Source: New Zealand Privacy Commissioner – Blog
Privacy breaches can come from anywhere that personal information is held or used by an organisation. This includes places where a breach may be less expected like when local councils deal with dogs, their registration, and complaints about them.
We’ve seen a number of dog-related privacy breaches and these breaches can result in some less than pawsitive consequences for people.
Dog complaints and privacy? You might think we are barking up the wrong tree but even when handling information around furry friends, consideration needs to be given to the personal information that relates to their relevant humans.
The Privacy Act only relates to the personal information of identifiable individuals, meaning information about a human, but when it comes to handling dog registrations or responding to complaints, respecting the privacy of that dog’s human is really important.
What is the harm?
In one example, a dog control officer responded to a complaint but accidentally revealed the identity of the complainant to the person whose dog was being complained about. They revealed their contact details as well as other types of personal information.
This resulted in some very real abuse between neighbours and threats of beating people up, vandalism, and harassment; all which could have been avoided with more careful handling of personal information.
We have also seen instances of accidentally emailing dog registrations to random members of the public, which revealed their financial details. Jenny doesn’t need to know if Bob down the street hasn’t paid his dog’s registration fees! A quick check of the email address before sending would have saved Bob’s personal information being shared.
What can organisations do to improve?
Some easy things include:
- Reminding staff of the importance of privacy. We have free e-learning modules online that anyone can use.
- Checking emails before sending attachments, email chains etc. to make sure the address is correct and hasn’t been auto-filled to something similar.
- Being mindful of what is relayed to the subject of a complaint – even certain photos can reveal a lot e.g. a photo may reveal the complainant’s property if taken from their doorway.
As privacy regulator, we love to sing from the woof-tops about privacy, and its importance in the ways organisations use personal information – even where you’d least expect it.
Written by Alex Robertson, Compliance Officer
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/06/26/dont-let-a-privacy-breach-be-the-tail-that-wags-the-dog/