Data Protection Act?

Adam86_2

Good evening, not sure if this is in the right forum so do apologise if it's not.

I have received an email from a branch superstore of First Choice Holidays within the last half hour. The email has not been BCC'd to everyone who it was addressed to. Therefore I can see everyone's email address as well as they can obviously see mine.

Is this a breach of the data protection act? as basically First Choice have now given my personal email address to all the addressees.

If so where do I go from here? as I am pretty mad at this moment!

Thanks

WhiteHorse

Yes. They have failed to secure data.

Adam86_2

What can I do about it?

Thanks

shaun_from_Africa

This topic gets asked many times on various legal enquiry sites, and the general opinion always seems to be that yes, it is a breech of the DPA.
The link below seems to be exactly the same as you case.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/26/email-data-protection-breach

mo786uk

you can tell the INFORMATION COMISSIONER as they deal with DPA issues. However I imagine its a small minor issue they wont care about.

Pound

Click 'Reply All' (or the equivalent) with instructions on how to make a complaint to the ICO

Equaliser123

Adam86 wrote: »

Good evening, not sure if this is in the right forum so do apologise if it's not.

I have received an email from a branch superstore of First Choice Holidays within the last half hour. The email has not been BCC'd to everyone who it was addressed to. Therefore I can see everyone's email address as well as they can obviously see mine.

Is this a breach of the data protection act? as basically First Choice have now given my personal email address to all the addressees.

If so where do I go from here? as I am pretty mad at this moment!

Thanks

Realistically, the Information Commissioner has much more blatant things to get involved with.

Admittedly, not good, but worse things happen.

I've just had an email account ruined by spam following Play.com's breach of security. But not a lot can be done after the event.

suited-aces

Might be rubbish, I thought there had to be two identifiers for it to be a DPA breach. If it's only email address you'll have no case (assuming I haerd correctly)

shaun_from_Africa

Might be rubbish, I thought there had to be two identifiers for it to be a DPA breach.

Anything that can be used to identify a living person is legally classed as data that falls under the remit of the DPA.

“personal data” means data which relate to a living individual who can be identified—
(a)
from those data, or

(b)
from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller,

Although I agree with Equaliser in that I doubt very much if the ICO will do anything unless First Choice have done this previously and have already been warned about it.