Privacy policy.

Divergent Digital Studio Pty Ltd (ABN 36 679 490 352, ACN 679 490 352), of 260 Collins St, Suite 355, Level 2, Melbourne VIC 3000, trades as NexDine. NexDine is a product of Divergent Digital Studio Pty Ltd. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Divergent Digital Studio Pty Ltd, and Divergent Digital Studio Pty Ltd is the APP entity accountable for the personal information described here.

We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). Where an exemption might otherwise be available to us, we do not rely on it.

This policy covers the NexDine platform, our marketing website, and the venue websites and guest-ordering pages we host for our customers.

This policy is not a collection notice. We give a separate, contextual notice at the point we collect information, as APP 5 requires.

We collect only what a feature actually needs. We do not collect government identity numbers, and we ask operators not to store them in free-text fields.

When a guest books a table, places an order or joins a loyalty program at a venue running on NexDine, the venue decides why that information is collected and what happens to it. We hold and process it for the venue, on the venue's instructions, to run the platform.

Australian privacy law does not split parties into 'controllers' and 'processors'. Both we and the venue can carry our own obligations for the same information. The description above allocates responsibility between us — it does not reduce anyone's obligations under the Privacy Act.

• We do not use guest information for our own marketing.
• We do not sell guest information, and we do not share it with data brokers.
• One venue can never see another venue's guests. Isolation is enforced in the database, not in application code.
• A guest request about their information is normally handled by the venue. If a guest contacts us directly, we will pass the request to the venue and help the venue answer it.

We collect an allergy or dietary note only where a venue's booking or ordering flow asks for it, and only with the guest's consent, as APP 3.3 requires.

We use it only to serve that guest safely — showing it to the kitchen and the floor team for that booking or order. We do not use it for marketing, segmentation, profiling or any purpose that is not directly related to serving the guest.

A general dietary preference — vegetarian, halal, vegan — is not necessarily health information. We hold it to the same standard anyway, because in a free-text note the two are not reliably separable.

• Directly from you — when you sign up, book a table, place an order, fill in a form, or contact support.
• From your venue — when an operator imports a customer list or a staff record they already hold.
• Automatically — through server logs, security events and the audit trail, when you use the platform.
• From an integration you authorise — a POS, an accounting system, a booking or delivery service the venue has connected.

Where the law allows and it is practical, you can deal with us anonymously or under a pseudonym — for example, browsing a menu. Most features need to know who you are to work at all.

We do not use personal information for a new, unrelated purpose without telling you or obtaining consent, as APP 6 requires.

We disclose personal information to:

• The venue whose guest or staff member the information is about;
• Our sub-processors — the service providers that run parts of the platform. Every one of them is named at nexdine.app/legal/subprocessors, with its role and its location;
• Integrations a venue connects — only where an operator has authorised the connection;
• Professional advisers, under confidentiality; and
• A regulator, court or law-enforcement body, where the law requires or authorises it.

We do not sell personal information. We do not disclose it for another organisation's own marketing.

If our business is sold or restructured, personal information may transfer to the buyer. The buyer would be bound to handle it under this policy or a policy at least as protective, and we would tell you.

Some sub-processors we rely on operate outside Australia. Under APP 8, before we disclose personal information to an overseas recipient we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient does not breach the APPs — including binding contractual obligations covering permitted purposes, security, onward disclosure and breach notification.

The countries in which our recipients are likely to be located are:

• Australia — database, storage and backups;
• United States — payment processing, error monitoring, transactional email, SMS, and AI model inference;
• Ireland and the European Union — some regional processing by our hosting and messaging providers.

The Sub-processors page lists the location of each provider, and is kept current.

APP 11 requires reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Ours include:

• Row-level security in PostgreSQL on every tenant-bound table — isolation is enforced by the database, not by application code that can be bypassed;
• TLS 1.3 in transit and encryption at rest;
• AES-256-GCM encryption of integration credentials and OAuth tokens;
• an immutable, append-only audit log recording actor, role, action, IP address, user agent, payload and timestamp;
• multi-factor authentication enforced on platform-administrator accounts;
• a strict Content Security Policy, HSTS, and rate limiting aligned to OWASP guidance;
• role-based access control, so a staff member sees only what their role needs; and
• no full card numbers on our servers — card fields are hosted by Stripe.

