ICO survey on data flouters: 50% say they receive more unwanted calls than before pandemic
- Reference: 1625754549
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/08/ico_data_protection_survey/
- Source link:
When quizzed about which data protection issue is most pressing, rather than citing privacy issues – the UK survey's 2,102 adult respondents, polled between 6 and 18 May, said their top concern was that "personal information [is] being used for scams or fraud."
What's more, organisations with a poor record on keeping people's data safe or not using it properly – such as those who pepper the public with unwanted marketing calls – are likely to find themselves scratched off people's Xmas card list.
[1]
The findings contained in the ICO’s annual snapshot Information Rights Strategic Plan: Trust and Confidence report [2][PDF] also identify who people trust - and those they don't.
[3]
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Social media and messaging platforms remain firmly shackled to the naughty step with six in 10 people registering a "low trust."
At the other end of the scale, health providers continue to be held in high regard.
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"As in 2020, levels of trust and confidence with different types of organisations are highest for the NHS and local GPs," said the report.
[6]UK's data watchdog probes use of private email to discuss government business at the Department of Health
[7]Brit firm fined £200k for banging on about missold PPI in 11.4 million nuisance calls
[8]UK watchdog fines biz £130k for 900,000+ direct marketing calls to folk who had opted out
[9]Of all the analytics firms in the world, why is Palantir getting its claws into UK health data?
While there are plenty who agree, this finding may raise some eyebrows since the government is currently neck-deep in concerns about plans to hold medical data on all 55 million people in England on a central repository.
Campaigners for the move rally under the slogan "data saves lives" but opponents to the scheme - which has now been delayed two months until September 1 – [10]have blasted it as the "biggest data grab in NHS history ."
But the issues go much deeper than that. Only yesterday, the ICO opened an [11]official inquiry into the misuse of private email accounts at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
The investigation comes amid mounting allegations that senior officials within the department – including former health secretary Matt Hancock who resigned recently over his inability to follow lockdown rules – used private emails to discuss sensitive government business.
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Elsewhere, the ICO-funded research found that half of those people questioned had received more unwanted marketing phone calls – such as those around [13]PPI claims , [14]home improvements or [15]fast food offers - now than they did 12 months ago.
Regardless of the concerns people have, one thing is clear; when it comes to data breaches, companies and organisations should be named and shamed.
Almost three quarters (74 per cent) of respondents said that if a company/organisation that they used were affected by a data breach and their information was lost or stolen, the company holding the data should be "held responsible".
After a 2015 mega-breach in which miscreants made off with data on 157,000 of its customers, Brit ISP [16]TalkTalk lost 101k of them and wrote down £60m in IT costs.®
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[2] https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/documents/2620165/ico-trust-and-confidence-report-290621.pdf
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YOchIAcjyQpl5GMd5MoLZgAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/07/ico_dhsc_private_email/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/02/ppi_claims_biz_fined/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/24/ico_colour_coat_fine/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/15/palantir_uk_sci_tech_committee/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/uk_health_secretary_data_saves_lives/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/07/ico_dhsc_private_email/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YOchIAcjyQpl5GMd5MoLZgAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/02/ppi_claims_biz_fined/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/24/ico_colour_coat_fine/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/papa_johns_ico_fine/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/02/talktalk_hack_cost_60m_lost_100k_customers/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
No answer
I simply don't pick up a phone if the call is from a number I don't know or expect.
The situation is extremely bad when you have to look for a job. You have to pick up calls from random numbers and waste time figuring out whether the caller is a recruiter or scammer. Sometimes both is also the case.
Why...
...is the report marked "©2021, Harris Interactive All rights reserved"?
Didn't the ICO pay for it?
Land line calls
We never use our land line or give the number to anyone, so all the calls to it are scams or wrong numbers. 99% of them are from call centres: Amazon prime renewal or my bank card has been used fraudulently or my internet service provider is going to terminate my internet or its about my recent car accident or there is a virus on my computer.
If I've got the time and inclination I like to wind the callers up and play along for as long as I can feeding them fake information until they finally realise they are being bated - I kept one guy on the line for 45 minutes. I give them an address that is nearly real (there is no house with that number on the street name I give them), I consistently give them the same incorrect date of birth and false full name etc. There must be quite a dossier building up about this non-existent person at this non-existent address.
The number of calls is going down though, spoilsports, they must slowly be adding our land line number to a black list of numbers not to call. :-(
Reasons? (and a proposal)
' ...the UK survey's 2,102 adult respondents, polled between 6 and 18 May, said their top concern was that "personal information [is] being used for scams or fraud." '
That may be primarily because they're unaware of how else their personal data are being abused.
[1]Our research of the situation to end of 2020 showed that practically no business was properly informing data subjects about its processing of personal data, and this wholly unacceptable situation is hardly likely to have changed in the last six months. Indeed it has been tacitly approved by the EU in the text of the UK Adequacy decision via Article 49, which states " Data subjects should be informed of the main features of the processing of their personal data " [emphasis added]. This directly contravenes Article 5.1(b) of the GDPR, which states that personal data must be " collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes " [emphasis added].
The problem is further exacerbated by the strict letter if the GDPR, whereby only existing data subjects are legally entitled to request full details of processing. Those not yet signed up may request the details but there is no legal obligation on the data controller to comply beyond the publication of a "privacy statement" (which our research showed is almost universally woefully inadequate but nevertheless apparently generally acceptable to the ICO). Consequently you have to put your head in the noose before you can find out how much a business is likely to tighten it.
This definitely needs to be changed, and can be now we have the right to make our own laws again. Anyone should have a statutory right to find out in advance exactly what a business is going to do with their personal data.
[1] http://businessinforisk.co.uk/library/Awful_not_Lawful-final-BiR.pdf
Someone's personal data is being misused
Yesterday we received a private and confidential letter addressed to someone at our address who had moved many years ago, long before we moved here. Being suspicious, rather than chucking the letter I opened it, apparently the person's request to have a £300 credit account with the NEXT store had been approved. This appeared to be obvious fraud, so I returned the letter to sender, marked NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS. Either the person who used to live here is trying to scam NEXT or someone else is. Either way NEXT isn't using due diligence in vetting potential scammers.
Did I hear you mention Palantir??
Quote: "...the government is currently neck-deep in concerns about plans to hold medical data on all 55 million people in England on a central repository..."
Yup....and Palantir is "neck deep" in this mess.
Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/
....and that's where it's headed.....private ownership of the health records of 60+ million people.
....and those records will be sold on to who-knows-who.....perhaps health insurance companies?
....Oh!...and about those "pseudonomised" records to be extracted on September 1, 2021 by HMG.....they contain the date of birth and the postcode of each individual.
....So back to Palantir...."Palantir Forge" is just the ticket for de-anonomising millions of PII records. Coincidence??...I think not!!!
Quote: William Burroughs -- "The paranoid is a person who knows a little of what is going on"