Privacy policy

This policy describes how personal information is handled on Who Called Australia, with reference to the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), as well as the GDPR for visitors from the EU.

Last updated: 14 October 2026.

1. Who operates this service

The operator is named in the legal notice. Contact: contact@whocalledaustralia.com.

2. Principle: no database about people, no raw IP addresses

This site does not offer a reverse lookup based on personal data. Number pages are built exclusively on the official ACMA register data (which identifies carriers, not people) and on moderated community reports. Lookups, ratings, reports and removal requests never store your IP address. To prevent abuse (duplicate ratings, spam, rate limits), an irreversible keyed HMAC checksum is computed from the IP address; the IP cannot be recovered from that value. The one exception is the visit statistics described in section 3.

3. Server logs and visit statistics

The web server (Nginx) logs accesses for technical reasons: IP address, time, requested page and browser identifier. Logs serve operational security and error diagnosis, rotate automatically and are deleted after 14 days at the latest.

For visit statistics, a small script reports each page you open to our server, which stores one record per page view: the page address, the time, the page you came from, your browser's user- agent string, your IP address and its keyed HMAC checksum, and the random identifier from the wcl_sid cookie. We use these records to count visits and distinct visitors, to separate people from automated traffic, to work out which country visits come from, and to see how many different people open a number page (a number page opened by several different people within 90 days is offered to search engines). These records currently have no fixed deletion date. If your browser sends a Do Not Track signal, the script records nothing and sets no cookie.

The wcl_sid cookie is set by this site itself. It holds only a random identifier, so that several pages viewed in the same browser count as one visitor; it is not used for advertising and is not shared with other companies. It expires one year after it is set, and you can delete it in your browser at any time. Apart from it, the site itself sets no cookies; advertising cookies are covered in section 7.

4. Number lookups

Looked-up numbers are logged with a timestamp and the HMAC checksum described above — for abuse prevention and to identify frequently checked numbers. Lookups cannot be traced back to any person.

5. Ratings and reports

When you submit a rating or report we store the content, the chosen category, an optional name (free text, no real name required), the time and the HMAC checksum. Longer written reports are published only after editorial review and labelled as personal opinion.

6. Removal and dispute procedure

Anyone affected by a number page can request review, correction or removal of content via the Data removal and disputes page (APPs 12 and 13 cover access and correction). Requests enter an internal queue and decisions are logged verifiably. The email address you provide is used solely to handle the request.

7. Advertising, cookies and your choices

Advertising from Google AdSense (Google LLC / Google Ireland Ltd.) can appear on the homepage, the guides and the overview pages: the spam barometer and the lists of prefixes, numbering areas, number types, country codes and carriers. Number pages load no advertising code at all, whether or not they carry reports, and neither do the pages for a single prefix, area, number type, country code or carrier, or the about, contact and legal pages.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet. Google may also process personal information such as your IP address. Details: how Google uses information from sites that use its services and Google's privacy policy.

You can opt out of personalised advertising in Google's Ads Settings, and opt out of personalised advertising from other participating companies at youronlinechoices.com.au.

Visitors from the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland see Google's consent message before advertising cookies are used. You can accept, refuse or choose individual purposes and partners; if you refuse, Google does not use cookies to personalise ads for you but may still show non-personalised ads. You can change your choice at any time with the "Privacy settings" link at the foot of any page that shows advertising. For visitors from elsewhere, and on pages without advertising, that link opens this policy.

8. Your rights

Under the Privacy Act you can ask for access to (APP 12) and correction of (APP 13) personal information we hold, and complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) if you believe we've mishandled it. EU visitors additionally have the GDPR rights of access, rectification, erasure and objection. Exercise any of these by writing to contact@whocalledaustralia.com or via the Data removal and disputes form.

9. Retention

Community content is kept for as long as it serves the service or until a removal request is upheld. Lookup and rate-limit logs are purged periodically. Server logs and visit statistics: see section 3.