UK Data Breach Compensation and Your Data Privacy Rights

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Data Breach Claim - When Are You Eligible for Data Breach Compensation?

Under DPA and GDPR, you are entitled to file a data breach claim up to £2,000 or more in data breach compensation if:

• Your personal data has been leaked, disclosed, lost, mis-used or hacked, corrupted
• It doesn’t matter if you suffered economic loss, you still can make a claim
• breach was deliberate or negligent
• The data incident happened less than 6 years ago
• It doesn’t matter if a company offered you a free credit monitoring or anything else, except for data breach settlement compensation.

Data Breach Types

Data breach may happen in many different ways that may include:

• Your online password and login credentials were compromised
• Your credit card information was leaked or stolen
• Your bank account or financial information was compromised
• IT security breach of the company you trusted your personal information or its vendor
• personal health or medical information leak
• Lost or stolen computer or electronic device which leads to security breach or unauthorized access to private information caused by a company’s employee
• An identity has been stolen (identity theft) or misused
• Sending personal data to a wrong recipient that puts personal information at risk.
• Outdated or inaccurate records that company or government holds on you that caused some harm or discrimination or profiling.
• sale of your personal data without your express consent.
• Loss of your personal data by the company or government.

How Much Compensation Should You Get for a Data Breach in UK?

Personal data breach happened in the UK entitles you to financial compensation.

The amount of data breach compensation you are entitled to depends on many factors and will be determined by court based on many factors. These are estimated amounts of compensation based on prior data breach awards:

• from £750 to £2,000 - for low risk data breach where information is not sensitive and where no financial harm was suffered, as compensation for distress.
• from £3,000 to £8,000 where sensitive information was compromised (medical or financial data breach), but breach has not caused severe losses or has not been intentional.

Courts have not settled on exact compensation brackets yet. In some cases where sensitive information was leaked or celebrity was involved, or data breach had a major effect on the person, courts carefully assessed data breach damages and data breach payout can be much greater and reach £30,000 - £50,000.

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DataClaim has partnered with the best legal experts in privacy protection and privacy claims to achieve the best possible outcomes for you and highest chances for data breach compensation success.

How much compensation can I claim for a Sensitive Information Breach?

Sometimes you can read stories about banks being hacked where bank details were leaked, or credit card information was compromised in such cases banks will typically notify customers and put a freeze on account or card and issue a new one, usually coupled with credit score monitoring. But that does not mean you will not suffer a financial loss, discrimination or distress in the future, which happens to approximately 30% of data leak victims based on recent surveys.

Health and medical data breaches (includes biometric information) are also considered very serious data incidents equally having a major lasting impact on personal or professional life.

If your sensitive data was breached, you may be entitled to (approximately):

• Medical data breach £3,000 - £5,000
• Bank or financial information breach £3,000 - £7,000
• Any of above with severe impact £8,000 - £30’000*

* evidence of loss and/or distress will be required.

Do I have to go to court to claim data breach compensation?

Typically, the company would tend to settle out of court, because it is costly to oppose data breach cases especially if the company admitted to it and for reputation reasons. However, some companies may decide not to settle in which case our team of experts will take your case to court, where it is feasible.

What is the cost to make a data breach compensation claim?

We work based on a “No-Win, No-Fee” success basis and without any advance payments from you, so there is no risk for you. This means that legal costs are deducted from data breach compensation payout to you and you don't have to pay legal bills. You can also refer to the Price section in Terms of use for % of success fee.

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How do I know if my personal data was hacked or leaked?

A company must report data breach, which may cause high risk to consumers, to ICO and affected individuals within 72 hours, as feasible. However, according to some recent surveys companies are slow to identify and mitigate data breach and 279 days is the average period. In some recent cases breach was left unnoticed for more than a year. Less than 1 out of 2 victims were notified about data breach and we recommend checking if your personal information was compromised for free. Don't be surprised if you will find out that you were hacked multiple times!

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How to make a data breach compensation claim?

If you had a data breach and want to make a claim for compensation click below to submit your request and our experts will assess your case. After we determine you have a valid claim we will seek compensation on your behalf at the pre-court stage and if it fails we will even take your case to court, all based on the “No-Win, No-Fee” success fee basis. That means you don't have to pay anything and legal costs will be deducted only from compensation received.

What is the time limit to file a data breach claim?

You have 6 years to bring your claim in the UK. This means if you had a data leak that happened within the last six years, you can now bring a claim for compensation or join existing data group actions (class actions). With short deadlines in place, it’s important to submit your claim now.

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Other Data Privacy Rights That Come With DPA and GDPR

UK Data Protection Law and GDPR

The United Kingdom has two major laws: the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR), which give individuals more protection of individual data privacy rights and regulates use and processing of personal information.

The DPA requires that your personal information should be stored, handled, used fairly and lawfully by organizations, businesses, or the government for specific purposes based on your consent and in a secure manner.

Other UK Data Privacy Rights

The law provides you seven major data privacy rights, major of which include: right to know what information business knows about you, right to rectify any incorrect information, right to delete data, right to limit processing, sale or use of your personal information, right to object to processing data and right to export/migrate data, right to claim compensation for a data breach.

