Australian members of parliament and their staffers are being advised to have two phones, to keep government work and private messaging away from any device that has social media apps.

Intelligence and cybersecurity agency the Australian Signals Directorate held confidential briefings with some MPs in recent weeks, sources said. Although the agency did not single out any social media company by name, briefing participants were warned that some apps were conducting excessive data collection and prompting for access to things such as contacts, location, and mapping out all apps on a device.