Privacy policy

Electronic Field Notebooks Pty Ltd builds and operates Fieldmark®, and runs two websites, fieldmark.au and fieldnote.au. This policy covers the personal information we handle across all of them: when you read our websites, when you use Fieldmark, and when you write to us.

Last updated: 16 October 2026

In brief

• Reading our websites: we run no analytics or advertising trackers. The network that delivers our sites handles the technical information needed to serve them, and sets only short-lived security cookies.
• Using Fieldmark: we hold your account details so that you can sign in. The research data you and your team put in belongs to whoever holds the plan (you, on an individual plan, or the organisation or team that holds it), and we hold it on their behalf.
• Where it is held: our hosted service keeps the records you create in Fieldmark in its database in Australia, unless your organisation’s agreement says otherwise. A few routine services that support Fieldmark are provided from outside Australia. Error reports, which help us fix faults, can include personal information and research content, and are held in the United States for 60 days (see Sending information overseas).
• Your rights: ask us for a copy, a correction, or deletion at [email protected].

Who we are

Electronic Field Notebooks Pty Ltd, ABN 15 640 693 287, of Level 1/457-459 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia.

Visiting our websites

Our websites, fieldmark.au and fieldnote.au, run no analytics and no advertising or social-media trackers. We do not track your visits or build a profile of you. As with any website, our hosting provider and the network that delivers the sites handle the technical information needed to serve and protect them, such as your device’s network address. Our pages load nothing from an advertising network, a social network, or a font service, so none of them learns that you visited.

Our websites set only security cookies. The network through which our hosting provider delivers the sites sets a short-lived cookie that helps tell people from automated traffic, and, if it ever asks you to complete a check before a page loads, one that records that you passed. They are not used for analytics or advertising, and they are needed to deliver the sites securely, so there is no consent banner.

When you write to us. Asking for a Fieldmark evaluation opens a message in your own mail program, with prompts for your organisation, who would use Fieldmark, and, if you like, a line about your fieldwork. Nothing is submitted to a server on our sites, and you choose what to send. The same applies to any other enquiry: what reaches us is the email you send.

Using Fieldmark

Your account

To let you sign in, Fieldmark holds your name, your email address, which is also your user identifier, and the roles you hold in each team and notebook. If you sign in with a Google account, through the Australian Access Federation, or through your organisation’s own sign-in service, we receive the profile that service sends, and Fieldmark keeps it with your account. It includes your name and email address, and can include other details the service holds, such as an account identifier or a link to a profile picture.

If you use a Fieldmark password, our sign-in database stores it only in hashed form, never in plain text.

Every record carries the identity of the person who created or last edited it, as part of its history.

The service keeps technical logs of the requests it receives, with the time, the address requested, and a network address (your device’s IP address, or that of a network service between you and us). Ordinary log lines do not name you. Using an invitation, downloading an export, and any request an administrator makes while signed in as you are logged with your account, and the first two also with your device’s IP address. When something goes wrong, an error report is sent to our error-reporting service, which helps us find and fix faults. It carries the error, technical details of your device, your network address, and a random identifier that the service keeps in the app’s or browser’s storage on your device. From the app and the Dashboard, it also carries the address of the page in use and a short trail of what the software was doing before the error: the screens opened, the text of things tapped, and the messages it logged. Depending on what was happening, that can include a notebook’s name, names or email addresses shown on screen, and research values from a record. From the server, a report carries the details of the request that failed, including what was sent with it. The service also receives brief usage information, used to measure reliability, even when nothing goes wrong. It holds error reports in the United States and keeps them for 60 days. Not every report carries all of this.

The Fieldmark app sets two cookies of its own, both needed for it to work: a short-lived one while you sign in, and one that authorises an export download. Neither tracks you. The security cookies described under Visiting our websites are also set on the app and the Dashboard.

Maps. Fieldmark’s maps come from a map service. When the Fieldmark app or the Dashboard shows a map, or downloads one for offline use, your device requests the map images for that area from the map service. Where a deployment offers satellite imagery, it comes the same way. Where a deployment offers address suggestions, the text you type into an address field is sent to the map service to find matching addresses. These requests reach it through a worldwide delivery network. The map service has confirmed to us that this network holds your device’s IP address for about 20 minutes so the service can work, and that the map service itself stores no data about the people using its maps. It says it does not track what people do on its maps, and has confirmed that it keeps none of the text typed into address searches.

Our operations administrators can sign in as you to diagnose a problem. They do so only when you or your organisation ask, to investigate a security incident, or to investigate a suspected breach of our user terms. We log the start of each session, and every request made during it to the Fieldmark application programming interface (API).

The data you put into Fieldmark

The records, photographs, locations, and notebook designs you and your team create belong to whoever holds the plan (you, if you hold an individual plan, or the organisation or team that holds it). We hold them on the plan holder’s behalf, to provide the service. The plan holder decides who can see and change them, through the roles it gives people, and you can export them at any time from the notebook’s Export tab.

Fieldmark works offline, so each device that syncs a notebook keeps its own copy of the notebook’s records, including after it syncs. We can delete data from the service, and it leaves our backups as they expire, but we cannot directly erase the copies held on devices. If those copies must go, the app’s “Wipe and reset everything” option clears a device. Use it with care, and ask us first: it deletes every notebook and record on that device, including any not yet synced.

