Cheshire West and Chester Council data leak

Media reports have confirmed that there has been a Cheshire West and Chester Council data leak, and it appears to be yet another in a long line of email breaches of its kind.

At Your Lawyers, as The Data Leak Lawyers, we are used to helping people claim compensation for incidents like this as leading privacy claims experts. It does not come as a surprise to us when we see a repeat of a style of incident, despite the fact that data laws are more stringent these days, and organisations should learn from the errors of others. Despite this, in our experience, these same kinds of breaches just keep on happening time and time again.

This may be part of the reason as to why we represent thousands of people for claims, and have already recovered over £1m in damages for mostly individual clients to date.

About the Cheshire West and Chester Council data leak

According to the BBC, the Cheshire West and Chester Council data leak appears to be yet another email leak that has occurred through someone sending a mass email in an unsafe way. The employee reportedly failed to use the “BCC” method, which in itself is dangerous and archaic. The email related to taxi legislation and is understood to have been sent at the start of April, and may have impacted some 1,300 people.

It is understood that the email was sent to people and businesses, and an apology has been issued for any inconvenience that has been caused.

Yet another one of these incidents…

Sadly, the Cheshire West and Chester Council data leak incident is one in a very long line of incidents just like it. It is a simple and avoidable error for an employee to send a mass email where the recipients’ addresses (and often names) are exposed. In the absence of consent from the recipients, this can amount to a data breach.

A lot of the time, the error stems from the inadvertent non-use of the “BCC” function which can mask the recipients’ information. However, as stated above, this is an archaic method – it is so outdated and dangerous, and there is no excuse for it in our view. There are plenty of mailing platforms that can be safely used to send mass emails, and using archaic workaround methods like this risks errors and risks data breaches.

We represent a lot of people for claims where this has happened. One of the most infamous events was the 56 Dean Street Clinic leak of 2015 where users of the sexual health clinic received an email like this. Unfortunately, most of the recipients were using the service for HIV matters, which meant that their very private and confidential medical status was leaked to hundreds of other people.

Ultimately, the Cheshire West and Chester Council data leak is a repeat of many an incident in the past just like it, and it is surprising that it has been allowed to happen.

Claiming compensation for a data leak

You could be entitled to claim compensation for a data leak if you are an individual whose personal information has been misused or exposed in this way.

The GDPR can entitle you to claim compensation for any distress caused by the loss of control of your personal information. You could be owed thousands of pounds in data breach damages if you have suffered as a result of an incident, and we may be able to represent you for a legal case on a No Win, No Fee basis.

You can speak to our team for free, no-obligation advice here now.

Email data leaks at work – what can you do

Claim compensation for employee data breaches