Home delivery newsagents in Western Australia last week received a letter from Seven West Media seeking their commitment to de-identify customer records from customers who lapsed five years or more ago.
This relates to newspaper home delivery data held by WA newsagents for West Australian customers.
To comply, newsagents will need to either manually remove customer records of old customers or have facilities in any software storing customer identifying data.
Besides the costs of compliance, there is a question about the five year age of identifying data and the ATO requirement of seven years for business records. ATO officers can go off-script when conducting an audit.
I have outlined to the Seven West Privacy Officer the challenges the requirement places on newsagents. Further discussions are to follow.
Good reading for newsagents on this topic can be found at the website of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.