The Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill 2012 was passed in Parliament on November 29th 2012 and was the biggest change to the privacy act in well over 20 years. Coming into effect on March 12th, 2014 there have been a raft of changes for Government agencies and businesses to get up to speed with. Most notably are the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) which regulate the handling of personal information and replace the outgoing National Privacy Principles (NPPs) and the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs)

The new laws require businesses and Government agencies to be more transparent about how they handle personal information. Entities need to have a clearly expressed and up-to-date privacy policy about the way they collect and handle personal information.

‘Being upfront with customers and having good privacy practices in place makes good business sense. It is also consistent with community expectations. The OAIC’s recent community attitudes to privacy survey revealed that 96% of Australians feel that they should be informed about how their information is handled and protected. Over 60% have decided not to deal with a business due to concerns as to how their personal information will be used, and 23% have decided not to deal with a government agency.’ said Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim.

Whilst many businesses will be caught off guard on March 12th, at My Privacy Policy we are helping organisations take the first step in acknowledging the new APPs and being fully transparent with how their website collects and handles personal data.