Competitions and privacy

When you enter competitions you will be required to give certain amounts of private information. There are a number of reasons for this, however the basics are to contact you in the event of a competition win. More likely than not your information will go into a database that may or may not be used for future contact.

We suggest that if privacy is of absolute concern to you, it may be worthwhile to consider whether competitions are right for you. If you are concerned, however not overtly, we suggest taking the following steps.

Firstly, check in the terms and conditions in relation to privacy issues. Terms and conditions should by rights tell you what will happen to your information, or at the very least what you can do to access or delete your details. Websites should also carry privacy related information in "terms of use" or similar pages.

CompetitionsGuide.com.au has increasingly become concerned at the level of information required for competition entry. Our advice to clients in the past has been not to ask for income or specific age unless you absolutely need it. Age ranges are fine (we use these ourselves) as they help determine our audience, and what prizes work best. Dates of birth are irrelevant.

Another area we would like to clear up is mandatory mobile phone numbers. Phone numbers are a requirement for prize notification (you would be surprised how many winners don't answer emails) but landlines should be acceptable. Again, many promoters demand mobile numbers simply because they may use them in the future .... most don't.

On the subject of landlines, we're also surprised that these are sometimes required, which is unusual given the declining rate of fixed line phones! If receiving phone calls in general is a problem, make sure your name is on the do not disturb list.

One final thing of importance. As promoters and supporters of competitions, we see the need for companies wanting contact details to be able to market products. After all, if no products were marketed there would be little or no need for competitions.

As with all competition related issues, do a little ground work and look for the obvious signs.

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©Craig Bradley Market Engineering Pty Ltd. 2009. All articles are original content and opinions of the author Craig Seitam. Copying of all or part of any content without the expressed permission of the author is prohibited.