The Information Commissioner has announced, today, that employees of a major mobile telephone company have unlawfully sold thousands of customer account details, including contract expiry dates, to the company's competitors. Agents of the company's competitors have been using the data to 'cold call' customers prior to their contract expiry dates to offer them alternative contracts.
This flagrant breach of data protection law is another example of why the Information Commissioner is seeking greater powers to 'punish' those who engage in the unlawful selling of personal data (and other serious data protection offences). For further information on the current and proposed enforcement powers available to the Information Commissioner please click here.
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
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The original publication date for this article was 17/11/2009.