I made the mistake of giving my email address and phone number to a real estate agent when looking at a property. How do I get random real estate agents I’ve never met to stop harassing me?
– Josh, Victoria
Lucky for you, there are two sets of protections in place to help you with this problem. Australia has strict rules and regulations around spam, which mean real estate agents can’t contact you with marketing messages if you don’t want them to. Under Australian privacy laws, they are not allowed to share your personal details with other agents, so you absolutely don’t have to put up with contact from an agent you’ve never met.
Firstly, spam. Under the Spam Act 2003 and the Spam Regulations 2021, anyone wanting to send you marketing texts or emails must first have your consent. Consent can be either express or inferred.
Express consent is where you give over your details with full knowledge and acceptance that you’re going to receive marketing. For instance, if you’re at an open house and a real estate agent offers to contact you about other listings, or gives you a form to fill out where you tick a box saying you’d like to receive more information, that would be considered express consent.
Inferred consent is where you give over your details and it is reasonable to believe that you expect to receive marketing as a result. For instance, if you give a real estate agent your details at a property inspection, it could arguably be reasonable for them to assume you have consented to being contacted about other properties.
Either way, consent can be withdrawn. Under the spam rules, unsubscribing has to be an easy process for the person receiving marketing messages; every marketing message must contain a clear unsubscribe option; and you must be unsubscribed within five working days when you opt out.
Immediately unsubscribing from all real estate marketing you receive should be your first step. If there is no option to unsubscribe, or you have unsubscribed but are still receiving messages, you should make a complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority who can investigate.
It’s worth sharing your issue with Acma either way, as it has authority to investigate systemic issues and take enforcement actions. If the type of issue you’re experiencing happens to be widespread, reporting it can help Acma identify the problem and take appropriate action. Be prepared to provide screenshots of all the communications you have received.
Secondly, privacy. You said real estate agents you’ve never met have been harassing you. When you provide explicit or inferred consent to a real estate agent, the consent is to that agent only. In your case, you’ve implied that your contact details were shared, so now other agents who you do not know and have not provided consent to are contacting you.
The Privacy Act 1998 contains a number of Australian privacy principles (APPs) that govern how your personal information can be used. The APPs include an explicit prohibition on businesses disclosing your personal information for the purposes of direct marketing, which means that real estate agents are not allowed to give anyone else your details so they can contact you with a sales pitch.
Further, under the APPs businesses must manage your information transparently. This means they need an up-to-date and clearly communicated privacy policy.
So if a real estate agent was planning to share your information, they should have disclosed this to you when they first collected it.
Right now, the Australian privacy commissioner, Carly Kind, is conducting a sweep of businesses who collect information in scenarios with power and information asymmetry. Kind has said that: “When confronted with in-person requests for their personal information … consumers often don’t have access to all the information they might need to make an informed decision. This makes them vulnerable to overcollection of personal information and creates risks to their security and privacy.”
Real estate agents are one of the sweep’s main targets.
In light of this, it is worth making a privacy complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The OAIC requires you to make a complaint to the business first. If they don’t respond to your complaint within 30 days or you’re unhappy with their response, you can submit your complaint to the OAIC online.
Finally, it’s also worth getting on the Do Not Call register which means businesses will no longer be able to make unsolicited marketing calls to you. Unfortunately this only protects you from unwanted calls and faxes, so you’ll still need to take steps to stop those real estate agents sending you texts and emails.
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