One of Australia’s largest tenancy databases breached a renter’s privacy by operating an additional service that tracked their movements over seven years, Australia’s information watchdog has found.
The complaint concerned Tenancy Information Centre Australasia’s (TICA) “virtual manager” service, which allows property managers to opt in to receive notifications when the name of tenants they have logged with the service are searched in TICA’s main database as part of future rental property applications.
While formal tenancy databases — often called blacklists — are subject to strict privacy and information rules, including that listings must be removed after three years, the virtual manager service has operated outside of these guardrails for years, allowing property managers to keep tabs on tenants indefinitely.
TICA — a private company that collates renters’ data and provides it to real estate agencies for a fee — argued the virtual manager service is an “internal database” and therefore exempt from statutory requirements for rental blacklists.
But in a decision made in February, the Australian Information Commissioner found the virtual manager database was bound by the same restrictions as other official databases, stating:
