Privacy Policy
This site compares mattresses sold in Australia. It does not sell anything, does not take payments, and does not run advertising or analytics scripts. This page sets out exactly what it does collect, why, and what you can ask us to do about it.
We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). Last updated 20 August 2026.
The short version
- We collect your name, email and message only if you choose to send one — through the contact form, the subscribe form, or a comment
- There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel, no heatmap and no retargeting tag on this site
- We never ask for and never hold payment details, because nothing is sold here
- We do not sell, rent or trade personal information to anyone
- You can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it
What we collect, and when
If you send us a message
The contact form at the bottom of every page asks for your email address and your message, and optionally your name. Along with these we record the page you were on when you submitted the form, and your browser’s user-agent string — the short line of text your browser sends identifying itself and your operating system. Submissions are stored in this site’s administration area. They are not forwarded to any email marketing service.
If you subscribe
The subscribe form collects your email address, and your name if you provide one. We use it to send you updates about mattress reviews and rankings on this site, and nothing else. Every message we send will include a way to unsubscribe, and you can also ask us directly at any time.
If you comment on a review
Comments run on WordPress, which stores the name and email address you enter, the comment itself, your IP address and your browser’s user-agent string. Your name and comment are published; your email address and IP address are not. If you tick the box offering to remember your details, WordPress saves them in cookies in your browser so you do not have to type them again — that is a choice you make, and leaving the box unticked sets no cookies.
One thing does leave this site when your comment is displayed: a one-way hash of your email address is sent to Gravatar, in the United States, to look up a picture to show beside it. Your address itself is not sent, and the hash cannot be turned back into it. This is described under Avatars below.
If you mark something as helpful
Review pages let you like an article or mark a comment as helpful without signing in. To stop the same visitor voting repeatedly we need to tell visitors apart, so the site reads your IP address and immediately converts it into an irreversible hash using a secret key held on the server. The hash is what gets stored; your actual IP address is not saved anywhere by this feature. The hash cannot be turned back into an IP address and is not used for anything except counting one vote per visitor.
Just by visiting
Like every website, this one runs on a web server that keeps standard access logs — the requesting IP address, the time, the page requested and the user-agent string. These logs exist so the site can be kept running and secure. They are not used to build a profile of you and are not combined with anything else described on this page.
What we do not do
It is worth being specific, because most privacy policies are written to cover things the site in question is actually doing:
- No analytics. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta pixel, no session recording and no heatmap tool on this site. We do not use analytics tools to measure or profile individual visits. The only record of a visit is the ordinary web-server log described above, which we do not use to build a picture of you. If that changes, this page will be updated before the change goes live.
- No advertising or retargeting. We do not run ad networks and we do not tag you to be followed around other websites.
- No payment details. Nothing is sold here. You will never be asked on this site for a card number, a bank account or a government identifier — and if a page ever appears to ask you for one, it is not ours.
- No accounts. Reading, commenting and subscribing all work without creating a login.
- No selling of data. We do not sell, rent or trade personal information, and we do not pass your email address to the mattress brands we review.
Cookies and what is stored in your browser
This site sets no tracking cookies. What it does use:
- Comment cookies — set only if you leave a comment and tick the box asking to have your details remembered.
- A light or dark mode preference — saved in your browser’s local storage, not in a cookie, and never sent to us. It exists so the site does not flash white at night.
- Login cookies — these apply only to people who administer this site, not to readers.
You can clear or block all of these in your browser settings. Nothing on this site stops working if you do, apart from having to re-enter your details when commenting.
Third parties
Fonts
Pages on this site load their typefaces from Google Fonts. That means your browser makes a request to Google’s servers when a page loads, and Google receives your IP address and basic browser information as part of that request. We do not send Google anything else about you, and we receive nothing back about you.
Avatars
The small round picture shown beside an article’s byline, and beside each comment, is not stored on this site. WordPress fetches it from Gravatar, a service run by Automattic in the United States, by putting a one-way hash of the relevant email address into the image address. Your browser makes that request, so Gravatar receives your IP address and basic browser information — the same kind of request as the one for fonts described above. If the email address behind a hash has never been registered with Gravatar, a generic placeholder image is returned instead.
Your own email address is involved in this only if you leave a comment. Reading a page sends Gravatar nothing about you beyond the request your browser has to make to load the image.
Hosting
The site runs on a third-party hosting provider, which necessarily processes the server logs described above in order to serve pages to you.
Links to mattress brands
When you click through to a mattress brand, we add parameters to the link recording which page and which position on that page you clicked from. This tells us that a click happened and where it came from; it does not identify you. Once you arrive on the brand’s website you are on their site under their privacy policy, not ours, and anything you do there — including anything you buy — is between you and them.
We earn a commission on some of these clicks, and those commercial relationships can affect which brands appear on this site and where they are ranked. That disclosure is set out in full on our About Us page.
How long we keep it
Contact messages and subscriber details are kept for as long as they are useful for answering you or sending you what you asked for. Comments and their details stay for as long as the comment is published. You can ask us to delete any of it sooner, and we will do so unless we are required to keep it.
Where it is kept
This site is not hosted in Australia, so anything you send us is held overseas. We say where, plainly, because you are entitled to know that before you send it.
- Hong Kong. Anything you send through a form, and anything you post as a comment, is stored on servers there.
- The United States. Two things are fetched directly by your browser from servers there. Pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, so your IP address and basic browser information reach Google every time a page loads — that one happens to every visitor, whether or not you ever send us anything. Pages that show a byline or comments also load the small round pictures beside them from Gravatar, run by Automattic, which receives the same information plus a one-way hash of the email address the picture belongs to. If you have left a comment, that hash is of your address.
Being based outside Australia does not lower the standard that applies. This site is aimed at readers in Australia, so we handle personal information under the Australian Privacy Principles and we remain accountable for it after it leaves Australia. You can bring a privacy complaint about this site to the Australian regulator in the way described below, and we will not argue that being offshore puts us out of reach.
We do not disclose personal information to the mattress brands we review, in Australia or anywhere else, and we do not sell or trade it to anyone.
Security, and what happens if something goes wrong
Access to the administration area of this site is restricted and password-protected, and the site is served over an encrypted connection. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm to anyone whose information we hold, we will meet our obligations under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, which include notifying the affected people and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner where the scheme requires it.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- Tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy of it
- Correct it if it is wrong, out of date or incomplete
- Delete it — including removing a comment you have left
- Stop emailing you, which takes effect regardless of how you ask
We act on these requests in line with the Australian Privacy Principles, which allow us to decline in a small number of defined situations — for example where we cannot confirm who you are, or where giving you a copy would reveal someone else’s information. None of it costs anything. Your Privacy Rights sets out how to make each request, what we need from you, how long we take, and exactly when we might have to say no.
Children
This site is written for adults buying a mattress and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us their details, tell us and we will delete them.
If you are reading from outside Australia
The mattresses, prices and terms covered on this site are the Australian ones, and this policy is written to Australian law. Everyone who contacts us is handled the same way regardless of where they are, and the rights described above are available to you as well.
Complaints
If you think your privacy has been mishandled here, contact us first — most problems are quicker to fix directly. Tell us what happened and what you would like done about it, and we will respond in writing.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can take the complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which oversees the Privacy Act in Australia. The OAIC can be reached at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992. Making a complaint to them is free. The full process is set out on Your Privacy Rights.
Changes to this policy
If what we collect changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top is updated. We will not quietly start collecting something new under a policy that says we do not.
Contact us
For anything on this page — a request to see, correct or delete your information, a complaint, or a question — email service@top3mattress.com, or use the contact form at the bottom of any page on this site.