MyCRA Specialist Credit Repair Lawyers

Tag: Privacy laws

  • Privacy Awareness Week 2014: New Privacy Laws and You

    PrivacyWeek-Banners-R1 - 2013-3MyCRA Lawyers is a proud partner for Privacy Awareness Week (PAW), held 4-10 May 2014. Privacy Awareness Week is held every year to promote awareness of privacy issues and the importance of the protection of personal information. This year is focused on our new Australian Privacy Laws, which came into force on 12 March 2014. Find out about how Privacy Laws may affect you and your credit rating, this week during PAW.

    By Graham Doessel, Non-Legal Director of MyCRA Lawyers www.mycralawyers.com.au.

    In an age of increasing accessibility of personal information, privacy is growing ever more important, and more valued for Australians. According to a recent survey by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (the federal Australian Government body responsible for privacy in Australia), a third of Australians reported they had a privacy problem in the last year. In addition, 60% of Australians decided not to deal with a private business and 25% have decided not to deal with a government agency due to concerns as to how their personal information will be used.

    Australia’s new privacy laws were the most significant changes to privacy laws in over 25 years, affecting a large section of the community. The changes to the Privacy Act 1988 include a new set of Australian Privacy Principles that regulate how your personal information is handled and new enforcement powers for the Office of the Information Commissioner (OAIC).

    One of the aims of the new privacy laws is to ensure that your personal information is managed in an open and transparent way.

    Here are some tips provided by the OAIC during PAW, to help you protect your personal information:

    • Know your privacy rights

    • Read privacy policies and notices

    • Always ask why, how and who — this will help you to know how your personal information is going to be used, and if it is going to be given to another agency or organisation

    • Only give out as much personal information as you need to — always think before handing your personal information over

    • Ask for access to your personal information

    • Make sure the information an organisation or agency holds about you is accurate and up to date

    • Take steps to protect your online privacy

    • Make sure your hard copy records are properly destroyed

    • You can ‘opt out’ of marketing communications if you do not want to receive any further contact of this kind

    • Make a privacy complaint if you consider that your personal information has not been handled properly.

    Many identity theft cases that impact your credit rating could have been prevented with better education and more vigilance around the protection of personal information. Complacency around personal information, both on the part of consumers and entities such as agencies and businesses, can be the undoing of someone’s ability to obtain credit.

    Pieces of personal information are the building blocks for credit file misuse. You can lose your personal information to fraudsters in many ways, and you may be unaware of how or when it has occurred – particularly if it has happened via malware, through data breaches or even through too much sharing online.

    Sometimes it’s not until you apply for credit and are refused that you even find out you have been exposed to identity fraud, and by then it may be too late to detect how it took place.

    This is why it is so important for all Australians to educate themselves on how to keep their information secure, and to demand that any information they are required to give over to any person or company be treated with the utmost privacy. Australia’s new Privacy Laws will hopefully add the requirements for all entities holding our personal information to be more aware of and accountable for upholding personal information privacy.

    You can find out about your rights in more detail through the OAIC’s Privacy factsheet ‘How changes to privacy law affect you.’

    THIS PAW WEEK: If you have a business, get some help in our next post with how to navigate the new privacy laws, including how to update your Privacy Policy, and how and when to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment. For consumers and businesses alike, also stay tuned this week for how Australia’s new Privacy Laws may impact your ability to obtain credit, through changes to credit reporting laws.

     

  • A wait and see approach to logistics of new credit laws

    Most people are very positive about changes to Australia’s Privacy Laws which are coming through Parliament, effectively bringing Australia out of the 1980’s and closer to other countries in our treatment of Privacy and personal information. But others are a little unsure they go far enough in many areas. We look at one opinion of how the new credit laws apply to credit reporting .

    By Graham Doessel, Founder and CEO of MyCRA Credit Rating Repairs and www.fixmybadcredit.com.au.

    An interesting post came through from ‘The Conversation’ yesterday written by Bruce Arnold, Lecturer of Law at University of Canberra. The post Two cheers for privacy law reform? Let’s wait and see looks at the potential benefits of these new Privacy Laws, and where perhaps the laws may be lacking:

    “For many people the bleeding edge of privacy law has been their credit records. The Bill rationalises the current credit reporting regime, which has featured strong disagreement between competing industry bodies and examples of bad practice by particular enterprises. That rationalisation is to be strongly welcomed by consumers and business as providing greater transparency and certainty. Its success however will be dependent on action by the national Privacy Commissioner, an entity within the national Office of the Information Commissioner. Under the proposed law, credit providers will have access to additional personal information with the expectation that more data will facilitate “a more robust assessment” of credit risk and “responsible lending” that may also “result in reductions to the cost of credit for individuals”. As with much finance, we will trust that lenders will pass on their savings to consumers.

    The Bill aims to give the Commissioner greater powers, for example scope for “own motion” investigations rather than in response to complaints by individuals who claim that there privacy has been disrespected. It is unclear whether the Commissioner will make effective use of those powers, given difficulties with resourcing and perceptions – fair or otherwise – that the office lacks both the will and expertise to take on particular interests. Historically it has endorsed industry practice that although commonplace, is below overseas benchmarks and is less than desired by many Australians.

    The Commissioner will be able to recognise external dispute resolution mechanisms, something that is consistent with the trend to outsourcing and administration and presumably welcomed by business.

