“The Warehouse Group also has 1-day and Noel Leeming, and I’d bought some stuff off there and complained because it hadn’t arrived. They had all these little records about when I’d said ‘Hey, this hasn’t arrived’ or ‘Can you refund me?’”
To make matters worse, The Warehouse had also erroneously shared extra information on several other Victoria Youngs also living in New Zealand.
“This was a bit shocking,” says Young.
“The Warehouse said that it was just human error that led them to disclose all this information.”
The added information didn’t feature receipts or shopping history, but it did contain some personal data on these other women who shared a first and last name with the BusinessDesk investigations editor.
Young would eventually call these women to let them know what had happened.
“They were concerned because I had their phone numbers, email addresses and where they lived – which is pretty scary to have somebody you don’t know holding that information.”
The Warehouse isn’t alone in gathering information on shoppers and online users. Businesses located both locally and internationally are tracking online users in an industry that’s now worth billions of dollars. So is the New Zealand Government doing enough to ensure our information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands?
Gehan Gunasekara, an associate law professor at the University of Auckland, says New Zealand lags behind some other jurisdictions when it comes to the issue of online tracking.
“We should align more with Australia,” he says.
“The European Union is, of course, the gold standard and they’ve been leaders in the field of regulation of these developments, but Australia is moving quite quickly and looking at an online code. For example, they’ve just cracked down on some Meta subsidiaries for misleading and deceptive conduct.”
Some online commentators have expressed frustration at the pace of change in New Zealand law, but Gunasekara says it’s never easy to regulate when it comes to rapidly evolving technology.
“The speed of developments with AI and everything else that’s come out with algorithms is just so fast that any legal system would struggle to keep up. Even the Europeans are struggling and the jury is still out on whether we can actually regulate these things before the technology just moves on to yet another level.”
- So why don’t countries just ban tracking altogether?
- How should the law evolve to keep up?
- Should people take more steps to protect their data?
- And what are some of the risks that come when companies know too much about us?
Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear more about what big business knows about you.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. It is presented by Damien Venuto, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in business reporting who joined the Herald in 2017.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
