Twenty five years ago, when the Privacy Act 1993 came in to
force, emails and the internet were in their infancy. Shopping
wasn't conducted online and delivered to your door direct from
overseas, and social media hadn't been contemplated. Scams came
via fax machine or leaflets in your letter box, and any major
banking transaction required a visit to your local branch.
In 2018, the loss of your passwords means that your money can be
stolen, your reputation tarnished by fake posts, and your credit
worthiness ruined, all within a matter of minutes. Regular
publicity of mass data protection breaches by government and
private sector organisations have heightened concern over the risks
of identity theft and undermined confidence in privacy protection.
Disclosures of privacy breaches are often belated, depriving
individuals of the chance to take any steps such as password
changes to try to reduce harm.
