Site Changes

On 1 November 2010 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was integrated into the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and a new website established at www.oaic.gov.au.

Note 1: Major changes to the Privacy Act 1988 will come into effect in March 2014. Agencies, businesses and not for profits need to start preparing for these changes. For more information go to our privacy law reform page at www.oaic.gov.au
Note 2: From 12 March 2013 content is no longer being added to, or amended, on this site, consequently some information may be out of date. For new privacy content visit the www.oaic.gov.au website.

Does a business have to tell me how I can stop getting their unsolicited mail (`junk` mail) every time they contact me?

Yes, although it depends upon the circumstances in which the business had collected your personal information.

Some small businesses do not come under the Privacy Act (for more information see Information Sheet 12 issued in 2001).

Those businesses that are covered by the Privacy Act may be able to send you unsolicited mail if they originally collected your information in order to send you direct marketing material. You may want to ask the organisation to explain how it thinks the Privacy Act applies and ask them to stop sending you their direct marketing material.

The Privacy Act also allows business to send you direct marketing material that is related to the original purpose of collection and is reasonably expected.

In all other cases businesses will need to have your consent to send you direct marketing material or, if it is not practicable to get your consent, to provide you with an option to not receive direct marketing material in each of their direct marketing communications. An example of such a situation might be where you bought something from a company and they used the information you supplied to send you offers that were not related to the product you had purchased.