I got someone else's letter from Natwest...

Mikeyorks

gazebo wrote: »

Irrespective of it being a 'glitch in a machine' or a 'human error', the bank need to know about these things.

Fully agree. But that is not what the OP proposed!

And if you look at the DPA site - they will not concur that the odd instance of duplicated letters / demands / statements etc in an envelope ... constitutes a 'breach'. They're looking for something a little more indicative of sustained system or process failings.

olly300

Mikeyorks wrote: »

From the DPA site :
....... namely those in 'complex filing systems' - as I quoted. I'll leave it to you to tell them they're wrong?

Actually the Data Protection Act does cover this sort of thing.

Simple explanation - if you have been watching the news and Watchdog in the past year you would see the issues over the government posting different people's details to the wrong person, and the issue of banks/building society's putting application forms, letters etc in the bin without being shredded.

I have also done Data Subject Access Requests and letters to/from organisations are what your receive in your file as not all organisations have "complex" filing systems plus I knew someone who use to deal with this issue for a bank.

Anyway banks/building societies make lots of mistakes with the Data Protection Act and as long as they:
1. Inform the information commissioner
2. The mistake is genuine and not complete negligence like not shredding documents.
The issue isn't taken any further and they don't get fined.

Mikeyorks

olly300 wrote: »

Actually the Data Protection Act does cover this sort of thing.

A fuller extract from an aspect of the DPA relating to disclosure :-

The Data Protection Act covers computer records and some manual records. Most computer records can easily be found about a particular person and should be disclosed removing any third party information. Manual records need to be in a relevant filing system. The files which form part of the relevant filing system are structured or referenced in such a way that information about the applicant can be easily located.

..... so the documents in question needed to have been, at some stage, within a 'relevant filing system' .. in order to fall within the Act?

olly300

Mikeyorks wrote: »

A fuller extract from an aspect of the DPA relating to disclosure :-


..... so the documents in question needed to have been, at some stage, within a 'relevant filing system' .. in order to fall within the Act?

The majority of organisations plus people covered by the DPA like GPs, solicitors, IFAs and accountants keep a record of anything they send to their customers/patients because they have another contract with the customer/patient covered by different laws. This record could simply be a note that a standard letter was sent to the person on a certain date or the actual copy of the letter.

Anyway the main thing is that the person who received the letter in error is not liable to get compensated as it wasn't their data going astray.

Meltdown_2

Presumably, Natwest have a computer record for the person whose financial details were sent to the wrong address.

That record should show that the person has been sent details of their plan.

Assuming that there weren't 2 copies of the letter/plan produced, with 1 going astray and 1 being received correctly, then that record will be incorrect.

Ergo, a DPA issue.