Privacy Policy

Version 2.0 · Last updated 1 November 2026

1. Privacy at a glance

Intelligent Choice AI Consulting is a small Melbourne consultancy that helps Australian small and medium businesses decide where AI can help them. In this policy, “the Services” means the consulting services we provide to clients under our Standard Terms of Trade and a Phase Schedule. We collect as little personal information as we can, we tell you what we do with it, and we keep it only as long as we need it.

• What we collect. For the AI Readiness Calculator: your ticked answers and, if you choose, your sector. If you ask for your results by email or for a free consultation: your email address and, for a consultation, your name, company, website and what you would like help with.
• What we do not ask for. Health, financial or other sensitive details, or government identifiers such as a tax file number or licence number. Please do not type them into free-text boxes.
• What the AI sees. The calculator’s summary is written by an AI service from your ticked answers and sector only. Your name and email address are never sent to it.
• Where it is kept. With the providers named in section 8, in the countries shown there.
• How long. Normally 24 months after we last deal with you, then deleted. Test and spam entries are deleted within days. See section 9.
• We do not sell your information. We email you only what you asked for and, once, a follow-up about a free chat. Our results emails tell you how to stop, and replying STOP to any of our emails stops further follow-up.
• Your rights. Ask to see, correct or delete your information. We answer within 10 days. If we get it wrong, complain to us first.
• Client Services. When a client gives us information about its customers or staff, the client stays responsible for it. We use it only to provide the Services, minimise it, keep it apart, and delete it at the end. See section 13.
• Contact. travis@intelligentchoice.digital.

2. Who we are and how this policy applies

Intelligent Choice AI Consulting (“Intelligent Choice”, “we”, “us”), ABN 78 462 883 855, is operated by Travis Shaw as a sole trader in Melbourne, Victoria. This policy covers people who visit our website, use our tools, contact us, work for our clients, or supply goods and services to us.

Our commitment to the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). We are a small business, and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) does not apply to us by default. We have chosen to handle personal information as if the 13 Australian Privacy Principles applied to us, and our Standard Terms of Trade commit us to this in every client engagement. This policy is guided by the APPs, and the schedule at the end shows where each one is met.

Two roles. When we collect information for ourselves (website visitors, people who enquire, our suppliers), we are responsible for it. When a client gives us information about its own customers, staff or suppliers so we can provide the Services, the client remains responsible for that information, and we handle it only to deliver the Services, under our Standard Terms of Trade (clause 8). Section 13 explains how.

3. What we collect

• Sensitive information. We do not ask for health, racial or ethnic origin, religion, political, union, criminal or similar information. If you send it to us unasked, we delete it unless we need it and you consent. Our Standard Terms exclude it from the Services unless the Phase Schedule says otherwise and safeguards are agreed.
• Government identifiers. We do not collect or use tax file numbers, licence numbers or similar identifiers to identify you. (APP 9)
• Anonymity. You can read everything on our website and use the calculator without giving us your name or any contact detail. To arrange a conversation we need your name and a way to reach you. (APP 2)
• Information we did not ask for. If we receive personal information we did not ask for, we decide within a reasonable time whether we could have collected it. If not, we destroy or de-identify it. (APP 4)
• How we collect. Directly from you through our forms and email, automatically through the website host, and from clients when they give us information for the Services. We may read a business’s public website to prepare a proposal. We do not buy contact lists.

4. Why we use and share it

• To reply to your enquiry, arrange a free 15-minute conversation and prepare a written proposal.
• To show your calculator score and summary, and to email your results if you ask.
• To follow up once about a free chat after you have asked for your results. Anything beyond that needs your agreement. Our results email names us and tells you how to stop, and we act on a stop request within 5 working days. (APP 7, Spam Act 2003)
• To deliver the Services, invoice for it and keep the records the law requires.
• To keep the website and our systems secure.
• We use information only for the purpose we collected it for, a closely related purpose you would reasonably expect, or with your consent, or where the law requires or allows. (APP 6)
• We do not sell or rent personal information. We do not build profiles of individuals.
• No automated decisions about you. Nothing in our calculator or workflows decides anything about an individual. The summary is a conversation starter about a business.

