The admission yesterday by T-Mobile that they had suffered a dataloss measured in the hundreds of thousands came hard on the heels of the admission that the head of an Indian IT outsourcing company had sold medical records from a UK private hospital for £4 each. In both cases the data was sold to companies who then used it to market to these people.

Published: Oct 2009 in Data Strategy Magazine - Author: Tim Beadle, Atrium Group

In January, the Data Protection Act 1998 will have been in force for ten years (although passed in 1998, it didn’t become active until 1st January 2000). But a recent study of leading e-commece sites in the UK suggests that this law is observed more in breach than in compliance. Out of the UK’s 50 top sites, not one fully complies with the Information Commissioner’s Office best practice guidelines and the majority breach either the Act or the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) 2003. Should we direct marketers care?

Speaking at last week’s Annual Privacy conference in London, Chris Graham, the new UK Information Commissioner, made it clear that he was going after companies that do not comply with UK privacy laws. In his first public speech since becoming Information Commissioner Graham made it clear that he would be “naming and shaming” companies that fail to comply with the Law. He pointed out that data privacy and information security are now “top of the media agenda”.