Privacy and data use
Last updated 10 September 2026
fieldteam is doorknocking software. Community organisations license an electorate, knock on doors in it, and write down what people say.
We do not ask for your name unless you offer to help the campaign. We are not a political party and we do not work for one, and we do not record how you vote or which party you support. There is no field for any of that in the software.
How your information reaches us
Nearly always at your door. A volunteer knocks, you have a conversation, and they write down what was said.
The rest comes from public registers. Street addresses come from G-NAF, the national address file. Electorate boundaries come from the Australian Electoral Commission, and population figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. None of those contain anything about you personally.
We do not buy lists, and we do not collect anything about you from social media.
What we hold
About the conversation:
- Whether anyone was home, and whether they wanted to talk
- How supportive of the campaign's cause you seemed, rated one to five by the volunteer
- Your answers to whatever questions that campaign is asking at the door
- Any notes the volunteer typed
About you, where you offered it:
- The volunteer's rough guess at your age and gender
- The volunteer's rough guess at the language you speak at home
- Whether you offered to help the campaign
Your phone number and email address, only with your consent. We only ask if you have offered to help the campaign or to put a sign up. Otherwise the question is never put to you and the fields stay empty. You can give a first name at that point too, so whoever rings you knows who they are asking for. That is the only name we hold, and only if you give it. Giving consent to be contacted is not the same as agreeing to be kept on file forever, and you can withdraw it whenever you like by asking us.
Why we hold it
So the campaign knows which doors it has knocked, does not send someone back to the same door a week later, and can get back to people who asked to hear more.
Who can see it
- The organisation that knocked on your door. Only its own members, and only those whose role allows it.
- Volunteers see the streets assigned to them, and nothing beyond that.
- Other organisations licensed in your electorate see what was said at your door without who said it: the issues you raised, the one-to-five rating, and whether a sign has been hosted here. They never see your name or your contact details.
- The volunteer's guess at your age and gender is never shown against your address, not to the campaign and not to the volunteer who typed it. After a week it is deleted from your record, and all that is left is a count: how many people in an age group said what, so the campaign can understand the demographics of your electorate better. Counts of fewer than five people are not shown at all.
- The volunteer's notes, the guess at your language, and whether you offered to help stay inside the one organisation you told.
- We can reach your record for three things: to fix a fault in the software, to answer a question an organiser has asked us about it, and to action a request from you to see, correct or delete what we hold. Every time a staff member reads contact details, that read is recorded.
We do not sell, rent, share or trade anyone’s contact details. We do not share what issues you raise with any person or organisation who is not on the platform.
What does not belong in a record
Campaigns write their own questions to ask at the door, and the notes field is free text, so we cannot stop a volunteer typing anything at all. What we can do is set the rule: it stays about the issue being campaigned on. Your health, race, religion, sexuality, party membership and who you vote for are none of their business and should not be in there, unless you tell us explicitly. If you find something in your record that should not be, tell us and we will take it out.
Seeing your record, correcting it, or deleting it
Ask and we will tell you what we hold about you. Ask and we will correct it, or delete it, as you wish. Use the form below, or email us. We will answer within 30 days, and there is no fee. Give us the address, because there is no name on the record to search for.
When we delete, your name if we have one, your contact details, what you said and any notes all go. What stays is that the door was visited, with nothing that points back to you. That much has to stay, or a campaign will knock on you again next week.
Most of it is deleted on a timer, without anyone having to ask. The campaign stops being able to see your phone number, email and first name the day it is wound up, and ninety days after that they are deleted, along with whether you offered to help, the volunteer’s notes, and the guess at your language. The ninety days is so a campaign wound up by mistake can be put back, not so anyone can keep reading. What stays is the address, that someone knocked and when, the issues raised there, the one-to-five rating, and whether a sign has been hosted — kept against the address, with no name on it, so a campaign knows which doors have already been asked. If you want that gone too, ask, and it goes.
