Employer nomination emails and AI data leakage: what an email to a sponsor gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

When an employer nominates a worker, the migration agent deals with two parties at once: the visa applicant and the business sponsoring them. The email to the employer asks for company financials, workforce numbers, the salary and duties, and proof of who the director is. Staff paste it into ChatGPT or Claude to make a tricky request sound reasonable. The email carries the employer’s confidential position and the worker’s immigration status together. This page marks every item that the Code of Conduct and the Privacy Act bear on, and shows how the same email is drafted on Ermos inside the practice.

The employer sponsor nomination email

Sent to a sponsoring employer at the start of a nomination. Section 36 of the Code requires an agent giving immigration assistance on the basis that a third person has nominated or sponsored a client to take all reasonable steps to verify that person’s identity and to be reasonably satisfied that they have nominated the client or intend to.

To:
From:
Date: 20 October 2026
Subject: Nominating : what I need from you

Dear Graham,

Thank you for confirming on the phone that wants to nominate Emre as a mechanical engineer. To prepare the nomination I need the following by Friday 6 November.

Kind regards,

An invented email. The company, director and engineer do not exist. The ABN is the ATO’s published example and the MARN is a placeholder. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the practice

  1. 1
    The agent

    Name, practice and MARN. Ties the email to a registered migration agent bound by the Code of Conduct.

  2. 2
    The sponsoring company and its ABN

    A named business and its ABN. Business information the company has not agreed to share with an AI provider, and confidential to the nomination.

  3. 3
    The director and email address

    A named individual and a business email. Personal information about someone who is not the practice’s client but whose identity the Code requires the agent to verify. Privacy Act guide.

  4. 4
    The nominee, the role and the salary

    A named worker, what he will do, what he will be paid and what he earns now. Employment information, and the figures the nomination will rely on. Privacy Act guide.

  5. 5
    Company finances and a tax arrangement

    Turnover, workforce size, temporary visa holders and an ATO payment arrangement. Commercially sensitive information about a business that may be harmful if it reaches a competitor or a lender.

  6. 6
    The identity check request

    Section 36 of the Code requires reasonable steps to verify the sponsor’s identity and to be reasonably satisfied they have nominated or intend to nominate the client. The request names the ID document but contains no ID itself.

  7. 7
    The nominee’s visa expiry and the lodgement plan

    The date his current visa ends and the practice’s timetable. The deadline the whole nomination is working to. Privacy Act guide.

  8. 8
    The practice’s fee for the sponsor

    What the company will pay for the nomination. Commercial information about the practice and the sponsor.

What happens in Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)

  • The whole document is transmitted to the provider’s servers. On personal plans the user cannot choose where it is stored or processed, and for the major providers that has generally meant outside Australia, under that country’s legal process. Some business plans offer storage in Australia, but the provider still receives the content.
  • On consumer tiers, prompts can be retained and used to train future models.
  • The provider’s staff and systems can reach the content under the provider’s own policies.
  • Once sent, the practice no longer controls it. Retention and deletion happen on the provider’s terms.

The same document on Ermos

Ermos Dominion

The document is drafted on a unit in your office, from your own templates and the client file. Every marked item stays on the unit, which keeps working with the internet switched off. Nothing in it is transmitted to an AI provider, so there is no disclosure to analyse: the confidentiality work is the same as for your file server.

Ermos Edge

Your documents, the index and your access boundaries stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre. When a staff member asks for this draft, only their question and the excerpts they are permitted to see go to a named Australian provider, who is contractually barred from keeping the content or training any model on it. Nothing is processed outside Australia.

Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)Ermos EdgeErmos Dominion
Where the document is processedProvider servers, generally offshore on personal plansYour instance in an Australian data centre; answers generated in AustraliaThe unit in your office
Who can read itProvider staff and systems, under policyYour staff, within the boundaries you set. The named Australian provider processes only permitted excerpts, under contract, and keeps nothingYour staff only
Is it keptOn the provider’s termsKept on your instance; the provider is barred from retaining itStays on the unit
Can it train a modelOn consumer tiers, yesNo, by contractOnly your own unit learns from it, on your hardware

Part of AI data leakage in migration practices.

Common questions

Do ChatGPT and Claude use the information in an employer sponsor nomination email?
Yes, whatever is pasted from the email is sent to the AI company's servers and processed there to produce a reply. As at October 2026, whether a conversation on a personal plan (ChatGPT Free, Plus or Pro; Claude Free, Pro or Max) can be used to train the models depends on a setting each user controls. Business plans (ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, Claude Team and Enterprise) and the developer APIs sit under commercial terms, and OpenAI and Anthropic each say they do not train on that content by default (OpenAI, Anthropic). On either product, the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons can send a whole conversation back for training. The email carries the company's ABN, a turnover of about $6.8 million, an ATO payment arrangement and the nominee's salary and visa expiry.
Is it safe to paste a nomination email into ChatGPT or Claude to make a difficult request sound reasonable?
No, because the email puts two parties' confidences into one paste. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recommends in its guidance on commercially available AI products that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools, because of the significant and complex privacy risks. The director's name and email address are personal information, and the nominee's role, salary and subclass 482 expiry identify him. The company's finances fall outside personal information yet remain commercially confidential.
What if staff use their own ChatGPT or Claude account for a nomination email?
The practice cannot see or manage what was sent from a personal account, so it cannot answer for it. On a personal plan the user cannot choose where conversations are stored or processed. Some business plans let an organisation choose to store data at rest in Australia (OpenAI), which still leaves the content with the AI company. Both companies can also review content that is flagged for safety or policy reasons. The employer's tax position and headcount could leave the practice with nobody able to tell the director where they went.
How can a migration practice use AI for an employer nomination email without sending it to ChatGPT or Claude?
Ermos is built so the document stays under your control. On the Dominion AI unit it is drafted inside your office and none of it is sent to an AI provider. On Ermos Edge your documents and index stay on your own instance in an Australian data centre, and only the question and the excerpts the user is permitted to see go to a named Australian provider that is contractually barred from keeping them or training any model on them. The email is drafted from the nomination file and the practice's own templates. The registered migration agent still verifies the sponsor's identity personally, then checks and signs off the email.
What must an agent check about the employer before acting on a nomination?
Section 36 of the Code of Conduct requires an agent giving assistance on the basis of a nomination or sponsorship to take all reasonable steps to verify the identity of the third person and to be reasonably satisfied that they have nominated the client or intend to. Section 20 also requires reasonable steps to verify a statement to a government official that someone is nominated.
Does the practice owe the employer confidentiality?
A sponsor can be a client: section 306C of the Migration Act treats anyone the agent has agreed to give immigration assistance as a client, and section 276(2) counts advising on or preparing a nomination as immigration assistance. If the practice acts for the company, as the attached service agreement suggests, the Code's duty in section 35 concerns the personal information of a client or former client and their affairs. A company's finances are not personal information, but they are commercially confidential, the director's details are personal information, and the nominee's file is covered by the Code. Treat the whole email as confidential.
Is it a problem to ask an AI tool to soften a difficult request?
The softening is harmless. The problem is the paste: the email carries the employer's tax position, headcount and salary figures together with the worker's visa deadline. Rewrite it with placeholders instead, or draft it where the data stays. Either way the agent verifies the sponsor's identity personally.

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