Our own staff access customer data only where it is needed to support you, and every access is written to the audit log.

APP 11.2 requires us to destroy or de-identify personal information we no longer need. We run scheduled jobs that do this automatically — retention is enforced by code, not by a promise.

A venue can set a shorter retention period for its own tenant. Where an operator sets one, that period governs.

Retention can be paused by a legal hold — where a record is needed for a legal proceeding, an investigation or a regulator. A record under hold is skipped by the deletion jobs and released when the hold ends.

When a venue leaves NexDine, its data stays available for export for 30 days, then is deleted or de-identified within 90 days.

Parts of the platform use artificial intelligence — demand forecasting, menu-engineering suggestions, the daily brief, guest-facing ordering assistants, the in-admin platform guide that helps staff find screens and steps, and drafting help.

• AI output is a suggestion for a person to review, not a decision.
• We do not use a computer program on its own to make a decision that could reasonably be expected to significantly affect a person's rights or interests.
• We do not allow our AI providers to train foundation models on your content. Model providers are engaged on zero-retention or no-training terms.
• AI conversations are retained briefly and then permanently deleted.

Our own marketing. We email operators and prospective operators about NexDine. Every message identifies us and carries a working unsubscribe. Unsubscribing takes effect within 5 working days, as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) requires.

A venue's marketing. Where a venue sends campaigns through NexDine, the venue is the sender. The venue is responsible for having consent and for honouring an opt-out. We supply the consent records, the suppression list and the unsubscribe link, and we log every send and every opt-out.

You can opt out of marketing at any time — use the unsubscribe link, change your preferences in the platform, or email hi@thedds.com.au. We never charge to unsubscribe and we never require an account to do it.

We do not use sensitive information for direct marketing.

We use cookies and similar technologies for:

• Essential — signing you in, keeping your session, protecting forms against abuse. These cannot be turned off without breaking the service.
• Preference — remembering your venue, your language and your consent choices.
• Analytics — understanding which pages are used, so we can improve them.

We ask for consent before setting a non-essential cookie, and you can change your choice at any time. We do not run advertising-network trackers on the platform.

We use hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile on public forms to keep out automated abuse. Those services receive technical signals from your browser to decide whether you are a person.

Under the Australian Privacy Principles you may ask us to:

These are not just an inbox promise. The platform has a data-subject-request pipeline that verifies identity, applies legal holds, and performs the deletion or export.

Email hi@thedds.com.au. We acknowledge within 5 business days and respond within 30 days. We do not charge for access. If we refuse a request, we tell you why in writing and how to have it reviewed.

We verify your identity before acting on a request, so that nobody else can use it to reach your information.

We follow the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in Part IIIC of the Privacy Act.

• If we suspect an eligible data breach, we assess it promptly and take all reasonable steps to finish the assessment within 30 days.
• If we have reasonable grounds to believe an eligible data breach has occurred, we notify the OAIC and the affected people as soon as practicable.
• We tell affected venues without undue delay, with what we know and what we are doing about it.
• We keep a register of incidents and what we changed afterwards.

NexDine is a business tool. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 15.

A guest-facing booking or ordering page may record a child's name in a party booking made by an adult. We treat that information as we treat any other guest information, and we do not profile it or market to it.

If you believe we hold information about a child that should not be there, email hi@thedds.com.au and we will delete it.

The OAIC's Children's Online Privacy Code is due to be registered by 10 December 2026. We will assess it against the platform and update this policy if it applies to us.

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, tell us first. Email hi@thedds.com.au, with what happened and what you would like us to do.

• We acknowledge your complaint within 5 business days.
• We investigate and respond in writing within 30 days.
• If we need longer, we tell you why and when to expect an answer.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC): 1300 363 992, or oaic.gov.au. You do not have to come to us first, but it usually resolves things faster.

We update this policy when our practices change, or when the law changes. The version and last-updated date are at the top of this page.

If a change materially affects how we handle your personal information, we will tell operators directly before it takes effect.

A person reads every privacy request. There is no ticket queue and no automated triage.

Privacy Officer, Divergent Digital Studio Pty Ltd (ABN 36 679 490 352), 260 Collins St, Suite 355, Level 2, Melbourne VIC 3000.

We will give you this policy in another format free of charge if you ask, as APP 1.6 requires.