If you are under 18
A volunteer can note that the person they spoke to looked under 18. We do not knowingly keep contact details for anyone under 18, and we would rather not hold anything about you at all. Ask us and we will delete it.
Everything we hold, in one table
The same rules as above, in the form we keep them in. The colour on the left of each row is who can see it: blue is every organisation licensed in your electorate, grey is one organisation, pink is us alone.
| What we hold | Who can see it | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Your street address | Public information, from the national address file (G-NAF) | Kept |
| What was said at your door: the issues you raised, how strongly you feel about them (1 to 5), whether a sign has been hosted here, and notes on getting in | Every organisation licensed in your electorate, so whoever knocks next already knows | Kept |
| The volunteer's notes, and the language spoken here if English was a barrier | Only the organisation that knocked, for their campaign (and us, to keep the platform running) | Deleted 90 days after the campaign is wound up |
| The volunteer's guess at your age (one of four brackets) and gender (one of three) | Nobody sees it against your address. The campaign sees counts by age group, and only where at least five people fall in the same group | Deleted from your record after 7 days. The counts are kept |
| Only if you say yes: your name, phone, email, and whether you offered to help | Only the organisation that knocked, for their campaign (and us, to keep the platform running). They lose sight of it the day the campaign is wound up | Deleted 90 days after the campaign is wound up |
| 2021 Census figures for the area | Public information, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Nothing about you personally | Kept |
About the people who use the software:
| What we hold | Who can see it | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Your name, email, organisation and what you have done in the software | Your own organisation (and us, to keep the platform running) | While your organisation is licensed, then 90 days |
| What you wrote in the end-of-shift survey, and how confident you said you felt | You, and your own organisation's leaders and admins | While your organisation is licensed, then 90 days |
Who else can reach it
Who can reach it, and what each one can actually reach. We do not sell data and we do not share it with anyone else.
| Company | Where they are | What they can reach |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Singapore and USA. Our data stored in Sydney | Everything. They run the database |
| AWS, including SES | USA. Our data stored in Sydney | Everything in principle, since Supabase runs on it. Also sends our email |
| Vercel | USA. Our data stored in Sydney | Everything. Pages are built on their servers, so resident data passes through them, and the key that bypasses our access rules is held there |
| Action Network, NationBuilder, or Salesforce | USA. Only if the organisation that knocked connects one | Only what that organisation is entitled to take: a first name, phone, email, address, and what someone offered to do. Never the notes, the one-to-five rating, or the language spoken |
| OpenFreeMap | Hungary | No resident data. They see each volunteer's IP address and which map tiles are requested, which is to say which streets are being walked, by whom, and when |
How it is kept safe
Who can read what is enforced by the database itself, not only by the website in front of it. Anyone whose role lets them see residents’ phone numbers or email addresses has to sign in with an authenticator app as well as a password, and their reads of those details are logged. A first name given when someone offers to help is protected the same way.
The database is hosted by Supabase and the site by Vercel, both in Sydney. Email to organisers goes out through Amazon SES, also in Sydney. Your information stays in Australia while it is with us.
The one exception is a campaign that connects its own contact list. If the organisation that knocked on your door uses Action Network, NationBuilder or Salesforce, the details you agreed to give them can be sent there, and all three are American companies. What can be sent is set out in the table on the other tab, and it is less than they can download as a spreadsheet: never the volunteer’s notes, never how supportive you seemed, and never the language spoken. Once it is in their contact list it is theirs to look after, not ours.
If your information is ever exposed, we will tell you. Where the law requires it we will also report it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.
If you are not happy
Email us first and we will try to sort it out. We aim to handle any issues promptly and with respect for your privacy. We may require more information from you before we can understand the issue fully and suggest a resolution. If you are still not happy, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.
Changes to this page
We may change this policy. If we change it in a way that matters, we will say so on the site rather than quietly editing it. We will not apply a weaker policy to information we already hold without asking the people it belongs to.