What’s in a trust mark? In general, a trust mark is a symbol that tells consumers that the product or service they are considering buying or subscribing to is reliable and trustworthy. Trust marks are created by industry or watchdog organisations to reassure customers about the quality or protection that comes with a product or service.

Four years ago, there was a change to the Privacy Act to reflect a change in the Government’s information sharing framework. The Government made the change in response to recommendations by the Law Commission, as part of the commission’s review of New Zealand’s privacy law.

Let’s recap. The Privacy Act gives people the right to access their information. And when a person requests their information, the organisation or business must respond to the request within 20 working days.

You have the right not to remain silent – and that includes when you think you might have been overcharged for work done on your car.

I don’t usually converse in metaphors and analogies but bear with me as I liken hackers to rodents and discuss security in keeping both of them at bay.

When we use the metaphor ‘to come with clean hands’, it means to have done nothing underhand or illegal. It’s a term that applies in the context of resolving privacy disputes. There’s a general expectation that if you make a complaint to our office, you did not bring the breach of privacy upon yourself through your actions.

If yours is a small business or organisation, there’s every chance you may be fairly inexperienced in what to do if you receive a request for personal information. But we hope you are at least aware that the Privacy Act gives people the right to make a request for information that is about them.

It is said that a sincere apology should include the three Rs – regret, responsibility and remedy. Why apologise and how to do it properly is a subject we’ve discussed before. But we continue to see apologies that fail to convince a complainant. So it’s something we thought we’d revisit in this post because the quality of an apology is an important part of our efforts to resolve privacy complaints.