The wide range of add-on services provided by credit bureaux is one of the areas the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will focus on in a review of the practices of third-party data brokers. The ACCC released an issues paper on data brokers yesterday, which forms part of its extensive inquiry into digital platform services. The regulator said it is hoping to shed some light on the practices of data broking businesses, which collect personal information, including financial information, and produce a range of data products and services. It is interested in learning more about the level of competition between third-party data brokers, their sources of information, the extent of their products and services, and any potential consumer and small business harms. The report said: “Despite the central role that data brokers play in providing data products and services to a range of businesses, as well as the wide variety and volume of information they collect, analyse and process, there is currently little transparency, awareness or understanding of how data brokers operate in Australia.” The ACCC is concerned that because third-party brokers have no direct relationship with the consumers whose data they collect, many consumers are unaware that businesses collect their data, what the extent of the data harvesting is, and how it is used. “This raises unique consumer protection issues, since consumer are less likely to be aware of the practices, have explicitly consented to the collection and use of their data and be able to challenge or opt out of the collection and use of their data,” the report said. Products the ACCC is interested in include customer and audience profiling, property data analytics, retail data analysis, risk and fraud management products, data validation and identity verification. Companies referred to in the report include CoreLogic, Equifax, Experian, illion, LiveRamp, Nielsen, Oracle, PropTrack and Quantium. The ACCC will not focus on the consumer and commercial credit reporting of Equifax, illion and Experian because that activity is regulated under the Privacy Act. It is interested in the “business solutions” and “insights” also offered by these companies. On the issue of potential harms, the ACCC said it has previously identified a range of potential harms relating to the collection and use of personal information, including potentially harmful targeted advertising, use of information in ways that might discriminate against a consumer and incomplete or inaccurate data being used in profiles. It has also identified misuse of data by malicious actors and inadequate or misleading disclosures about how information is used.