Your responsibilities

Whenever you get personal information deliberately, you are 'collecting' it. The Privacy Act sets out what personal information you can collect, where you may collect it from, and how you may collect it.

Only collect information you need

If you’re thinking about collecting personal information, the first thing you should consider is why you’re collecting it. The Privacy Act requires that you only collect personal information that’s necessary for a lawful purpose. For example, it could be to deliver a product or service, or find the right person to employ. Having a clear purpose will help you make good decisions about collecting and using personal information.

Before you collect personal information, think about what information you need to achieve your purpose. You may find you don’t need to collect as much as you originally thought, or you may not need to collect any at all. The more unnecessary information you have, the more you have to keep up to date, and the more likely mistakes are to happen.

If your lawful purpose changes or you want to use the personal information you have collected for an unrelated purpose, you are likely to need the agreement of the people you collected it from.

Privacy principle 1 governs purposes for collecting information.

Collect information directly from the person

Generally, you should collect information directly from the person it’s about. Then the person will know what information you've got and what you're doing with it - they're far less likely to be surprised or upset.

Sometimes you do need to get information from other sources – for instance if you're checking job references or doing a credit check. You can do this when:

you have the consent of the person the information is about
getting it from the person concerned would undermine the purpose of the collection
you’re a public sector body and that information is necessary to uphold or enforce the law
the information is publicly available.

Privacy principle 2 governs sources of personal information.

Tell people what you’re doing

If you're collecting personal information from someone, you need to let them know what you're doing. The best way to do this is usually with a clear privacy statement.

Creating a privacy statement

Our Privacy Statement Generator makes it easy.

You need to take reasonable steps to tell people:

that you’re collecting their information
why you’re collecting their information
whether you’re collecting their information under a particular law
who will be able to access the information
whether they can choose not to give you the information
what will happen if they don't give you the information
that they can ask to access and correct their personal information
how to contact you, or any organisation that is holding their information for you

Sometimes it’s obvious to people that you’re collecting their information. Other times, it may not be as obvious, e.g. if you’re using CCTV, or cookies on a website. Whatever the case, being open with people about what you’re doing with their information means you won't take them by surprise, and they're less likely to object. Think about how and when it would be best to tell them.

You may not need to tell the person if it would undermine the purpose of the collection, or it’s just not possible to tell them.

Privacy principle 3 governs what you need to tell an individual.

Collect information fairly and lawfully

Make sure you collect personal information in a way that is lawful, fair, and not unreasonably intrusive. For instance, covert surveillance is usually not allowed.

Privacy principle 4 governs how you should collect personal information.