Car owners angry at use of vehicle register

A finance company's unsolicited mail is prompting complaints from car owners to the Privacy Commissioner and the Transport Minister.

They say the company is making improper use of a public register to obtain their names and addresses.

Privacy Commissioner Bruce Slane said his office had been receiving calls for a couple of months about letters from financial services business Pacific Retail Finance.

The company had gathered the names of vehicles owners from the Motor Vehicles Register and was sending them unwanted mail.

"People feel vulnerable that their address is being made available on a bulk basis for commercial purposes and they don't know what happens to it after that," Mr Slane said yesterday.

Names and addresses are available to the public on the Motor Vehicles Register, administered by the Land Transport Safety Authority.

Mr Slane has previously recommended to the Government that the information should not be available in bulk, "other than for the purposes in which it was set up".

Police and the public use the register to identify the owners of vehicles that may have been involved in accidents or offences. People selling and buying vehicles also use the register to check ownership.

Mr Slane said the register was not for the commercial sector to gather thousands of names to sell products. He advised those annoyed about the unsolicited mail to complain to the company involved.

Others had taken their complaints to Transport Minister Paul Swain.

"The essential principle for the use of personal information is to use it for the purpose for which you obtained it," Mr Slane said.

"Here people have no choice. They have to give out their information, only to find it is being used for commercial purposes which are nothing to do with their ownership of a vehicle."

LTSA spokesman Andy Knackstedt said while the register was subject to privacy laws, it was decreed a public document and that took precedence.

"As a public register, most information stored in the [register] is publicly available," he said.

"Any person who pays the prescribed fee ... may apply for the particulars of current and previous owners of a vehicle."

Fees could range from 23 cents to $11. Those who were given the information were under no constraints as to how it could be used.

Mr Knackstedt said the LTSA could refuse to hand out information in relation to specified vehicles.

For a vehicle to be registered on a private list, owners had to prove that if their information was publicly available it would be "likely to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand, the international relations of the Government of New Zealand, the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, or detection of offences, the right to a fair trial, or the privacy or personal safety of any person".

Mr Knackstedt said the Transport Ministry was considering possible amendments to the law that could tighten up access to the register.

Pacific Retail Finance head of marketing Mike Frederickson said the mailouts were a relevant offer to vehicle owners and the company got a good response from them.

"We tell people on the bottom of the letter where we got the information from and if they want to remove themselves from the database, they can do so by email or by ringing us.

"The privacy issue is really an issue for the LTSA ... they wouldn't do anything if it was illegal."

He said fewer than half a percent of people asked to be taken off the database.

Details available

For fees ranging from 23c to $11 access to the full name and address of current and previous owners of a vehicle recorded in the register.

Those given the information are under no constraints as to how it could be used.

- NZPA