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.

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”.

ICO seizes covert database of construction industry workers
An obscure midlands firm was raided last week by the Information Commissioner and has resulted in 40 leading firms now facing investigation because they bought and used illegal data from this company. As a result those companies reputations' are now as muddy as one of their construction sites and almost certainly not because the individuals who sanctioned it knew it was wrong, but rather because they didn't know or didn't care.