    The Bill does not provide for a tort of serious invasion of privacy – that is, scope for an individual to seek compensation over an invasion of their privacy by an individual or an organisation. That tort has been recommended by the ALRC and by the law reform commissions of New South Wales and Victoria. It is thus hardly a radical or alarming notion, although it has been strongly opposed by the major media groups and some legal practitioners. The Government’s willingness to proceed with suggestions for establishment of the tort as we head towards an election is unclear.

    Enactment of the Australian Privacy Principles is a step forward, deserving of two cheers even if we ask why has it taken so long and wonder how the APP will be interpreted by the Privacy Commissioner. Rationalisation of credit reporting law, in conjunction with the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (NCCPA) is also meritorious, although in one of the most messy areas of privacy practice we will need to see how business implements the revised arrangements and whether there is meaningful enforcement by the Privacy Commissioner,” Mr Arnold says.

    It will be interesting to see how the actual application of dispute resolution pans out in the credit reporting landscape including how the changes will alter the Credit Reporting Code of Conduct. We will certainly adopt the ‘wait and see’ approach as to whether the changes will indeed make it ‘easier’ to dispute credit listings and fix unnecessary bad credit as claimed by Attorney-General Nicola Roxon.

    Image: Stuart Miles/ Free Digital Photos.net

     

  • Privacy Protection set to be heightened under Australian Law

    Big changes are coming for Australian privacy rights and laws governing the use of personal information. The Australian Government has announced it will make the first set of changes to the Privacy Act 1988 in the Winter sitting of Parliament. The announcement came yesterday from Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, who intentionally announced the changes to coincide with Australia’s Privacy Awareness Week.

    By Graham Doessel, Founder and CEO of MyCRA Credit Rating Repairs and www.fixmybadcredit.com.au.

    The Attorney-General said in her statement that Australia’s privacy laws will be reformed to better protect people’s personal information, simplify credit reporting arrangements and give new enforcement powers to the Privacy Commissioner.

    The Attorney explained that key changes to benefit consumers are:

    • clearer and tighter regulation of the use of personal information for direct marketing
    • extending privacy protections to unsolicited information
    • making it easier for consumers to access and correct information held about them
    • tightening the rules on sending personal information outside Australia
    • enhancing the powers of the Privacy Commissioner to improve the Commissioner’s ability to resolve complaints, conduct investigations and promote privacy compliance

    These changes are part of a long consultation process coming out of recommendations made within the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report For your information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice.

    The changes will include new powers for the Privacy Commissioner to enforce privacy laws. Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said in a statement to the media these changes were a significant step forward and will allow him to better resolve privacy investigations more effectively.

    “The strengthening of these powers also sends a strong message to government agencies and businesses covered by the Act that there can be significant consequences when personal information is not given an appropriate level of protection.”

    “These changes give me more options when undertaking an investigation on my initiative. At the moment I can only make a determination when I am investigating a complaint made by an individual,” Mr Pilgrim said.

    The powers of the Privacy Commissioner to investigate Privacy complaints has previously come under criticism, particularly following the well-publicised global Sony Data Breach in April 2011 which seemed to showcase the gaping hole in Australian Privacy Law at the time. The data breach left the personal information of approximately 77 million Sony customers worldwide exposed to hackers and threatened the victims with possible identity theft and credit file misuse.

    Criticism was sparked by the Commissioner’s lack of powers to make determinations following any investigation, and also Australia’s absence of mandatory data breach notification law. It was well publicised that Sony took over a week to notify it’s customers of the data breach, in the process potentially exposing customers to identity theft and credit file fraud.

    A recent survey conducted by the University of Canberra and eBay Australia found that Australian internet users were highly concerned about identity theft and wanted government to order businesses to notify users of online data breaches.

    The survey, reported in CIO Magazine Call for mandatory data breach notification grows: Survey found 85 per cent of 700 Australian participants want data breach notifications to become mandatory. Here is an excerpt from that story:

    In addition, 86 per cent of respondents cited identity theft as their greatest privacy concern, while 83 per cent mentioned financial data loss as their biggest concern.

    The survey also found that the financial sector was the most trusted when it came to privacy (42 per cent).

    Social media was the least trusted industry on privacy with only 1 per cent of respondents saying they trusted websites such as Facebook. Sixty-one per cent of Australians surveyed nominated the social media industry as having the worst privacy practices.

    Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, said that the high level of support for mandatory data breach notifications is not surprising given significant data breaches over the past year such as the Sony PlayStation Network compromise.

    “Incidents are on the rise as weaknesses become apparent in business systems at the same time as hackers become more sophisticated,” he said in a statement.

    “I encourage businesses to look at our guide which not only outlines how to respond to a breach, but also how to avoid a breach in the first place by focusing on the security of their systems,” Pilgrim said.

    Other privacy law reform changes will include the introduction of a set of Australian Privacy Principles, and importantly, changes to credit reporting law.

    Some changes Attorney-General Nicola Roxon chose to highlight in her statement yesterday include:

    • making a clear obligation on organisations to substantiate, or show their evidence to justify, disputed credit listings
    • making it easier for individuals to access and correct their credit reporting information
    • prohibiting the collection of credit reporting information about children
    • simplifying the complaints process by removing requirement to complain to the organisation first, complaints can be made directly to the Privacy Commissioner, and by introducing alternative dispute resolution to more efficiently deal with complaints.

    We will be watching with intense interest at how the whole barrage of changes around credit reporting could possibly impact consumers and their credit files. The above four recommendations would be a great improvement as currently consumers can experience difficulty when disputing entries on their credit reports.

    MyCRA is proud to be a Partner for Privacy Awareness Week 2012.