Can you claim for an accidental data breach?

You could be eligible to claim for an accidental data protection breach, and we may be able to represent you for a legal case on a No Win, No Fee basis.

Many of the cases that we take forward involve information being exposed or misused as a result of an accident or an error. These kinds of incidents can have devastating consequences for the victims, with data breach compensation amounts based on things like the severity of the breach and the nature of the information involved.

As a leading firm of data breach compensation lawyers, we represent thousands of clients for cases, and we may be able to help you too.

Can claim for an accidental data breach?

The short answer to this question is that you can be entitled to receive compensation when you claim for an accidental data breach. In fact, many of the data breach cases that we take forward involve the breach itself occurring because of some kind of accident.

Unless it is a cyberattack, many cases are due to some kind of error or oversight.

What we need to do to prove that you should be owed compensation is establish that there has been an instance of negligence. If a data breach was caused by the accidental actions of an employee, their employer can be vicariously liable for the breach. This can mean that the organisation that employs the employee can be responsible to meet the claim.

On a quick side note, for cyberattack cases, you could still claim from the organisation affected if they failed to properly protect your information.

Examples where you could claim

There are huge numbers of examples that we could give you where you could be eligible to claim for an accidental data protection breach.

Some of these can include:

• Emails or letters accidentally being sent to the wrong person or containing the wrong person’s information;
• A mass email sent where the CC function instead of the BCC function was used, exposing the recipients’ identities. This technique should never be used for such emails and this kind of breach is so easily avoidable. Despite this, we have represented a lot of people for infamous examples where this happened, including the 56 Dean Street Clinic leak of 2015, and the 2019 Charing Cross leak;
• Accidental disclosure of information without the clear consent of the data subject (i.e. the person the information is about);
• Data being published accidentally or left accessible online in error, unsecured.

That last one is what happened on the Virgin Media data breach that we are pursuing a group action for. A database had been left accessible online and was unsecured, and contained information for some 900,000 people.

No Win, No Fee legal representation

For eligible clients, we can offer No Win, No Fee arrangements when you claim for an accidental data breach with us.

To find out today if you are eligible to start a legal case with us, just contact the team for free, no-obligation advice here.

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