Council email data leaks compensation advice

Victims of council email data leaks can be entitled to make a claim for compensation, and we’re able to offer No Win, No Fee representation for this kind of incident.

We often say that council data breach claims are common, which they are. Generally speaking, public sector incidents are some of the most common types of individual cases that we take forward. Of the thousands of people that we represent for legal cases, plenty of them involve local authorities or the agencies working on their behalf.

As a leading firm of consumer action and data breach compensation specialists that have been representing people for cases like this for years, we may be able to help you.

Compensation for council email data leaks

You may be eligible to claim compensation for council email data leaks. You could be entitled to seek damages for the distress caused by the loss of control of your personal information. If you also suffer losses and expenses in addition to this, you may also be able to recover compensation for those also.

Importantly, you don’t have to have suffered any financial loss to be able to make a claim. The GDPR and the preceding Data Protection Act 1998 can allow victims to be able to claim for the distress alone. When information is leaked, exposed or otherwise misused, the distress that can be caused can be significant. In fact, with councils and local authorities often holding a great deal of personal and sensitive information for a huge number of people, the damage can be serious. They may hold personal, financial, medical, and sensitive domestic data, and all this can be at risk of being exposed or misused.

This is why data breach compensation amounts for cases like this can be substantial in some cases.

Are you entitled to claim?

If council email data leaks arise from some form of negligence, that’s when you may be eligible to make a claim for compensation with us on a No Win, No Fee basis.

They can happen in a number of ways, which can include where data is sent to the wrong person, or where it’s leaked in a mass email event where the CC function is used instead of the BCC function. Really, councils should not use such a risky and archaic method for mass emails and should make use of readily available mass mailing software.

When it comes to non-email leaks, incidents can happen where information sent by post to the wrong persons, whether it’s the incorrect data contained in a letter or attached to it, or where more than one letter or information document has been mixed together in the post. Information could also be published online when it shouldn’t have been, or accessible online in error

We do assess each potential claim on a case by case basis, but we’re more than happy to do this on a completely free and no-obligation basis. For a free claims assessment, just contact the team today and we can normally tell you right away if your case is one we can take forward with a No Win, No Fee arrangement.

Somerset West and Taunton Council incident

We’ve seen plenty of council email data leaks, and there was a recent one that was in the media in February that led to a local authority having to apologise for an error.

It’s understood that Somerset West and Taunton Council (SWT) sent an email to 900 residents about renewal reminders for those who use kerbside garden waste collection services. Unfortunately, as we have seen so many times before, the email was sent by using the CC function instead of the BCC function. As we said above, this kind of method should never be used, and this is precisely the reason as to why.

The result of the data breach is that residents’ information has now been leaked to each of the recipients. The council is understood to have reported itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who may now issue a fine for what has happened.

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