Games visitors 'won't face FB data mining'

The Gold Coast mayor has assured Commonwealth Games visitors his council will not be mining their Facebook data.

The council has moved to allay any privacy concerns about free, high-speed Wi-Fi the council is rolling out ahead of next month's Games.

"People taking advantage of our free public Wi-Fi do not need to worry about their private data being mined. It won't happen," Mr Tate said in a statement on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, the ABC reported that people who used their Facebook accounts to log in to the service would have their data mined by the council for tourism marketing purposes.

"We will be able to monitor the people, where they come from that is the percentage of tourists coming from China, Japan, Southeast Asia and locals," the ABC quoted Mr Tate as saying.

But the council says that's not the case.

However, it does plan to collect the ages, genders, and possibly the nationalities of people who log on via Facebook, in an effort to ensure overseas tourists who often complain about free public Wi-Fi in Australia are actually using it.

But that work will be done in-house by council officers.

"The city has built and owns the Wi-Fi network. The city is not collecting any Wi-Fi content data. Council will not collect, or store, any users private data," the council said in a statement.