclose personal information in response to a production order under the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, to help with the detection and prevention of crime and the prosecution of alleged offenders.
• We may voluntarily share your personal information in certain limited circumstances, including:
  • In exceptional circumstances and where we have reasonable grounds to believe it’s necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to public health, public safety, or a person’s life or health (including your own), for example, to help the Police locate a missing person.
  • Where you’ve consented to the disclosure.
  • To the New Zealand Police or other relevant government agencies, if we believe you’ve committed fraud against Spark, for example, setting up an account in someone else’s name, or attacking or attempting to destabilise our network.
  • To confirm you’re a Spark customer to the New Zealand Police or a government agency so they can determine whether to issue a warrant requiring us to provide additional information.
  • To enable the New Zealand Police to access directory listing information (name, address and phone number) where there are reasonable grounds to believe it’s necessary for them to access that information for law enforcement purposes or to prevent or lessen a serious threat to public health, public safety, or a person’s life or health. We will, however, not disclose the information of those who’ve selected a listing status of “confidential” and who have not requested that we allow emergency services access.
    Check how to manage your directory listing status
  • Where emergency services advise that a 111 call was made from a number that appears to have been disconnected, we may confirm to them whether an attempted 111 call was made from your number and share your name, address and phone number so they can respond to the call.

We may use and disclose your supplied data and usage data to comply with our legal obligations, including:

• To comply with any court order that requires us to share your personal information (including your content) with another person or an organisation.
• To meet our contractual and legal obligations (for example, if you participate in a loyalty programme).
• To exercise our lawful rights or those of any of our related companies or parties.
• Where disclosure of that information is necessary as part of the sale of a Spark business or asset.

We may use your supplied data to manage your status as a Vulnerable End User of Spark services to ensure you’re not unduly placed at risk when we connect, disconnect, maintain and repair faults with your Spark service. This may require us to share your personal information with other telco network operators to identify your service connection. If necessary in your situation, we may also share any medical details relevant to your connection, such as the presence of a medical device.

Learn about Vulnerable End Users

Anonymised, aggregated data is a set of data about many people, where personal identifiers, such as name, address and phone number have been removed so individuals can’t be identified. This protects your personal privacy. We use this anonymised, aggregated data to:

• Improve our products, services and customer experience.
• Build decision making systems that help us to assess future applications for service.
• Enhance our fraud prevention and detection controls.

We may also use anonymised, aggregated data to provide insights to other organisations – such as our advertisers, customers and partners.

Mobile location data

For example, as you use our mobile services, we collect information about how you are using our mobile network. This includes your mobile location data generated from use of our mobile network through our mobile, wireless broadband and wireless landline services.

We may use this anonymised, aggregated mobile location data to optimise our network (for example, to plan where to increase our mobile network capacity) and enhance our customer experiences. We may also share insights gained from analysis of this data to help other organisations better understand, plan for and meet the needs of their customers and the public.

Qrious

We provide anonymised, aggregated mobile location data to Qrious, a Spark-owned data and analytics organisation. Qrious analyses this and other non-Spark data (for example, aggregated demographic data) for insights that can help organisations improve infrastructure and services, such as making decisions about transport and infrastructure investment. If you would like to opt-out from having your information included in the data set provided to Qrious, or if you have any queries or concerns, email privacy@spark.co.nz

We store most of your personal information on our own servers here in New Zealand. But from time to time we may need to store personal information in the cloud (online). This may involve storage in data centres outside New Zealand. Our data centre and storage service providers are always carefully selected to ensure they can be trusted with your information.

We apply strict security measures and follow industry standards to keep your personal information secure. To help with this, we ask that you:

• Keep unique account information such as your account number, PIN and password secure and don’t share them with anyone.
• Always select strong, unique passwords or PINs that you don’t use for any other services or platforms and you haven’t used in the past.
• Don’t reuse your password or PIN for any other services or platforms.

We may assume that any verbal or online request or instruction we receive is authorised by you if it’s accompanied by suitable verification (like your Spark account number, personal identification number or password).

We work hard and follow industry best practice to ensure the information we hold is secure.

If we become aware of a data breach that we think could compromise customer security, we’ll report this to affected customers at the earliest opportunity. We may also report the breach publicly, if we consider it appropriate to do so or if we’re required to by law.

Generally, we only keep your personal information for as long as it’s needed. That means once we’ve carried out the purpose for which we first collected it, we get rid of it – either by deleting it or anonymising it.

More specifically:

• We keep billing records for seven years.
• We keep text messages for approximately one month to verify and address any delivery issues.
• We generally keep recordings of telephone and Live Chat conversations between our contact centres and customers for up to 60 days.  We may keep them longer if a recording is needed to investigate a complaint, for customer service coaching or if legislation or industry codes require us to keep it.

If you’re a Spark customer, we may continue to hold, use and share your supplied data after our agreement with you ends and you stop being a Spark customer. We do this so that we can contact you with future offers, to discuss matters relating to your former account or to help improve our credit and fraud management controls and decision-making/credit scoring models. This also makes it easy to re-connect your account if you wish to join us again in the future.

In additions to the reasons set out above, we may share your personal information with third parties:

• Where you have consented to the information being shared, subject to appropriate confidentiality obligations.
• Where the reason for doing so is related to the purpose for which we originally collected the personal information.

If you enable cookies in your web browser, you don’t have to re-enter your username every time you visit our websites or apps. We use cookies that store your login details locally on your device so that information isn’t passed to us. Cookies are usually enabled by default. You can turn cookies off.

Learn how to turn cookies off using Google Chrome

Learn how to turn cookies off using Microsoft Internet Explorer

Learn how to turn cookies off using Mozilla Firefox

You can choose whether you’d like to be kept up to date with the latest offers and promotions from Spark.

You can opt out of all promotional messages by getting in touch with us. Or you can opt out of promotional emails by updating your settings in MySpark online. You can also click "unsubscribe" on marketing emails or reply STOP in response to a marketing text message.

Go to MySpark online

Go to Live Chat

You can choose a directory listing status for your landline or mobile number that suits your preferred level of privacy (you may choose not to have a directory listing at all for example). Find out more about your options on our website. You can check and update your directory listing in MySpark or by getting in touch with us if you don’t have internet access or need help. 

Manage your directory listing

Go to MySpark online

Go to Live Chat

Spark shares anonymised, aggregated mobile location data with Spark-owned company Qrious. These are large sets of data that Qrious use to provide insights to other organisations. For example, there are often 6000 people in region ‘A’ at 1pm on Saturdays. These insights help organisations improve infrastructure and services. You can choose to have your anonymised mobile location data excluded from these large data sets by emailing us.

Email: privacy@spark.co.nz

We may share your email address and/or mobile number with Facebook and Google to help us personalise your experience of Spark on those platforms and other websites with relevant content, offers and ads from Spark.

You can opt out of us sharing  information about you with Google and Facebook for these purposes. If you opt out, you may still see ads and other information from us, but it won’t always be as relevant to you. You can opt out by clicking the link below then entering your MySpark ID. If you don’t have a MySpark ID, you can sign up for one then come back to this page and click the link below to opt out. 

Opt out of sharing your information with Google and Facebook 

Register for Spark ID

Note: If you only have a landline with Spark, and no other services, then you’ll already be opted out from this initiative.