Information Commission Cracks Down On Sale Of Confidential Data

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has today

announced that a firm which has sold employees confidential data to

construction firms has breached the Data Protection Act.

The system which was run by this firm gave opportunities to

employers in the construction industry to pay for information on

possible employees and effectively vet these possible employees.

The information included details such as the individual's name,

details of their previous employment and whether they had any

involvement in trade unions.

As this confidential information was held without the knowledge

of the individuals, this conduct represents a serious breach of the

Data Protection Act. An Enforcement Notice was subsequently issued

to the offending firm in order to stop them from continuing this

illegal activity.

The ICO has also announced that the owner of the offending firm

will face prosecution as he was never registered as a data

controller with the ICO and so should not have been handling such

data.

It is estimated that there are over 40 construction firms that

were purchasing information from the offending firm. The ICO has

stated that these firms will be investigated in a bid to discover

the extent of their involvement. For these construction firms there

is a potential threat that the ICO will issue enforcement

proceedings against them.

This will mean that the construction firms will be disallowed

from utilising the personal data and will also be prohibited from

becoming involved in this sort of activity again. Failure to

conform to these conditions could lead to prosecution.

The ICO will now conduct further investigations in order to find

out whether the sale of...

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