Belatedly reposting this from Mi3Australia. Back on the podcast this week to discuss the ACCC "data firms" report, why it ended up being called that, the ever-closer competition + privacy law overlap and how even the privacy-review changes expected in July might not be enough, according to the ACCC. Thanks for having me, Paul McIntyre!
Another salvo in the fast approaching privacy regime set for tabling in parliament in August was fired last week by the ACCC around how personal information is collected, used and sold by data firms – Experian, Nielsen, Publicis-owned Epsilon and Woolworths-owned Quantium were among those flagged by the competition regulator last week in its eighth interim report as part of the multi-year Digital Platforms Inquiry. But the regulator has gone much further than putting these companies in the spotlight - it originally called them ‘data brokers’ but industry players in their submissions to the ACCC protested at the descriptor because they asserted they did not trade in personal information. Rather, they enabled companies who bought their services to segment and target audiences with shared attributes through the use of information that wasn’t personally identifying. So the ACCC changed the term to “data firms” in last week’s Data Products and Services interim report and for good measure, broadened the scope of what a data firm is to what UNSW’s Business School’s Professor of Practice and Principal at Data Synergies, Peter Leonard, says now makes “every firm in this economy a data firm.” Civic Data Chris Brinkworth Sarla Fernando ADMA Peter Leonard Laurel Henning Capital Brief Ricky Sutton
