OAIC Privacy Survey 2023

There has been a sharp increase in the number of Australians who feel data breaches are the biggest privacy risk they face today, according to a major survey released today by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

The Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey (ACAPS) 2023 provides a comprehensive view of Australians’ privacy attitudes and experiences and how recent events have impacted them.

The survey tested attitudes on topics such as data practices, privacy legislation, data breaches, biometrics, artificial intelligence and children’s privacy.

Key findings:

• Three-quarters of Australians feel data breaches are one of the biggest privacy risks they face today. This has increased 13 percentage points since 2020.

• Seventy per cent of Australians place a high level of importance on their privacy when choosing a product or service. After quality and price, data privacy is the third most important factor when choosing a product or service.

• Australians trust health service providers the most and social media companies the least when it comes to the protection and use of their personal information.

• Only 42% of Australians feel most organisations they deal with are transparent about the way they use their personal information, and three in five don’t understand what organisations do with the information they collect.

• Over half of Australians consider having to share some personal information if they want to use a service fair enough. However, they generally only consider it fair and reasonable to provide their name (81%) and email address (77%) to organisations and, to a lesser extent, their phone number (68%), date of birth (62%) and physical address (61%).

• Protecting their child’s personal information is a major concern for 79% of parents. However, only half feel they are in control of their child’s data privacy. Eighty-five per cent of parents believe children must be empowered to use the internet and online services, but their data privacy must be protected.

Takeaways for Organisations:

1. Go back to basics:

   • Don’t collect personal information you don’t need.

   • Securely store personal information.

   • Delete or deidentify personal information when it is no longer needed.

2. Help individuals protect their privacy and make informed choices, for example, through privacy education and being clear and transparent about how you use their information.

3. Ask yourself whether the community would consider your practices to be fair and reasonable.

4. If you experience a data breach, quickly take steps to prevent customers suffering harm, report the breach and notify individuals if it is likely to result in serious harm, and consider making improvements to your privacy practices.

5. Make good privacy practices part of your point of difference.

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