THE Department of Family and Community Services has breached the Privacy Act by spamming website competition entrants on behalf of a university. The Office of Federal Privacy Commissioner said it had concluded its investigation of The Source website, which the department manages, and the breach had now been adequately addressed. During April 2002, the department ran 34 online "Win Free Stuff" competitions, which attracted thousands of entries. In June 2002, the website editor was approached and agreed to send marketing emails to the entrants on behalf of RMIT students who were running a project to send spiders into space with NASA. Deputy Federal Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said the Office received no formal complaints regarding the marketing emails, but decided to investigate the matter. "The Office sent two audit staff to conduct a physical audit of The Source website premises and its practices, including interviewing the staff and managers involved," Mr Pilgrim said. "At the time of the breach, the editor of The Source website was new to the role. The editor had not attended a privacy awareness training session and didn't check their actions with staff in the Administrative Law Unit regarding the Commissioner's Guidelines for Federal and ACT Government websites." Mr Pilgrim said the editor acted "quickly and appropriately" when complaints were received about the marketing emails. The Department has now completed a privacy audit of their websites; destroyed the database with the website visitor details; and conducted privacy awareness training for all staff. "This is a cautionary tale for all website operators, not only those who operate government sites, that they must respect the privacy of their visitor's personal information." Source www.news.com.au ###