Personal data manipulation is a significant and affects all Australians.

Privacy protections, consumer protections and cyber protections have lagged behind digitisation,

allowing an unregulated predatory data market to thrive.

This market harms all Australians at some stage of our lives, and often when we are most vulnerable.

The use of personal data to create and exploit vulnerabilities in consumers is a harm in itself,

it violates consumers rights to autonomy and free choice.

 The Predatory data market is just that predatory,

and the onus cannot and should not be on Australians to protect themselves

one by one disconnecting from the digital world..

Consumers should not be expected to become technical experts to simple engage online

Personal data in the 21st century is not just a list of details about you – your name, address, date

of birth or phone number – it is a vast trove of information drawn from the websites you visit, the

places you go, the apps you have on your phone, the time you spend on your screens, your bank

accounts and shopping habits

The manipulation of individuals through online targeted advertising

can have serious consequences for families, communities and states. These are business practi-

ces that need to be stamped out using the full range of legislative tools available. When it comes

to online advertising, our data is personal, but it is also political, and the scale of the industry that

is built on the mapping and manipulation of Australian minds is astonishing.

One company may know that a person visited a certain web-

site, searched for a certain thing or installed a certain app on the phone. Another data broker

knows where this person lives and which places they visited. Yet another company knows that they

purchased certain products in the supermarket.

Companies that create ‘geofenced data’ mark boundaries around areas of interest using GPS

coordinates or other data that identifies their location. When someone enters one of these areas

and with an app installed on their phone or other device that is sharing geolocation or other

data, these companies add people to their segment list of, for example, ‘people who have visited

airports’. In this way, data brokers can sell access to information about which people have been and where.

Australia’s research revealed that Facebook uses data it collects about underage

users to create profiles of young people with harmful or risky interests, such as 13–17-year-olds

interested in smoking, gambling, alcohol or extreme weight loss. This sort of profiling is part of

Facebook’s day-to-day business model.

It’s estimated that 72 million data points will have been collected by companies on

each Australian child by the age of 13. This can be sold to marketers who can effectively target

each child. As VicHealth CEO Dr Sandro Demaio explained:

‘If kids get hooked on harmful products from a young age, they become consumers

for life. Yet sneaky tactics like apps, games, influencer posts on social media

and strategies to encourage content sharing among friends, all appeal to kids and

are repeatedly used by harmful industries. We also know there’s nothing stopping

companies buying kids’ data from digital platforms and using it to target them with

marketing, essentially making our kids the product…

Manipulation also violates consumers‘ human rights. It interferes with our rights to a pri-

vate life protected under international law, but also potentially interferes with our absolute

right to freedom of thought. Influence and persuasion may be a perfectly normal part of

human interaction, but manipulation violates human rights.

Personal data manipulation is a significant and affects all Australians.

AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen said online gambling was causing immeasurable harm to Australian families.

"The committee led by Peta Murphy was crystal clear partial bans do not work,

and it is time to recognise that ongoing industry pressure is harming Australians," Dr McMullen said.

"While families struggle with cost-of-living pressures, gambling losses now amount to more than $1500 for every adult,

draining budgets faster than utilities or housing."

Australians lose $31.5 billion annually to gambling — the highest per capita losses in the world.

Gambling companies have been emboldened by inaction, with TabCorp ramping up inducements

as they exploit the regulatory vacuum.

Dr McMullen said Peta Murphy’s report had exposed how these companies

use this lack of oversight to systematically target vulnerable audiences, particularly children, through sports advertising.

"The inquiry was unambiguous — online gambling companies deliberately exploit Australia’s love of sport

to normalise gambling as harmless fun," she said.

"Australia's sporting codes and broadcasters have been in lockstep with gambling industry

with its partners to oppose restrictions."

The AMA has championed reform since 2013, calling for an independent regulator and comprehensive advertising bans.

Gambling harm causes severe mental health disorders,

substance abuse, family breakdown and financial devastation.

The AMA demands an immediate response to all 31 recommendations, including total advertising bans,

an independent regulator, and child protection.

"Every day of delay means more Australians fall victim to an industry that profits from harm and despair."

Would you let your child bet away thousands of dollars at the races?

How about on their phones?

Believe it or not, that’s exactly what’s happening.

The law states that Australians must be 18 or over to purchase a $2 scratchie ticket from the newsagency.

So why are we allowing the younger generation to gamble their money away online?

More than 97.8 million people across the globe use popular gaming app Roblox, 50% of which are children.

Roblox has amassed a net worth of 48 billion

through the app’s immoral application of gambling techniques designed to hook young users.

Kids purchase game currency ‘Robux’ in the hopes to score chance items,

such as exclusive pets, items, and upgrades within games.

Many of these items have less than a 1% chance at reward- a statistic that is all too familiar.

It’s ’Pay to Win’- but the only winners are the developers and Roblox itself.