5. Telling you at the point of collection

Each form says, next to the Send button, who we are, why we are asking, that we do not sell the information, that sensitive details should be left out, and where to read this policy. (APP 5)

6. How our systems are designed to protect your information

These are design choices we made when we built the website workflows, not just promises.

• Ask for less. Each form asks only for what we use. The calculator needs no personal details.
• Keep contact details away from the AI. The summary request contains tick answers and a sector chosen from a fixed list. It has no name, email address or free text.
• Treat form data as data. The AI is told to ignore any instructions found in the input. We check its reply before showing it: two plain paragraphs, no links, no named software.
• Fail safely. If the AI is slow or unavailable, the page shows a standard summary after 7 seconds. Nobody is left without a result and nothing is lost.
• Accept requests only from our own site. Our workflow addresses are set to accept browser requests from our website only.
• Limit abuse. Forms use a hidden trap field, a minimum time-open check, address checks, and limits per address and per hour. These also limit how much personal information can be collected by mistake or on purpose.
• Keep website information apart from client information. Website data sits in its own Airtable base, reached by a token that cannot see any other base. Client billing records are in a separate base, and client documents are kept in a folder for each client. We keep a short written record of where each kind of information sits and who can reach it.
• Give each tool only the access it needs. The website’s Airtable token reads and writes records in one base only, and the AI key is limited to a single workspace.
• People check what AI produces before a deliverable goes to a client (Standard Terms clause 6.6).
• Delete on a schedule (section 9).

What happens when you use the calculator and ask for your results.

1. You tick your answers. They stay in your browser.
2. If you pick a sector and see your result, your answers and sector go to our workflow tool, which asks an AI service for the two-paragraph summary and sends it back to your page.
3. If you press “Email me these results” and enter your address, your email, answers, sector and the summary you saw go to our workflow tool. It checks them and saves them in our Airtable database.
4. An email goes to you from our mail provider, with a copy to us.
5. If you request a consultation, the details you type are saved in a separate table, linked to your results if the email matches, and we receive an email.

7. How we use AI

• On our website. The calculator summary is written by Anthropic’s Claude, through its commercial API. The page says it is AI-powered.
• In our own business. We use AI assistants to help draft and analyse. Our AI tools run on Anthropic’s commercial API. We enter client personal information into a tool only if the tool’s terms do not allow our inputs to be used for model training, it has appropriate security, and the client has been told which tools we use, in the Phase Schedule or in writing (Standard Terms clause 8.4). Where we can, we de-identify first. We have a written rule that client information goes only into tools on commercial terms.
• Recording sessions. We record and transcribe a session only if the client agrees in writing beforehand, and we tell everyone taking part. We would use Fireflies, a service in the United States. We delete the voice recording as soon as the transcript has been created, and the transcript from Fireflies once it has been saved to our records. Fireflies also deletes recordings and transcripts automatically after a set period, as a backstop.
• No training on your information through our website. Under Anthropic’s Commercial Terms, which govern API use, Anthropic may not train its models on what we send or on what it returns, and it keeps inputs and outputs for a limited period (currently 30 days) for safety and operation.
• Accuracy. AI output can be wrong. We treat it as a draft, review it before it goes to a client, and describe the calculator summary as a starting point and not a verdict. (APP 10)
• Before adding AI to anything that touches personal information we check the privacy impact first and keep a written record of the check.

8. Who we share it with, and sending it overseas

We use the providers below. Each receives only what it needs to do its job. Before we use one we look at its security and terms, and whether it uses inputs for training. Some are outside Australia. We list the countries where we can. (APP 8)

We also disclose information where the law requires or allows, to our professional advisers under confidentiality, and, if the business is ever sold, to the buyer on the same terms. If an overseas provider mishandles information we gave it, we will deal with that provider and tell you if you are affected.

