Personal privacy is a fundamental human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 12 and is an imperative for protecting individual identity, personal autonomy, seclusion, human dignity, and self-determination, in turn enabling freedom of expression, freedom of association, the free development of personality and the avoidance of discrimination and racism.
The protection of personal privacy enables people to experience personal happiness through the control of their own identity, their self-esteem, their reputation, and the guarantee of their personal security (physical, emotional, and financial) without fear of persecution.
The development of hugely popular online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which inherently encourage the willing disclosure of users’ personal information including facial images, photographs of family members, associates, locations, activities, and personal habits and pastimes, have led to the unwitting diminution of individuals’ personal privacy in the online space.
At the same time, today’s smartphones include AI-enhanced photographic generator capabilities, and almost every Australian now owns a smartphone capable of shooting sophisticated professional-grade video enabling them to stream live content to social media platforms and/or to produce high-quality social media photography for posting to online platforms.
This technological revolution has bought into sharp focus the personal privacy rights of ordinary Australians, both in public and in private settings where they would reasonably expect their identity, location, and personal activities to be protected. Individuals can now find themselves being captured as ‘unwilling background actors’ in online social media content produced and published by ‘influencers’ with the singular focus to gain increased ‘hits’ (views) and thus generate additional social media platform revenue for themselves.
As more Australians move into residential apartment buildings around Australia, the issue of non-consensual filming of residents on building common property such as gymnasiums and swimming pools, by influencers and other social media content creators, is becoming more prevalent.
On 10 June 2025, the Federal Government introduced a new statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy, allowing individuals to sue for serious invasions of privacy, including misuse of information or intrusion upon seclusion. The threshold to claim is that an invasion of privacy must be serious, that is, intentional or reckless and satisfy the condition that a person should have reasonably expected their personal privacy to be upheld. More needs to be done to protect individuals’ rights to personal privacy and seclusion by explicitly prohibiting the filming and online publication of individuals without their express consent.
The protection of individuals’ personal privacy rights goes hand in hand with the protection of consumers from deliberate and deceptive online scams. The Scams Prevention Framework Act was legislated February 21, 2025, and sits under the purview of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). However, the Act monitors the online platform providers themselves and not the individual influencers or any of their misleading social media content and deceptive claims.
Today, there are over 1.2m Australians with social media accounts who have more than 1,000 followers. The ACCC conducted research in 2023 and found that over 80 per cent of the online influencers surveyed posted content that raised concerns about being misleading or deliberately deceptive.
Moreover, 43 per cent of the Australian influencer market operate in the health and fitness industry promoting online dietary advice and/or ‘medications’ as well as specific exercise programs whilst holding no formal qualifications nor accreditations, to largely desperate, unsuspecting, and potentially gullible consumers.
The influencer Marketing Code of Practice, under the auspices of the Australian Influencer Marketing Council (AiMCO), is a voluntary and self-regulatory industry code and therefore does little to protect the public against incorrect and deliberately misleading influencer claims. AiMCO provides some advice and guidance to influencers regarding a duty of care to consumer rights to privacy but provides no compliance management or audit services to manage influencers’ online activities to mitigate the risk of consumers from unscrupulous influencer practices. Further, there is no licensing regime for social media influencers from which authorities can garner any oversight.
The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) as part of their advertising and marketing principals has a self-regulated Code of Ethics in which section 1.2 requires that: ‘Advertising shall not be misleading or deceptive or be likely to mislead or deceive.’ That seems to be the extent of oversight of the influencer market from the advertising industry.
At the same time, social media platforms are highly vulnerable to hacking at the individual user account level through phishing, malware, or reused passwords. The advent of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), the development of advanced anti-virus software, and the introduction of login alerts is assisting with the protection of personal privacy data online.
There is no single official statistic for the exact number of social media hacks in Australia during 2025. However, according to Australian Government data, online scams — often facilitated through social media — resulted in nearly 201,000 scams and $335 million in financial losses nationwide. Globally, it is estimated that 429 million social media accounts were hacked in 2025 (an increase of 37 per cent on 2023), costing victims approximately $3.5 billion. It is speculated that the surge in the numbers of breaches and scams is being driven by automation, AI-powered phishing, and credential-stuffing attacks.
The development of online social media platforms has facilitated a general movement towards a loss of personal privacy for consumers as well as the potential loss of personal information which can lead to online financial fraud. The Federal Government needs to stay vigilant and must do more to ensure that Australians’ personal privacy is not compromised as the technological world accelerates around them.