On a paid or self-hosted service, your organisation’s data is governed by the agreement covering that service. A self-hosted deployment runs on your organisation’s own infrastructure, wherever it chooses to put it.

During an evaluation, the records belong to the organisation that asked for the evaluation, or to you if you asked as an individual. You can export them at any time, and you do not need to ask us first. An evaluation may run on a demonstration system, which is not backed up. If you continue, your data carries across to the paid service. If you do not, we keep the workspace for 30 days after the evaluation ends so that you can still export, and then we delete it; it leaves our backups as they expire. Export first: after deletion we cannot recover it.

Where it is held. The hosted Fieldmark service runs in an Australian data centre, in Sydney. An Enterprise customer can instead have a dedicated cloud deployment, also in Sydney unless its agreement says otherwise, or a deployment on its own infrastructure.

Writing to us

When you email us, for support or anything else, we keep the correspondence so that we can answer you and pick up the thread next time. Support email is read by the people who run the service. Our email is held by our email provider (see Sending information overseas).

How long we keep it

The hosted service is backed up every day. We keep each daily backup for 7 days, one backup a week for 4 weeks, and one backup a month for 12 months. So your data can be restored as it stood on any day in the past week, at weekly points over the past month, and at monthly points over the past year.

Twelve months is the ceiling, and it runs from the moment data leaves the database, not from when your account closes. Deleting a single record in Fieldmark marks it as deleted but keeps it in the notebook, where it can be restored, so its clock starts only when the notebook itself is deleted. If you need a record removed for good before then, ask us: we can delete it directly from the database, and its clock starts from that point. No copy survives in any backup beyond the twelve months.

Whilst a notebook is live, nothing is counting down. It sits in the database and is captured by each new backup, indefinitely, for as long as you keep it.

Unless the contract says otherwise, at the end of a contract the two periods run in sequence: the workspace stays available for 30 days so you can export, and the last backups taken before it was removed expire up to 12 months after that. So the outside limit is about 13 months from the end of a contract, and considerably less for a dedicated Enterprise cloud deployment.

Keeping a year of monthly backups is deliberate. Fieldmark holds research data, which contains personal information only incidentally and usually very little of it, and researchers discover their mistakes late. A season’s fieldwork cannot be collected again, and a year of recoverable history is worth more to the people whose data it is than an early deletion would be. Where that judgement does not suit a project, a shorter window can be set for it.

Dedicated Enterprise cloud deployments are the exception, because storage there costs considerably more. A backup is taken every day and each is kept for 30 days, so data can be restored as it stood on any day in the past 30 days, and no copy survives more than 30 days after deletion. Retention is stated in the agreement covering the deployment.

Why we collect it

To answer you, to set up an evaluation if you have asked for one, to provide and support Fieldmark, and to keep a record of who has asked. We do not sell personal information, we do not disclose it for advertising, and we do not use it to market to you unless you have asked us to.

Who else sees it

The people inside Electronic Field Notebooks who need it, and the service providers we use to run Fieldmark, our websites, and our mail: our hosting providers, the network that delivers our websites and the app, our email provider, an error-reporting service, an email delivery service for the service’s own emails, such as verification codes and password resets, and a map service for maps and address suggestions. Those outside Australia are listed, with their countries, under Sending information overseas. We do not pass your information to anyone else for their own purposes.

Sending information overseas

The records you and your team create in Fieldmark are stored in an Australian data centre: notebooks, records, photographs, attachments, and their details. An Enterprise customer who asks for a different location has the arrangement scoped in its agreement. The services below can still receive some information outside Australia. In particular, an error report can include personal information and research content, as described under Your account.

A few routine services that support Fieldmark and our business are provided from outside Australia. Each receives only the information listed here.

We use these services on their providers’ published terms, which describe how they protect personal information. If a change would send personal information to a different country, we will update this table.

Security

The security page describes how Fieldmark protects data in transit, controls access, and is tested.

Seeing it, correcting it, and complaining

Ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you and, subject to the exceptions allowed by law, we will give you access to it within a reasonable period. We may charge a reasonable fee to cover the cost of giving access, and will tell you before we do. If you tell us it is wrong, we will take reasonable steps to correct it. If we refuse a request for access or correction, we will tell you why, unless it would be unreasonable to do so. You can also ask us to delete it. We will do so unless we are required or permitted by law to keep it, or we still need it to provide the service, to resolve a dispute, or to protect our legal rights. Copies held in backups are removed as those backups expire (see How long we keep it). Records you created in an organisation’s notebooks keep your identity as part of their history, because they belong to that organisation, and the database keeps a note that your account was deleted, which includes your email address. If your request concerns records in a notebook that belongs to an organisation, we may refer you to that organisation, because it controls those records. We may ask you to confirm who you are before we act on any request.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, tell us first, in writing to [email protected], and give us a reasonable opportunity to respond. We will consider your complaint and let you know the outcome within a reasonable period. If that does not settle it, you may be able to complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at www.oaic.gov.au.

Contact

Write to [email protected], or post to Electronic Field Notebooks Pty Ltd at the address under Who we are.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it.