Compensation for a Data Breach

A data breach is where confidential information is copied and either released in public e.g. on a web site or is stolen by criminals for identity theft, online blackmail or similar.

Many well-known organisations have suffered from data breaches, revealing confidential information such as login and password, payment card details, date of birth etc. of their customers

When this happens, the company has a legal obligation to inform the authorities and all users who may be affected by this.

If your data is lost and it causes you financial damage or distress, you may be able to make a claim for compensation from the organisation that was breached.

The criteria for a compensation claim for a data breach include:

Financial losses.
Loss of privacy.

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 financial loss and other types of loss.

The Citizens Advice Bureau provides information on taking legal action in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

To Complain and Claim Compensation

Complain to the company that lost your data

Explain any problems you believe have been caused by the data breach and include any distress you have suffered. It’s also useful to specify what compensation you want

Complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office

You can take your issues with how the organisation dealt with your confidential information to the |Information Commissioner but it’s better for this to be after you have given the company a chance to review your claim first.

Use the Small Claims Court

This is a cheap and simple process if you cannot reach agreement with the company.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

August 1, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Euro Funds

Scammers use all sorts of enticements to get people to reply and give their personal information.

This one is weird in that it’s hard to see who it is aimed at – anyone in investments would recognise it as fake and people not into investments may not understand it.

The email sender’s address is PaulStarr but the message claims to be from Stella June so is an obvious scam.

It’s also sent to Undisclosed Recipients which suggests it has been sent to a large number of people for whom the sender only has email addresses – no names.

The key part of the message is:

I am Stella June from the central computer room of the Euro Screen responsible for all foreign /international transfer passing through Europe.

There has been a standing order pending on a transfer in your name on the Euro screen for months now which happens to be a contract/inheritance funds payment, Please do tell us why you have left your funds half done and unattended to in the euro screen.

Usually these sorts of messages mention a very large sum of money – in the millions of Pounds, dollars or Euros, but in this case it’s left up to the imagination and perhaps the greed of the email recipient.

There is no attempt to make the email look authentic, no company name or contact details etc.

A simple cheap phishing message. Never reply to such messages.

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July 31, 2021

Time-Wasters Update Saturday

Holiday City Travel say they want to add us, free of charge, to the holiday company register. Don’t any of these morons check who they are sending emails to?

A scammer named Didik offers us the chance to buy the [radio station].com domain name. But a simple check shows that it is an unregistered domain name so anyone can buy it for £1.99 first year currently. It’s of no use to us, so we’re no interested. If we replied that we were interested, then ‘Didik’ would buy the domain name for next to nothing and try selling it to us at a high price. If you do want one or more domain names, then shop around – and don’t be taken in by this kind of email.

Dimosthenes lists a series of part numbers and wants us to advise cost, discount, payment terms, transportation costs to Greece and delivery time for the below item (or alternative solution). Radio stations don’t sell parts so is an obvious scam.

A series of emails arrive at about the same time with titles such as “What an Interesting Offer”, “Open for a remarkable offer”, “Special offer just for you”, “Fabulous Offer enclosed” and so on. They are all from random email addresses i.e. ones with lots of numbers in them and are clearly made up by a computer. The messages have identical content – just a link to click. No thanks – won’t be clicking on any of those.

A message from Katherine claims she is currently working on behalf of a major industry-leading client trying to enhance their brand via editorial content and whilst looking for opportunities, came across our website brooklandsradio.co.uk. She wants to place sponsored content on our site. But she has an email address that shows she works in the gambling industry. No thanks. Gambling and community radio do not go together.

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July 30, 2021

Avast Secure Browser

Avast Secure Browser is a web browser developed by Avast that focuses on Internet security and privacy. It is free and available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.

Features

Block malicious webpages and browser extensions
Advert Block
Bank Mode
A password manager.
Video Downloader
Anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting
Anti-Phishing

Bank Mode

Bank Mode creates an isolated Windows desktop session while you do your online banking. This is stop keyloggers from recording your keyboard access.

Bank Mode can give you secure privacy whenever any sort of payment info or sensitive data comes into play. Use it for:

online banking
online shopping
managing investments
managing cryptocurrencies

If you have any experiences with secure browsers by any maker, do let me know, by email.

July 29, 2021

Do Not Unsubscribe

If you receive emails from a reputable business and want the emails to stop then usually the easy answer is just to click the unsubscribe button.

The problem is where you are dealing with emails from companies that you don’t know whether they are reputable or not and of course the vast majority of spam messages are from the disreputable sources.

For these, it’s usually a bad idea to click on the unsubscribe link – assuming there is one of course.

Why is that?

By clicking, you are confirming that the email address is Live and hence it may be added to spam lists that sell at a higher price than spam lists of untested email address. These lists are sold to other scammers and spammers.
Your click demonstrates an interest in the subject of the email. A sender that is not reputable will then double down and send you many more similar emails.
The sender can glean quite a lot of information from your click, about your browser and operating system, IP address etc. and that can be used to target scams and attacks against you.
The link you click may well be to a site that tries to download malware onto your device.

Think twice before clicking on an unsubscribe link.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.