Older Australians bombarded by sales calls after ‘unscrupulous providers’ scraped private data from My Aged Care website
Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne has revealed older Australians have been targeted by telemarketers after a privacy fail on a government website.
EXCLUSIVE: Unscrupulous aged care providers are scraping private data from a government website in order to spam older Australians for business.
The privacy fail was made public by Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne at the Senate Estimates on Wednesday.
She said older people had come to her to complain about the practice of being bombarded by telemarketers after signing up to the My Aged Care website, the portal through which older Australians must register for an aged care assessment.
Under the privacy section on the website it says that information collected includes the older person’s name, date of birth, contact details (address, email, phone), demographic information (e.g. gender), identifiers (e.g. Medicare number, healthcare identifier, aged care ID), applications, consents and supporters.
“We may also collect sensitive information about your health, disabilities, ethnic background and sexual orientation,” the website states.
“We store all of the information we collect about your aged care journey in your personalised record which is stored securely on data servers in Australia as required by the Privacy Act.
“These systems ensure your information is kept accurate, confidential, and accessible only to authorised staff involved in your care, or in the management of your records.
“We use a range of physical and electronic security measures to protect your personal information from misuse and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.”
The website states that the personal details of supporters or people referring older Australians are also collected.
Greg Pugh from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing said that they had heard of people using software to scrape data and are investigating.
He said the department collects personal details of people who have signed up to My Aged Care’s website for the purpose of organising aged care services.
He said there were protections in place, but said he had previously heard of the website being abused in this way.
“The short of it is it’s against the terms of conditions, not something we allow or condone,” Mr Pugh said.
Senator Allman-Payne said in a statement later that it was a shocking admission by the Department that it has been aware of this problem for months.
“Older Australians are having their information stolen from My Aged Care by unscrupulous providers and being used to target people with sales calls for aged care services,” she said.
“What actual protections have they put in place for people’s data?
“Older Australians face enough hazards from scams and exploitative sales tactics online without the government giving greedy corporations the keys.
“This is yet another example of Labor’s aged care system choosing profits over the care of our older Australians.”
In a response to the discussion at Estimates, a spokesperson from the Department said people’s personal details cannot be scraped from the My Aged Care website.
“Personal details on My Aged Care portals are only accessible by authorised users,” the spokesperson said.
“There are strict obligations under law for portal users to ensure they do not inappropriately use personal information including under the privacy and aged care acts.”
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Originally published as Older Australians bombarded by sales calls after ‘unscrupulous providers’ scraped private data from My Aged Care website
