Privacy Policy

AusBus is a comparison and discovery platform for long-distance bus and coach travel in Australia. We help travellers search for routes, compare operators, see indicative fares, and click through to the operator's own website to book.

We are not a bus or coach operator. We do not run vehicles, we do not control schedules, and we do not sell tickets directly. Unless something on the page says otherwise, any booking you make is between you and the operator on their site, under their terms.

Pre-launch note: the public site is currently a waitlist. The search, comparison, route guide and pass features described in this policy are built but not yet live. We have published the full policy now so it is ready when those features open.

The data controller for AusBus is:

• AUSBUS LTD
• Company number: 14220380
• Registered address: Business Development Centre, Telford, TF3 3BA, United Kingdom
• Contact: support@aus-bus.com

AusBus is operated by AUSBUS LTD, a UK-incorporated private limited company.

We only collect information that we actually need. This is everything we currently collect or are likely to collect once the full site launches:

Waitlist signups (currently live)

• Your email address.
• A short campaign tag taken from the URL you arrived on (for example instagram). The tag tells us which channel brought you to the site. It is not a tracking cookie.
• The date and time you joined the waitlist.
• Your IP address is briefly used to rate-limit the form so bots cannot hammer it. It is not written to our database.

Search information (post-launch)

When you use the route search, we receive the origin city, destination city and travel date you enter. These values are passed in the URL so the search results page can render. We do not currently store individual searches in a database against your identity.

Technical and analytics data

When you visit any page, our hosting provider and analytics provider receive standard request information including:

• IP address (used by the host for delivery and security; may be truncated by analytics).
• Browser type, device type and operating system.
• The page you visited and the page you came from (referrer).
• Approximate location at country or region level.
• Aggregate page-view counts and browser/device telemetry collected through Vercel Analytics, which is loaded only on the production site and is configured to be cookieless.

Outbound click data

Most booking links are direct deep-links to the operator and are not logged. For a small number of operators (Premier Motor Service, Stateliner and Kinetic Tasmania) the booking link passes through an AusBus redirect that pre-fills their booking system. When it does, we record that a click happened — which operator, which corridor and travel date, and the time — for aggregate analytics and affiliate-attribution. This record contains no personal data: no name, no account, no IP address and no cookie identify you. After you click you leave AusBus and the operator's own privacy policy applies.

Display preferences

When you choose a display language or display currency from the preferences picker, we save that choice in a first-party cookie called ausbus_prefs. It only ever contains those two codes (for example locale=en&currency=AUD), is not used for tracking or profiling, and expires after twelve months. The cookie is sent only to aus-bus.com. See the Cookie Policy for the full description.

What we do not collect

• We do not have user accounts. There is no login, no password, no profile.
• We do not take payments and we do not collect card details.
• We do not currently run a contact form, newsletter signup or price-alert form. If we add one we will update this policy and describe what we collect.
• We do not buy data from third parties.

We use what we collect for the following purposes:

• Provide the service. Run the search, render route guides, show operator comparisons, and let you click through to book.
• Email you about the launch. If you join the waitlist we will email you when AusBus opens, and stop emailing you after that unless you opt in to something else.
• Understand demand. See which channels bring people to the site and which routes are popular. This is aggregate, not personal profiling.
• Keep the site working. Detect and prevent bot abuse, scraping, fraud, denial-of-service, and security incidents.
• Affiliate attribution. If you book on an operator's site after clicking through from AusBus, the operator may pay us a small referral commission. To support that, the operator network may see that you arrived from AusBus. The full list of partners and the editorial rules we follow are on our affiliate disclosure page.
• Comply with the law. Respond to lawful requests, keep records we are legally required to keep, and enforce our terms.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your data for advertising profiling.

For users in the United Kingdom and European Economic Area, the UK GDPR and EU GDPR require us to identify a legal basis for each use of your data. The bases we rely on are:

• Performance of a contract (or steps taken at your request) — for things like sending the launch email after you join the waitlist, or running the search you submitted.
• Consent — for any future marketing emails beyond the launch announcement, and for any non-essential cookies if and when we introduce them. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legitimate interests — for basic analytics, security, fraud prevention, affiliate attribution and product improvement, where those interests are not overridden by your rights.
• Legal obligation — where we have to keep records or respond to lawful requests.

For Australian users, we handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). The Spam Act 2003 (Cth) governs our marketing emails.

