Is Your Website Enquiry Form a Privacy Risk? Here's How to Tell

Most practices never think twice about their website contact form, but it is often the weakest point for patient privacy. Here is how to tell whether yours is a risk.

Why the enquiry form matters

When someone fills in your website's enquiry form, they usually type in their name, their contact details and a short description of a health concern. Under the Privacy Act, anything about a person's health is treated as "sensitive information", the category with the strictest handling obligations. That means a contact form deserves the same care you would give to any patient record.

The problem is that most website contact forms were never designed with health information in mind. They were built to send a general enquiry for a non-sensitive enquiries (e.g. an enquiry form for a bathroom renovation company), not to safeguard sensitive details.

Warning signs to look for

You do not need to be technical to spot the common red flags. Ask yourself:

• Does the full enquiry, including the patient's message, get sent in an email?
• Is your website built on a general platform like Wix, Squarespace or WordPress with an off-the-shelf form?
• Could your web agency, hosting provider or a plugin developer view submitted enquiries?
• Do you know where the form data is actually stored, and whether that is in Australia?

If you answered "yes" or "I'm not sure" to any of these, it is worth a closer look.

What a safer form looks like

A form that handles health enquiries safely will typically:

• encrypt enquiries where they are stored
• keep the data in Australia
• limit access to only the staff you authorise
• keep patient details out of the notification emails your team receives

Privacy-first form tools built for this, such as SafeSubmit, can add this protection to your existing website without a rebuild.

Fixing it is usually straightforward

In most cases, fixing an insecure enquiry form is quick and does not require changing your website platform or design. Often it is a matter of swapping the form's behind-the-scenes processing for something purpose-built, while the form on your page looks exactly the same to visitors.