Compensation for published personal data online

If an organisation has published personal data online about you and they didn’t have just cause, reason or consent to do so, you could be entitled to claim compensation.

If this has happened to you, we may be able to represent you for a legal case on a No Win, No Fee basis. There are plenty of ways in which this kind of data leak can happen, and it’s only right that victims have a voice for justice.

As a leading firm of data breach and consumer action experts, we regularly help people for breaches where this has happened. We may be able to help you too.

Compensation for published personal data online

If an organisation has published personal data online, and you did not consent to the information being published, you may be entitled to take legal action. Whether you can or not can depend on the nature of the data involved, who has publish it, and what reasons they had to publish it.

Some of the questions we will normally ask are:

• Did you consent to your personal data being published online?
• Is the information of a private and sensitive nature that shouldn’t have been published?
• Is the information already in, or allowed to be in, the public domain? For example, the media will regularly run stories about people, and this doesn’t mean that a breach of your rights to privacy has occurred. It can depend on the nature of the data, where it has come from, and how it has been used. If it’s in the public’s interest then a breach may not have occurred.

In most cases, claims arise when it comes to the misuse of your private information. If information about you that is personal and sensitive has been leaked or disclosed without your consent, that’s when you may be eligible to make a claim for compensation.

It happens a lot…

In a recent example, Powys Council has been forced to apologise after they reportedly published personal data online that they shouldn’t have.

In what has been described as an error related to the rush of trying to get information online for the coronavirus pandemic, names and addresses attached to a letter were reportedly shown on the site in error. It’s understood that the letter was a template letter, and residents affected by the breach have been informed, and steps have been taken to avoid a repeat of the incident occurring.

As we often say when such steps are taken: why weren’t they in place before the breach occurred? The law is clear, so how do these avoidable data leaks keep happening?

In another recent example that we have launched legal action for, we had the New Year’s Honour list data breach where recipients’ names and address were posted online in error. The Virgin Media data breach stems from a similar kind of incident where data had been left unsecure online.

Free, no-obligation legal advice

If an organisation has published personal data online, and it’s data that’s of a personal and sensitive nature, we may be able to help you.

We can assess the case for you on a free and no-obligation basis and let you know if it’s a claim that we can take forward for you on a No Win, No Fee basis.

To get in touch with the team head over to our contact page here.

Babylon Health data breach

easyJet data breach scams