When you click through to an operator's website, you leave AusBus. From that point onwards:

• The operator's privacy policy applies, not ours.
• Any details you submit on the operator's site (name, payment details, ID, contact info) are processed by them, not us.
• We are not responsible for the operator's data handling, refund policy, accessibility commitments, or service quality.
• The operator may see the page you arrived from (an HTTP referrer) and, where applicable, an affiliate identifier so any commission can be attributed.

We use a small number of service providers to run AusBus. They process personal information only on our instructions and subject to written agreements where required.

• Vercel Inc. — hosts the site and routes requests. Vercel processes IP addresses and request metadata in order to serve pages and protect the site.
• Supabase Inc. — hosts our database, which stores waitlist email addresses and the public bus operator catalogue.
• Vercel Analytics — collects aggregate page-view counts and browser/device telemetry. It is loaded only on the production site and is configured to be cookieless.
• Sentry — records application errors so we can fix faults. It runs only on the production site and is configured for privacy: we do not send personal identifiers (no email or user ID), there is no session replay or recording of your screen, and cookie and authorisation headers are stripped before any error is transmitted. IP addresses are not stored against errors.
• Frankfurter (European Central Bank reference rates)— provides the indicative AUD-base foreign-exchange rates used to display approximate fares in your selected currency. Our server queries the open-source Frankfurter API at api.frankfurter.dev, which republishes the European Central Bank's daily reference rates. Your browser does not contact this provider directly, and no personal data is shared with them.
• Transactional email provider (at launch) — we will use a transactional email provider to send the waitlist announcement. The provider has not yet been integrated into the codebase. We will name them here once they are.
• Affiliate networks— where an operator chooses to pay referral commission through an affiliate network (for example AWIN), that network may see the click as part of attributing the referral. AusBus is in the process of joining operator affiliate programmes; specific networks will be named here once they are wired up in code.

AusBus is operated from the United Kingdom for users who may be in Australia, the UK, the EEA, or elsewhere. Our hosting, analytics and database providers are US-headquartered companies that may process data on servers in the United States or other regions outside Australia, the UK and the EEA.

Where data is transferred out of the UK or EEA, we rely on mechanisms such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, and adequacy decisions where applicable. For Australian users, by using the site you acknowledge that disclosure of personal information to overseas recipients is part of how AusBus is delivered. You can request details of safeguards by emailing the contact address below.

We keep data only for as long as we have a reason to:

• Waitlist emails — until we have sent the launch announcement and finished following up, or until you ask us to remove you, whichever comes first. After launch we may keep a suppression record of unsubscribed addresses so we do not accidentally email you again.
• Search and outbound-click analytics — aggregate data may be retained indefinitely; raw event-level logs are kept for 90 days and then deleted or anonymised.
• Hosting and security logs — kept for 90 days for incident investigation and abuse prevention.
• Records we are legally required to keep (for example, suppression lists, accounting records) — kept for the period the relevant law requires.

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Have inaccurate information corrected.
• Have your information deleted.
• Restrict or object to certain processing.
• Receive your information in a portable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time, where consent is the legal basis we rely on.
• Unsubscribe from marketing emails at any time.
• Lodge a complaint with a privacy regulator.

To exercise any of these, email support@aus-bus.com. We may need to confirm your identity before we act.

If we cannot resolve a concern, you can complain to your local regulator. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO); in Australia the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC); in the EEA, your member-state supervisory authority.

If you join the waitlist, we will email you once when AusBus launches. The launch email itself will include an unsubscribe link, as required by the Spam Act 2003 (Cth) and equivalent UK and EU rules. You can also email us at any time to be removed.

Any marketing communications beyond the launch announcement require your separate consent. Service emails (for example, to confirm a request you made) may still be sent unless you cancel the underlying request.

AusBus is intended for a general audience of adults planning travel. The site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has submitted personal information to us, please contact us and we will delete it.

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including TLS in transit, row-level security on our database, restricted server-side credentials, request rate-limiting, and a strict Content Security Policy. No system is perfectly secure and we cannot guarantee absolute protection against every threat.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes we will update the date at the top of this page, and where the change matters to people on the waitlist we will tell you in the launch email or a follow-up.

For any privacy question, including a request to access, correct, or delete your data, email support@aus-bus.com or write to us at AUSBUS LTD, Business Development Centre, Telford, TF3 3BA, United Kingdom.