The Albanese government is being urged to take advantage of a rare multi reform opportunity to curb Australia’s “extractive and predatory data market” after analysis of a leaked dataset showed vulnerable Australians’ activity is being tracked and traded online.
A database of 650,000 ‘audience segments’ found on the website of Microsoft’s ad platform Xandr shows Australian internet users are being grouped for advertising based on sensitive information like “heavy TAB gamblers” and “heavy credit card users”.
The document contains 8,300 segments about Australians available on the data market, collected by monitoring their online activity and in some cases physical location, according to analysis of the file by Reset Australia, the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) and Choice released on Thursday.
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