Global privacy authorities issue follow-up joint statement on data scraping

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) and 16 of its international data protection and privacy counterparts have released a joint statement with further expectations about how social media companies can better protect personal information.

Last year, data protection authorities called on industry to identify and implement controls to protect against, monitor for, and respond to data scraping activities on their platforms, including by taking steps to detect bots and block IP addresses when data scraping activity is identified, among other measures.

This initiative was followed by a period of industry engagement. During the interim, concerns in the community have grown about mass scraping of personal information within social media platforms, including to support artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

This follow-up joint statement lays out further expectations, including that organisations:

• comply with privacy and data protection laws when using personal information, including from their own platforms, to develop AI large language models
• deploy a combination of safeguarding measures and regularly review and update them to keep pace with advances in scraping techniques and technologies
• ensure that permissible data scraping for commercial or socially beneficial purposes is done lawfully and in accordance with strict contractual terms.

The joint initiative, with its focus on the implications of AI large language models, coincides with the OAIC recently publishing detailed guidance on privacy and developing and training generative AI models. This guidance communicates the OAIC's expectations of industry to ensure that in these new and developing areas industry operates within the boundaries of Australia's privacy law.

While the continued dialogue with industry is constructive, it remains important to remind individuals that they can lose control over the information they make public online, and that they should consider carefully what personal information they share to minimise the risks from data scraping.

The OAIC provides advice on privacy rights and online media as well as tips for minimising and individual's online footprint.

Related links

• Concluding joint statement on data scraping and the protection of privacy
• Initial joint statement on data scraping and the protection of privacy