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NHS admin worker guilty of illegally accessing sensitive medical records of her friends and family

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has given a former NHS administrator a fine for illegally accessing sensitive medical records of people she knows.

Whilst working at the Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, the former admin worker took advantage of her position and searched for medial information on her friends and family without their consent. The former admin worker pleaded guilty to breaching s55 of the Data Protection Act. The ICO consequently issued her a £45 fine and have also ordered her to pay costs of £405.98 and a victim surcharge of £20.
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ICO issues fine for historical society who had a laptop containing donor information stolen

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has reported that a historical society has breached data protection laws when one of its work laptops were stolen.

An employee was using it away from the workplace and had set it down in an undisclosed location when a break-in occurred, and the laptop – among other things – was stolen. The laptop, purchased by the historical society, contained sensitive personal information of artefact donors.

The ICO did not further explain exactly what information this included.
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“Spam marketing has landed Nouveau Finance a £70,000 fine” – Companies who use personal data for spam purposes remain in the ICO’s firing line

Aren’t marketing text messages one of the most irritating things?

Well, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has thankfully penalised a company for abusing text marketing powers. The issue with this batch of marketing messages is that it was done using personal information for marketing purposes without proper consent, and therefore constituted as a breach of the law.
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“Unsolicited marketing calls have landed a legal firm a £30,000 fine” – Assist Law Ltd used private information solely to make unsolicited marketing calls

Assist Law Limited has been hit with a monetary penalty from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for making unsolicited marketing phone calls to people who were registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

The Weston Super Mare legal firm felt the force of the ICO who imposed the monetary penalty for making the phone calls for marketing purposes over a period of a year.
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Cisco reportedly failed to protect users’ data following system maintenance

Cisco Systems, a renowned leader in IT, has admitted that one of its websites has leaked their users’ personal details.

It goes to show that even the big IT companies can find it impossible to keep personal data 100 per cent secure. You could argue that it’s particularly embarrassing for Cisco, as the company reportedly prides itself on its security.

It’s a stark reminder about just how vulnerable our personal data continues to be!
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“The Northamptonshire PCC data breach” – Adam Simmonds is charged for disclosing confidential information

A former Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Adam Simmonds, is charged and due to be on trial next year for breaching data protection provisions.

Mr Simmonds is accused of unlawfully disclosing information about a Wellingborough MP, Peter Bone, during his time in office from 2012 to 2016. There’s little clarification as to what information was disclosed, but the documents were classified as confidential, according to reports.
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ICO fines two employees for a data breach when they used personal data wrongfully

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has prosecuted two employees, Lesley Severs and Kayleigh Billington, who worked at a claims management company. They both had access to data that was reportedly illegally obtained from another company, to go on to use the personal data to make calls to insurers.

The personal data in question included information about policy holders and their recent or historic road traffic accidents. The personal data would’ve no doubt included names, addresses, vehicle identification numbers, dates of birth, and so on.
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“Three are losing customer trust” – Three mobile customers aren’t happy following the data breach

Following on from Three’s data breach, Three’s mobile customers aren’t happy… me included.

Three has had a lot of difficulty in ascertaining the exact amount of customers that were affected by the recent data breach. They’ve confirmed that hundreds of thousands out of their ten million customers could be affected though, so we’re talking big numbers here.
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“Adobe’s $1 million fine” – Adobe Systems has been fined for the security breach in 2013

Adobe Systems has now been fined $1 million for the data breach that occurred in 2013.

Initially, it was believed that 38 million accounts were breached, but the total was then decreased to around half a million.

That’s still a heck of a lot of breaches though!
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Tesco Bank criticised for its “lax” security system

Following what was dubbed as the largest cyber-attack in U.K. banking history, Tesco Bank has a lot to answer for in terms of the ‘suspicious activity’ of 40,000 bank accounts, which led to thousands being successfully hacked, and money going missing.

What originally was thought to be a hack into 20,000 customer accounts was revised down to 9,000, in which £2.5 million was stolen.
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