How did a political party get my contact information?

Political parties need to comply with the Privacy Act. But like other agencies, they can obtain contact information from publicly available sources like the electoral roll and the White Pages, as well as their party membership databases. They may use this information to contact you.

If you want to know what personal information a political party has about you, you can make an access request to the organisation. You can do this online using our AboutMe tool.

If a political party has information which you believe is not available publicly – for example, your mobile phone number - you might want to ask it where it got that information. If you believe the party should not have that information, you can ask for your information to be removed from its database to prevent further contact.

Here's a case we dealt with where a woman discovered her telephone provider had given her phone number to a political party.

Also, if you have grounds for doing so, you may want to consider applying to the Electoral Commission to go onto the unpublished roll to protect your safety.