Harts breaches Privacy Act
Consolidator group Harts Australasia has breached the Privacy Act, according to the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner.
The breach relates to an incident on January 11 when an office worker discovered that a wheelie bin in Neutral Bay contained hundreds of files with details of credit cards, tax file numbers, bank statements, along with photocopies of Medicare cards, passports and drivers licences.
The files related to clients of Harts Group Financial Services. A spokesperson for the Privacy Commissioner Office says that the number of people affected was "in excess of 350".
A statement released by deputy federal privacy commissioner Timothy Pilgrim says that Harts' co-operation with the office has "adequately addressed our concerns".
"We have reached an agreement with Harts that includes an undertaking that they will contact all the people affected by this incident to apologise and offer to meet any costs they incurred in replacing documents that had been disclosed," Pilgrim says.
The statement also says that Harts will be addressing internal problems with their internal information handling practices.
The Office will be carrying out further inspection of Harts over coming months.
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