Australian Data Removal

I spent 28 years as a chef. That's not a disclaimer — it's context. When you spend nearly three decades in professional kitchens, you learn that the work either gets done or it doesn't, and there's no one else to blame if it doesn't. I didn't come to privacy through a computer science degree or a data law career. I came to it the same way most people do: I discovered my own personal information was being sold and republished online without my knowledge, I tried to fix it, and I found out how badly the existing tools serve Australians. Most of what was available was either built for the US market, automated in ways that don't work on Australian platforms, or expensive without being effective. I built Australian Data Removal because I needed it to exist, not because I saw a market opportunity.

What I am not is a lawyer. I want to be straightforward about that. Australian Data Removal is not a legal service, and nothing we provide constitutes legal advice. What the business does operate under is the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles — the same framework that governs how any organisation in Australia handles personal information. Our internal processes and compliance approach are developed with guidance from privacy law specialists, and for clients whose situations require solicitor representation — disputes, formal complaints to the OAIC, or cases involving sensitive data — we have legal referral pathways to qualified practitioners. We don't try to be everything. We do the removal work properly and refer out what we can't responsibly handle ourselves.

The career change is sometimes the first thing people notice, and I understand why it gives some people pause. But the reason this service works the way it does — manual, human-led, no automated theatre, honest about what it can and can't do — is because it was built by someone who got genuinely frustrated with the gap between what was being promised and what was being delivered. I'm not protecting your privacy because it's my professional background. I'm doing it because I know from personal experience what it feels like when it's exposed, and because I think Australians deserve a service that actually does the work.

— Chris Robinson, Founder