Get lucky enough to score a prize, and the next ‘crucial’ item immediately surfaces,

 fueling the users urge to ‘bid higher’.

Roblox games are often never-ending, continuously cycling through frequent upgrades

- a tactic that blatantly correlates with gambling promotion techniques.

Gaming YouTubers are supplied with exclusive in-game items to promote to their young, impressionable audience.

Children often idolize these personalities, who appear highly skilled due to their access to advanced items,

hence tempting them to purchase similarly as they believe it will help them achieve their hero’s accomplishments.

It gets worse.

Auto-clickers and macros allow the young to play the game 24/7, even with the computer screen turned off.

These games are deliberately designed to be extremely difficult to complete.

We are talking 1000s of hours.

Children are constantly bombarded with in-game offers daily, then consumed nightly with worries of winnings.

This is an addiction, plain and simple.

Scientific research has acknowledged a strong association between long hours of gameplay

and a lack of sleep in children.

This is detrimental to several aspects of a child’s wellbeing, such as schooling,

relationships, and foundational brain development.

This problem will only worsen with time if nothing is done.

Apple, Netflix, Google and other major streaming services have begun offering games with in-app purchases,

poorly disguising opportunities to gamble within.

Without your help, this blatant infringement will continue to damage Australia’s children and young adolescents.

What needs to happen:

Online gaming to be subscription based only

No more in game purchasing.

Australian servers for school age users to be shut down between 11pm and 9am

Let the kids sleep.

Anything you want you can have, I mean anything.

Buying of weapon, guns, knives, swords, machete’s 

How to make detonators, explosive, projectiles 

How to self harm, commit suicidal acts

Explicit sex, with minors and animals 

“Just ask Google”: The well-rehearsed parent response to the latest of their child’s boundless curiosities. Global mainstream search engine Google produces unlimited content upon user command. This includes:

Slime tutorials. Explosive tutorials.

Video game advice. Self-harm advice.

Try-not-to-laugh compilations. Pornography.

Think it’s ridiculous to place these prompts in the same list? It is. Even more so that these prompts are equally filtered.

Do we really need content at our fingertips that is truly harmful to all Australians.

There needs to be stricter filters on what we see as a society, what our children can observe and learn from.

Until then, whether it’s fairytale rhymes or committing crime-

Just ask Google.

Where are the morals of Google

Where are the filters.

The australian Government needs to force Google into filtering content to all Australians.

The rules that protect you are just not working.

All telemarketers and research callers have to follow additional rules, even where they are allowed to call numbers on a

Do Not call register.

Even if the company or person is exempt, they must

Only call you certain times of the day.

Say their name, the name of their employer and (if the are calling of behalf of someone else), their name as well.

Tell you why they are calling.

End the call if you ask them to or indicate you do not want to continue.

Have a caller ID displaying a return number for you to use to get more information.

What Our Australia is calling for is a complete ban on cold calling.

We have a right to our own privacy lets enact it.

99% of all spam enails originate from overseas hitting Australians via our servers / data centres.

This is where the filters / blocking should be not on our phones or computers.

we shouldnt have to be subjected to continous scam emails that target vulnerable Australians or any Australian that are unaware of its deceptive nature.

AI

● Creating and spreading disinformation

● Compromising cybersecurity

● Creating pornographic deep fakes of real people’s photos including of children (school

aged children in Australia using AI-generated deep fake pornography to bully peers.

 There is mass misuse of women’s online photos to sell porn subscriptions, a Tasmanian was

jailed for two years for uploading and downloading AI-generated child abuse material

.

● Threatening livelihoods (AI is built on vast amounts of copyright information which threaten

writers, artists and the creative industries’ livelihoods.

The Australian Government is well aware of the current harms to Australians.

A Roy Morgan

survey  shows a sizeable majority of 57% of Australians believe AI creates more

problems than it solves.

The Government's response falls short of Australians’ expectations to regulate AI

There is a strong expectation from the Australian public for the Government to regulate AI. The

broad consensus in the submissions to the Government’s  is that

voluntary guardrails are insufficient.

In a Choice survey of 1000 respondents, four in five

Australians believe that businesses must ensure their AI systems are fair and safe pre-deployment

and 77% agree the government should make this a requirement.

The Government has so far committed to a minimal number of measures, such as:

● Exploring voluntary measures such as watermarking and an industry safety standard,

● Setting up a temporary expert advisory body,

● A ban on deepfake pornography,

● A Copyright and Artificial Intelligence reference group (AG).

This is very concerning because these actions will not address the harms facing Australians

from misuse of AI technology.

In the last ten years, the lack of regulation on social media platforms and digital services in has led

to the global entrenchment of a handful of businesses that have been found to cause serious

privacy and safety harms to Australians.

The advancement of AI technology is dominated by the

same businesses and while they may choose to behave differently for this technology, it is more

likely they will continue bad behaviour until they face consequences.

The Australian Governmentmust not delay action.