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ARTICLE · 09 MARCH 2014

How does your privacy policy rate? Our top tips for getting your privacy policy ready

Clayton Utz
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Jargon, too much information (or not enough) and no contact details are all common flaws of website privacy policies.

AustraliaPrivacy
Wei-Loong Chen
Wei-Loong Chen
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Key Points:

Jargon, too much information (or not enough) and no contact details are all common flaws of privacy policies.

We are well and truly counting down to the start date of the changes to the Privacy Act on 12 March 2014. As part of the lead-up to the reforms, last year the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) released the results of a privacy sweep of almost 50 website privacy policies, which were assessed against new transparency requirements in the Privacy Act.

The results of the sweep were mixed, with many privacy policies held to be too long and complex.

Australian Privacy Principle 1.3 requires an organisation to have a clearly expressed and up-to-date privacy policy. While this requirement itself is not new, APP 1 is more prescriptive than NPP 5 by specifying in APP 1.4 the minimum information that must be contained in a privacy policy.

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