Big problem for data-hoarding companies

ACOUPLE of months back I headed into a department store and bought my wife some perfume. As I paid, the lady behind the counter asked me for my email address. Sure, I said, and she typed it into the system.

I have reflected on the totally unnecessary nature of that information exchange as two of our biggest companies, Optus and

Medicare, have been rocked by hacking scandals.

There was another more curious moment involving the provision of a much more important piece of personal information that now strikes me as even more bizarre.

I got an email not long ago from a financial planner who I have used for years. He is a lovely, reputable bloke, and his office emailed asking for my driver licence details. I asked why they needed it. He replied that under federal laws, all financial planners must keep clients’ personal information, including driver licence details, to comply with money laundering and terrorism laws.

The weird thing is that on the back of my licence is a warning, made on behalf of its issuer, which in my case is the South Australian Government: “Use of this permit/licence for identification purposes, other than policing road traffic laws, is not intended or authorised, and is solely at the risk of the user.”

So one tier of government is telling us to keep our licence details secret while another tells us we have to hand them over to comply with the law.

One of the key problems we face in terms of protecting our privacy is the willy-nilly distribution of private information.

The nature of information that was compromised in the Optus hack and now in the Medibank extortion attempt is obviously far more serious than a simple email address, which is used to allow pestering in future sales or to frame ad and marketing campaigns. But how do I know my email won’t lead to something more sinister if its passed around or because of a company’s lax security?

Australia’s privacy laws are now under review, and not a moment too soon, as they were crafted in what was really still an analog era when the digital world was just starting to take shape.

They are completely antiquated.