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From 12 March 2013 content is no longer being added to, or amended, on this site, consequently some information may be out of date.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.

What information must commercial electronic messages contain?

The Spam Act requires that businesses include the following information in each commercial electronic message that they send you:

the name of their business
their business address and telephone number
electronic contact details (such as an email address or fax number) and
that you can unsubscribe from future messages (see What can I do to stop a business sending me spam?)

If a business does not include this information, it is probably a 'spam' message and in breach of the Spam Act. It may also breach the Privacy Act (see, How does the Privacy Act apply to commercial electronic messages and spam?).

You should also remember that only a small percentage of 'spam traffic' is generated in Australia and a lot of spam is sent randomly , often to promote scams like 'phishing'. It will generally be difficult for the Spam Act or Privacy Act to offer protections against spam sent from dubious overseas sources. For this type of spam, you should consider installing "SpamMATTERS" from the Australian Communications and Media Authority. While this is not a spam filter, this software reports spam emails to ACMA so as to help in the fight against spam. More information on this is available at www.spam.acma.gov.au.

More information

For more information about spam and the Privacy Act, see Information Sheet 26.
Detailed information about the Spam Act and reporting spam (SpamMATTERS) is also available from the Australian Communications and Media Authority at http://www.spam.acma.gov.au.

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