A Surrey college has apologised after accidentally e-mailing the private medical details of more than 300 students to an entire year group. The list, meant for Godalming College teachers, names one student with a brain tumour and another with anorexia. Staff tried to recall the message and then asked its lower sixth year group to…
Category: Non-U.S.
UK: Council printer mix up breached data protection laws
Probably everyone has accidentally left some papers in a shared printer at one time or another. But when papers containing sensitive personal data get scooped and included in a mailing to an uninvolved their party, you may wind up violating the Data Protection Act. According to the Information Commissioner’s Office, that’s pretty much what happened…
UK: Lancashire Police officers dismissed for breaching data laws
The residents of Lancashire, like most people in Britain, hope that the police are there to protect them. So they will be shocked and disappointed today to find out that dozens of police have been using police equipment to spy on their partners and neighbours for the last three years. There were a total of…
UK: 83,000 customer details leaked by Co-op
Joe McGrath reports: The Co-operative Group has issued a public apology after a data error led to the customer details of 83,000 people being published online. Customers of Co-operative Life Planning and Co-operative Wills & Funeral Planning were affected by the error at a third party support services provider which resulted in the customer details…
Cn: Bank details on the web
Jia Feishang reports: China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, removed files containing the personal details of thousands of locals from its document-sharing platform yesterday, following public outcry over the breach of privacy. But although those files were deleted, people’s personal information can easily be found on the Internet. Shanghai Daily has discovered similar documents online, including…
A few ICO undertakings that flew under the radar
I thought that whenever the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had an entity sign an undertaking to improve data security or privacy protective practices, the office issued a press release. But thanks to Stewart Room, I’ve learned that that’s not necessarily the case. Stewart alerted us all to a recently signed undertaking that involved a…