Despite all above rights and corresponding obligations DPA puts on companies, data breaches happen so often now and have a lasting negative impact on personal and professional life that not always have immediate economic loss. According to recent surveys up to 31% of victims later become victims of identity theft or fraud.

What personal information is protected?

Personal data is defined very broadly under the DPA to effectively deal with different sorts of data that can directly or indirectly have reference or identify individuals and such information is protected from unauthorized disclosures, leaks and breaches.

Special category of sensitive personal information

Under the DPA sensitive personal information includes data about:

• biometric data (finger prints, voice recognition, hand geometry, behaviour characteristics, face recognition, eyes scan)
• Ethnic background and race
• physical or mental health
• Political opinions and preferences
• Religious beliefs
• Trade union membership
• Genetic information
• sex life or sexual orientation
• Criminal or offence history (attempts, arrests, sentence, parol) and similar records.

Can I get compensation for a data breach?

Yes, if your private information was compromised, leaked or misused, you should have the right to claim fair compensation even if you have not suffered economic damage.

Even prior to GDPR, the Court of Appeals in London decided in case Vidal-Hall and others v Google Inc. that a claim for compensation can be made for distress suffered by the victims of privacy breach even though there was no financial loss.

DataClaim team of experts in data privacy protection can help you to claim data protection breach compensation for privacy violations and data breach specifically.

Do not ignore even small data breaches.

If you are reading this it is likely your data personal information was compromised, if still in doubt please check if you have been hacked. No one should ignore even a small personal data breach, because it can have a serious effect on your future life. Often leaks are caused by human factors in absence of bad faith, but bad actors can take advantage and mis-use personal information. According to recent surveys, every third person who had personal data leaked, had later suffered from any of below:

• identity theft or fraudulent activity
• Financial loss or bad credit history
• discrimination on different grounds
• damage to reputation
• inconvenience, economic or social distress, or
• loss of confidentiality.

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What is ICO and what does ICO do?

ICO is the Information Commissioner’s Office is an independent authority designed to enforce data protection obligations and protect privacy rights of individuals. ICO allows you to file a complaint directly to the ICO and your case will be reviewed and opinion will be given by ICO if data protection regulations have been breached. Since ICO cannot make a decision to award compensation for a data breach, it is very helpful for purposes of potential out of court settlement and in-court enforcement of data breach compensation claims.

ICO has also strong power to put a significant fine on the company for data violations, but cannot give you legal advice or award compensation. The DPA 2018 allows the ICO to reclaim any expenses incurred in investigating your complaint from any settlement costs awarded at pre-court or in court stage.

If you had personal information breached or identity theft within the last 6 years, you could be eligible for up to £2,000 or more in compensation Check compensation

How to File a Claim for Data Breach Compensation

What To Do When Your Data is Breached

If you’ve just found out your information is breached or leaked, don’t stress, follow our easy step-by-step guide on how to make the best out of the situation.

• Confirm data breach happened. If the company notified you about a data breach - your personal information was likely compromised. Save any data breach notice and any other relevant information you might’ve received.
• Confirm if it affected you: If you learned about data breach from the news and you think you might have been affected, ask the company what exactly happened and did it affect your personal information
• Confirm type of data breach: online accounts compromised, credit card or bank data breach, health or medical leak, social accounts information, etc.
• Has your sensitive information been leaked or compromised in unsecured format (credit card or bank information, medical information, social security number, passport or ID details, or security questions).
• Submit a claim with DataClaim for compensation and attach any relevant information.
• If the company has information about bad actors trying to mis-use your private information already (e.g., identity fraud)
• Change your online logins, passwords to stronger ones and security Q&A
• Activate double authentication for banks, email and other essential accounts
• Consider credit freeze and carefully monitor bank account activity
• Stop using VPN or public Wifi.
• Consider getting duplicates of compromised documents.
• Keep all copies of all communications and receipts of any expenses you might incur to claim compensation for it later
• While it might make sense to accept free credit monitoring or credit repair services as offered for the company
• Don’t sign anything or accept any offers that require you to waive your rights

Data Breach Compensation - How to Claim Data Breach Compensation with DataClaim

We understand that many victims do not have time, experience or desire to fight for their data privacy rights in order to make a data breach claim for compensation they may be entitled to.

DataClaim is able to submit data privacy claims on behalf of people affected by data leak:

• we‘ll tell you quickly if we think you might be entitled to compensation
• We’ll handle all communication with organization which had your information compromised
• There is no risk, we only charge a fee when we are successful in getting you compensation.

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Documents You need to claim Data Breach Compensation

Organizations have different procedures and may require different documents in order to make a data breach claim. The best advice is to hold on to all documents and communications you had.

One of the advantages of filing a claim with DataClaim, is that our experts know exactly what different organizations may require. Our team will help you navigate the process and to find the right documents when we start working on your claim.

If you file a claim yourself, you may experience a pushback or amount of compensation offered will be small. Organizations might be slow to react to your complaint or ignore it completely. To increase chances of quick and successful payout on your claim, make sure you gather all documents you can (data breach notices, copies of receipts, etc).

Tools to Help you claim for Data Breach

Online compensation calculator

It only takes a few minutes to answer a few questions to know what is the estimated amount of compensation you might be entitled. After this easy check you can make a data breach compensation.

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