As 69 per cent of Australians fear for their online privacy, the Australian Commissioner called on Australian individuals and businesses to take action against privacy threat. 

The 2017 Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey revealed that one in four Australians know someone who was a victim of identity theft. 

The Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim said that Australians need to use the options already available to protect themselves against privacy concerns. 

“While 61 per cent of us check website security, our results found that over 65 per cent of Australians do not read privacy policies, and half do not regularly adjust privacy settings on social media, or clear their browsing history,” Mr Pilgrim said. 

The 2017 survey revealed that Australians believe that biggest risk to privacy are; 32 per cent of online services, 19 per cent of ID fraud and theft, 17 per cent of data breaches and security and 12 per cent of exposure of financial data. 

In addition, it was found that majority of Australians have decided not to deal with a business due to privacy concerns.  

This included the 93 per cent who were concerned that organisations were sending personal information overseas. 

“For businesses, these results show there is still work to do make privacy easy for customers to manage. Those long-winded privacy notices and complex settings need to be replaced by clear language and point-in-time notifications,” Mr Pilgrim said.