There is no universal data breach definition and it largely depends on the state or country of your residence or citizenship or where the breach occurred. A data breach happens when your personal and/or sensitive data is made public, compromised (unauthorized access or tampering), mis-used, lost, stolen, or otherwise put at risk by an organisation. Personal data is anything that can directly or indirectly be used to identify you (either on its own or when combined with other information). For example, your name, email address, an IP address, bank details, health records, login credentials, etc. Information about you in the public domain is not protected personal information.
In California however the term Personal information for purposes of data claims is defined more narrowly. Read more about data privacy rights in California.
First, all states in the US, the UK and all EU countries have passed data breach notification laws, which require all organizations that had a data breach to inform all affected consumers whose data might have been affected and as well as data privacy authorities.
However, according to recent surveys only 1 out of 2 people were notified. This happens for a few reasons. Most of the time companies are slow to identify a security breach (some surveys show it takes on average 180 days to identify breach), which allows bad actors to continue to exploit leaks for some time. Some are trying to hide and are dishonest about data security incidents. So we recommend you to check compensation with DataClaim and monitor your accounts and always use double authentication.
Yes, if your personal information was leaked, compromised, or misused, you may bring a claim for damages.
Yes. If your personal data was leaked, compromised, misused, destroyed or lost, you might be eligible to claim compensation for material and/or non-material damages, such as distress and inconvenience even if you have not suffered financial harm.
GDPR is the General Data Protection regulation passed in the EU, that is effective in all EU and EEA countries. The UK has also made it into UK law, called UK GDPR. During the transition period, DPA (Data Protection Act 2018) will regulate data protection in the UK. GDPR set the highest standard globally in personal data protection and any individual, whose private data was compromised, can bring a claim for compensation.
California has introduced the law to data privacy protection of California resident consumers, which is called California Consumer Privacy Act. It becomes fully effective from July 1, 2020 and provides private right of action, which means you can claim from $100 to $750 if your data has been breached, compromised or leaked, or mis-used. There is no requirement for you to suffer a material loss to be able to bring a claim. This is the first such law in the States and if you want to read more about it visit our page.
Yes, the GDPR gives you a right to claim compensation from an organisation if you have suffered damage as a result of it breaking data protection law. This includes both “material damage” (e.g. you have lost money) or “non-material damage” (e.g. you have suffered distress).