9. Keeping it secure, and how long we keep it

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. (APP 11) Our measures are:

• Two-step sign-in on every account that holds personal information, checked and recorded in a written check that we repeat regularly.
• A password manager, and encrypted, screen-locked devices, checked in the same way.
• Encrypted connections (HTTPS) for the website and for all workflows.
• Access limited to the two people who run the business. No one else has access to client or website information without a signed confidentiality obligation (Standard Terms clauses 7 and 12.2).
• Tokens and credentials limited to what each workflow needs. The Anthropic key expiry (2 November 2027) is diarised.
• Backups of our key records: our host backs up the website files and database daily (the host sets how long it keeps them). We keep no other backup.
• A review of providers when we adopt them and at least once a year.

How long we keep information. We keep information only while it is needed for the purpose it was collected, or as the law requires. Then we delete it or remove what identifies you. (APP 11.2)

10. Seeing and correcting your information

• Email travis@intelligentchoice.digital with what you would like to see, correct or delete. We may ask you to confirm your identity, for example by replying from the address we hold. (APP 12, 13)
• We look in each place your information could be: the website tables, our email, our documents and the workflow logs. We reply within 10 days and do not charge for a request.
• If we cannot give you access, we tell you why in writing and how to complain.
• If information is wrong, we correct it. If we have passed it to a provider and you ask us to, we tell the provider. If we cannot agree on a correction, we will attach your statement to the record.
• To stop emails, reply STOP. We act within 5 working days. We handle these requests by hand and record them against your entry.

11. Complaints

Write to travis@intelligentchoice.digital. We will acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days, look into it, and give you a written answer, normally within 30 days. If you are still not satisfied, we suggest you seek independent advice.

12. This is what we do if something goes wrong

• Contain the problem straight away, for example by cutting off a token or password.
• Assess what was affected, whether anyone could be seriously harmed, and what we can do to reduce the harm. We aim to finish within 30 days at the latest and usually far sooner.
• Tell the right people. If a client’s information is involved, we tell the client promptly and aim to do so within 48 hours of becoming aware, so it can meet its own duties. Where a breach is likely to cause serious harm to people whose information we hold for ourselves, we tell them as soon as practicable, and we may also notify the OAIC. We are guided by the approach of the notifiable data breaches scheme; it does not bind us unless we opt in.
• Record and learn. We keep a register of incidents and review what to change.

13. When we handle information for a client

14. Cookies and website analytics

The website uses one first-party cookie to remember your Light or Dark choice. It does not use advertising or tracking cookies, and does not use analytics. Fonts are loaded from Google, which receives your IP address when a page loads. Our AI Basics videos are hosted on YouTube. They load only when you press play, using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, and until then your browser does not contact YouTube. Once a video plays, Google receives your IP address and may set cookies under its own policy. You can control cookies in your browser.

15. Links, changes and versions

Our site may link to other sites; we do not control their privacy practices. We review this policy at least twice a year and when the law or our systems change. The latest version is always at intelligentchoice.digital/privacy-policy, and we send a copy free in any form you ask for. Version 2.0, 1 November 2026; version 1.1, 23 October 2026; version 1.0, 14 October 2026.

16. Contact

Intelligent Choice AI Consulting, ABN 78 462 883 855. Privacy contact: Travis Shaw, travis@intelligentchoice.digital. Email is our contact for privacy matters.

17. Schedule: the 13 APPs and how we meet them

How we manage privacy day to day. Seven short written procedures sit behind the commitments in this policy. They cover: notices on our forms; a regular routine of security and housekeeping checks; keeping website information and client information apart; a rule for using AI tools; a privacy check before we add AI to anything that touches personal information; a plan for what to do if something goes wrong; and a record, for each client, of where its information is held and when it was returned or deleted. We keep them up to date, review them at least twice a year, and can describe them to you on request. Blank copies of the working documents are published in the APP Compliance Framework section of our Reference Library, as blank templates. We use the same ones ourselves and keep the completed copies in our records.