Pixxie

Is anyone an expert on the DPA, in particular an employers responsibility to keep you data safe?
Seen this and thought would post it here to see if anyone can help.....

My GF works for a local company who had an IT consultancy doing some work for them. A contractor with the IT firm has had his/her laptop stolen which had personal details of all the staff (date of birth, NI number, bank account details, address etc). The company have not said whether the data was encrypted or how long ago the theft took place.
The GF is now concerned that the person with this data will now attempt to open bank accounts, apply for credit cards etc using this information.

Can she do anything about claiming for compensation from her employer and/or the IT consultancy? From what I've read it sounds like you can only get compensation if you have suffered "damage". That sounds a bit vague. She's stressing now and nothings happened. If her credit rating gets hit because of dodgy credit card applications etc she may struggle to get loans, mortgages in the future (and I'll be nagged to death about it as well ).

Has anyone been in this position

fast bloke

Even if someone has these details, if they apply for credit it will have to be to this address. In order to make any benefit from this they need to steal her post as well. All the info above is fairly easily obtained - in theory someone could use it to set up an identity at another address, but if someone is going to make that much effort then they could probably do it even if they didn't get all the info from the laptop

WRXPete

Under the Act, anyone who has such information in some electronic form has a responsibility to protect it....we get that many laptop thefts in service areas around this way that police are considering sticking the aggreived party on for breaching the DPA, just to make them take responsibility.
I'm not sure however how you stand on compensation unless the data is actually accessed(not even sure if it has to be used in any way!!)....well worth a trip to your solicitors!!!
If i get a chance at work this week, i could research it further....pm me if you are interested!

SJ_Skyline

I'm not sure of the answer to your question but a few points that I thought of reading:

- Has the theft been notified to the police?

- Has the suspected fraud been notified to the police?

- Did the consultancy sign a non-disclosure agreement? If they didn't then at the risk of sounding harsh the company has given a the consultancy access to personal information without ensuring they will not pass it on knowingly.

- Was the contractor an employee of the consultancy or self-employed? You may have more success persuing a larger company, the consultancy should be insured against this sort of thing if it is a larger company.

Jamo

iTrader: (23)

are you sure about this??

its not hard to "create" a new address, and this is a problem within uk banking at the minute, especially with loans and cards. there is specific number of address' in london that are known for this kind of thing. you know we have recently moved from here to here, here is our past adress details etc etc

james

fast bloke

j4mou - It would be fairly easy for them to create a new address and have the credit history of the old address, but if someone wants to go to this effort they will be able to get all the info they need from other sources, so the theft of the laptop probably isn't that bad

minor_threat

j4mou,

I agree with fast bloke, if somebody wants to steal your girlfriend's identity they can do this without the hassle of stealing a laptop. The addresses you're referring to in London are know as "accommodation addresses" and all banks/finance houses know these addresses and automatically check their data against them.

If your girlfriend is seriously concerned about this tell her to contact CIFAS and put her name on the protective registration service. This costs £11.75. Go to CIFAS and click on Protective Registration.