Katharine Kemp, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney Australian consumers don’t understand how companies – including data brokers – track, target and profile them. This is revealed in new research on consumer understanding of privacy terms, released by the non-profit Consumer Policy Research Centre and UNSW Sydney today. Our report also reveals… Read More

Fertility apps collect deeply sensitive data about consumers’ sex lives, health, emotional states and menstrual cycles. And many of them are intended for use by children as young as 13. An analysis by UNSW’s Katharine Kemp has uncovered a number of concerning practices by these apps including: confusing and misleading privacy messages, a lack of choice in how data are used, inadequate de-identification measures when data are shared with other organisations, and retention of data for years even after a consumer stops using the app, exposing them to unnecessary risk from potential data breaches. Read More

In the recently released Privacy Act Review Report, the Attorney-General’s Department makes numerous important proposals that could see the legislation, enacted in 1988, begin to catch up to leading privacy laws globally. However, the report’s proposals on targeted advertising don’t properly address the power imbalance between companies and consumers. Instead, they largely accept a status quo that sacrifices consumer privacy to the demands of online targeted ad businesses. Read More

A little-known provision of the Privacy Act makes it illegal for many companies in Australia to buy or exchange consumers’ personal data for profiling or targeting purposes. It’s almost never enforced. The burning question is: why is there not a single published case of this law being enforced against companies “enriching” customer data for profiling and targeting purposes? Read More

Consumers using online retail marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon “have little effective choice in the amount of data they share”, according to the latest report of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) Digital Platform Services Inquiry. The report reiterates the ACCC’s earlier calls for amendments to the Australian Consumer Law to address unfair data terms and practices. However, none of these proposals is likely to come into effect in the near future. In the meantime, we should also consider whether practices such as obtaining information about users from third-party data brokers are fully compliant with existing privacy law. Read More

This week the federal government announced proposed legislation to develop an online privacy code (or “OP Code”) setting tougher privacy standards for Facebook, Google, Amazon and many other online platforms. These companies collect and use vast amounts of consumers’ personal data, much of it without their knowledge or real consent, and the code is intended to guard against privacy harms from these practices. The higher standards would be backed by increased penalties for interference with privacy under the Privacy Act and greater enforcement powers for the federal privacy commissioner. However, relevant companies are likely to try to avoid obligations under the OP Code by drawing out the process for drafting and registering the code. They are also likely to try to exclude themselves from the code’s coverage, and argue about the definition of “personal information”. Read More

The Australian Information Commissioner this week called for a ban on police accessing QR code check-in data, unless for COVID-19 contact tracing purposes. State police have already accessed this data on at least six occasions for unrelated criminal investigations. We need cooperation and clarity regarding how COVID surveillance data is handled, to protect people’s privacy and maintain public trust in surveillance measures. We propose more detailed and consistent laws to be enacted throughout Australia, covering all COVID surveillance. Read More

I spent last week studying the 26,000 words of privacy terms published by eBay and Amazon, trying to extract some straight answers, and comparing them to the privacy terms of other online marketplaces such as Kogan and Catch. The bad news is that none of the privacy terms analysed are good. Based on their published policies, there is no major online marketplace operating in Australia that sets a commendable standard for respecting consumers’ data privacy. Read More

The Federal Court has found Google misled some users about personal location data collected through Android devices for two years, from January 2017 to December 2018. Other companies too should be warned that representations in their privacy policies and privacy settings could lead to similar liability under the ACL. But this won’t be a complete solution to the problem of many companies concealing what they do with data, including the way they share consumers’ personal information. Read More

Australia’s consumer watchdog is suing Google for allegedly misleading millions of people after it started tracking them on non-Google apps and websites in 2016.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says Google’s pop-up notification about this move didn’t let users make an informed choice about the increased tracking of their activities. Read More