Information Commissioner ICO

iglimpse

What a toothless wonder that turned out to be . Abbey sent only 75% of the info we requested. As suggested here, I reported them to the ICO (fill in online form, send all copies of letters). Upshot- seems to be this standard reply (below) which IMO could have been sent with very little info from me :mad:

The fact that Abbey have sent me 75% of the info presumably means that I cannot go ahead to the court because I don't have all the full info. OR can I proceed and estimate the missing costs??? I am tempted to proceed anyway to see if it will force Abbey to provide the info. I have copies of all my letters to Abbey, so the court can see that they have been messing me about

No criticism of the info on this site, still feel it is a necessary part of this whole debacle to put more pressure on Banks to behave better :T :beer: :T

Was surprised by the rapid message that my case is now closed, only officially opened 2 days ago :eek:

""Complaint about the ‘Subject Access Request’ made to Abbey for personal information relating to *******.

You have complained that, as yet, the information requested from Abbey has not been received. (untrue, I said part of it received)

When we receive a complaint like this, we are under a duty to consider if it is likely or unlikely that there has been a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act). We will then decide what action, if any, to take.

Following a recent Office of Fair Trading decision about ‘penalty charges’ we are aware that the number of individuals making subject access requests to financial institutions has significantly increased. However, clearly these financial institutions are still required to comply with subject access requests within the statutory 40 calendar days. :rolleyes:

As you may be aware under the Act there are eight data protection principles. These are sometimes known as the principles of good information handling as they set out the way organisations should handle personal information. The sixth data protection principle requires organisations to process personal data in accordance with an individual’s rights under the Act. Therefore if you have not been sent the information you are entitled to within 40 days, it is likely to be in breach of the sixth data protection principle

We would like to explain that due to the number of complaints we are receiving about failed subject access requests we are writing to financial institutions on a monthly basis, sending them a ‘batch’ of complaints. :rotfl:

We will be writing to Abbey with the next batch of complaints at the end of April 07 and will of course include the details of your complaint in our letter. We will advise Abbey to ensure that they provide you with the information you are entitled to as a matter of priority. Furthermore we will ask them to outline what steps they are taking to ensure their future compliance with the Act. Therefore although we will now close your case we would like to assure you that we will continue to carefully monitor this issue. :mad:

Finally, it may be helpful to explain that a breach of one of the data protection principles is not a criminal offence and we cannot punish an organisation for a breach of principle. Our priority is to get organisations to take steps to solve the problem and to ensure they handle personal information properly in the future.

However, it may also be helpful to explain that if you have suffered a loss because an organisation has broken the law, you may be entitled to compensation :j . We do not have any powers to award compensation and any claims should be made through the Court.

We would like to thank you for bringing this matter to the attention of the Information Commissioner"".