The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 2019:
More than 1 million
Australians have had their name and address added to the electoral roll and
then automatically passed to global marketing giants without their knowledge.
Direct enrolment laws
passed by Parliament in 2012 meant Australians no longer had to register on the
electoral roll to have their details entered, with information of workers and
school students scanned from drivers licences, Centrelink and records from the
Board of Studies in each state.
The electoral roll has
since been handed over to credit-check operators for identification purposes
designed to help financial services firms such as banks, Afterpay and Zip, to
run fraud, anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism checks, but four of those
identity firms are now running global marketing operations using data
analytics.
No government body has
been able to advise if anyone is monitoring the companies for breaches of the
electoral act, which carries fines for using the data in commercial operations,
or if they are monitoring the separation of data between the companies'
identification and marketing arms.
The Sydney Morning
Herald and The Age revealed this week that AXCIOM, Experian,
Global Data and illion (formerly known as debt collectors Dun & Bradstreet)
all have access to the electoral roll as "prescribed authorities". In
their secondary businesses, each boasts of their ability to provide marketing
data analytics on millions of Australians to their clients but maintain they
are in full compliance with the privacy act and do not use the data for
marketing purposes.
AXCIOM and Global Data
have not responded to multiple requests for comment. An auto-reply email from
AXCIOM said "data monetisation awaits!"
The only non-marketing
firm among the group, US credit check giant Equifax, had the records of 145.5
million hacked in a breach in 2017 was fined $3.5 million by the Federal Court
last year for misleading, deceptive and unconscionable conduct…..
….database that contains
information on 16 million Australians. More than 1.5 million Australians who
were eligible to vote - but not on the electoral roll - are likely to have been
added since the laws passed.
School students as young
as 16 have been caught up in the data transfer, with more than 18,846 people
aged 16 and 17 provisionally on the electoral roll as of December 31.
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