Welcome To The Data Leak Lawyers Blog

Exam Board, AQA, reportedly compromised 64,000 examiners’ personal details

A school examining board has recently fallen victim to a mass data breach, compromising approximately 64,000 current and former examiners’ personal information.

AQA’s online systems were reportedly hacked on the 21^st March 2017. These online systems stored examiners’ name, addresses, personal phone numbers, and passwords. The examining board were quick to stress that the attacked systems didn’t store any financial details or any personal data of the schools, pupils or exam material.
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95,000 McDonald’s applicants personal information hacked

Food for thought: McDonald’s is the next big corporation to fall victim to a major cyber-attack.

A McDonald’s Canadian unit said that 95,000 job applications were compromised from a cyber-attack that took place on the 31^st March. It’s believed that the cyber-attackers retrieved information such as names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and employment backgrounds from a careers website.

The users affected by the hack are said to be candidates who applied for jobs at one of Canadian branches between March 2014 and March 2017.
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Concerns over NHS plans to move all sensitive patient data up into the Cloud!

We have all heard of the online Cloud data storage; but pardon our old fashioned pessimism, but it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen!

It seems a far-fetched suggestion to trust all of your sensitive data to be stored in something that was named after floating wisps in the air that come and go depending on the weather. With all the data leak incidents and scandals erupting left, right and centre… we can’t be blamed for our scepticism when it comes to uploading personal information on the World Wide Web.

If it’s on the internet, surely hackers will always find their way in? So how is our sensitive medical date ever going to be safe when it’s all accessible online?
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What to do if a debt recovery company has leaked my private information

As a hard-and-fast rule, companies have a responsibility under the Data Protection Act (DPA) to use and store sensitive information correctly. Although the law is there, not all organisations successfully uphold the regulations they’re supposed to.

So, in this example, what can you do if a debt recover company has leaked your private information? Do you have a valid claim for Data Leak Compensation?
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Two former employees were fined by the ICO for misusing personal information

Two former employees who worked at a UK based claims management company illegally obtained information from a car hire company and then used this information to blag calls to an insurance company to illegally obtain personal information of drivers.

They did this in order to try and sell this personal information to solicitors. We ourselves have never bought claims, and never will!

The information included policy holders information and their recent and/or historic road traffic accidents. Within that information, the policy holders’ names, addresses, and contact details would likely have been accessed too.
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Two people sentenced for 12 months after leaking confidential information

If you thought breaching confidential information would earn you a slap on the wrist and nothing more, you thought wrong.

Recently, two people from a claims management company and an insurance company were jailed for 12 months following a serious data breach. Data is a sensitive and valuable commodity, and the punishments for failing to protect information should be strict.
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Rise of the fake news and its implications from a data perspective

“Banksy’s identity revealed!”

“Facebook now requires a monthly user fee.”

“Bath salts create zombies.”

Chances are, you’ve probably seen these ‘news’ headlines all over social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These shocking revelations prompted millions of social media users to click on the links to find out more, and then they were sharing the links to warn friends and family.

However, these incredible and shocking ‘news’ articles were produced for that exact effect; rather than the production of real journalism. And it can cause problems for those who open links and share them.
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RSPCA was given a fine by the ICO for secretly screening their donors by using wealth management services.

Very recently, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has handed out penalty fines to two well-known charities for secretly screening their donors’ personal information, and then using an external wealth management company to analyse the data to find the most generous donors and work out who would be most likely to give again.

With this effective but illegal method, the charities then used direct marketing communications to ask targeted donors to make more donations. This is, however, a breach, of data protection legislation.
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British Heart Foundation fined for secretly screening donor’s information for targeting most generous

The British Heart Foundation Charity secretly screened thousands of their donors to target the most generous ones for further donations. As a result of their behaviour, they have been given a monetary fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Although the first thing that springs to mind is the fact that we’re talking about a charity here, we must always remember that no one is above the law – a fact that the ICO had to recognise when investigating their behaviour.
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NHS admin worker guilty of illegally accessing sensitive medical records of friends and family

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

Whilst working at the Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, the former admin worker took advantage of their position and searched for medial information on their friends and family without their consent. The former admin worker pleaded guilty to breaching s55 of the Data Protection Act. The ICO consequently issued a fine and have also ordered them to pay costs and a victim surcharge.
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